What the P2P Foundation Did in 2014

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Discussion

Part 1: from Open Cooperativism to the Commons Transition Plan

This overview is meant to be for the P2P Foundation as a network but this first part focuses on my own activities, which is the aspect I know best.

My two strategic priorities for 2014 were the following:

  • to contribute to the convergence between the open/p2p modes of production, and the cooperative/social/solidarity economy mode of production, and their respective social movements;
  • to continue the work around a commons transition, following the experience in Ecuador with the floksociety.org project


In 2014, I continued to work on the convergence of the open/commons and cooperative movements, and I believe we made really substantial progress on this.

This convergence was prepared in late 2013 with my participation as attendee, speaker and scientific adviser to the Rencontre du Mont Blancs meeting 7-8 November 2014. This is a french network for the Social and Solidarity Economy. Following this event, we continued our conversations within that network, and met with the Frederic Sultan, Nicole Alix, and J-M Bancel, and others, to continue working at the institutional level. This will likely culminate in workshops in the spring and fall of 2015.

A separate line of communication and dialogue went through the english cooperative network, with members such as Pat Conaty, Robin Murray, Ed Mayo and Canadians like Margie Mendell, Mike Lewis, John Restakis. This network is now in alignment for this convergence. One of the highlights of 2014 was the ability to work very closely with John Restakis and many of his policy papers for the Ecuadorian FLOK project, also reflect this convergence. John is a great cooperative thinker and as he is influenced by p2p/commons thinking so am I influenced by his ideas on the Cooperative Commonwealth (also beautifully expressed by Pat Conaty). The dialogue with and within this network culminated in the open cooperativism deep dive in September in Berlin, which I co-organized with David Bollier, and in the subsequent 3-day 'movement of movements convergence' in Meisse, also co-organized with David Bollier. It was also the theme of a very well diffused lecture during the Degrowth conference, in which Silke Helfrich was an active co-organizer for the material on the commons. Finally, we organized a three day collaborative convergence festival, organized by the P2P Foundation and myself with the assistance of Kevin Flanagan and the participation of John Restakis, in the We Create green fablab at the Cloughjordan ecovillage in Ireland, which attracted many Irish nationals, especially young people. I was really very enthusiastic to see this green fab lab at work. Imagine in the middle of green Ireland, several dozens of smart and committed people!

Separate from the general dialogue and movement convergence, we also paid close attention to the development of systemic proposals, which can co-create an eco-system in which the open, cooperative and 'sustainability' aspects can co-exist.

The first such project is the creation of a commons-based reciprocity license or copyfair, which has received the endorsement of various activists, including legal experts, particularly in France (such as Lionel Maurel and Primavera de Filippi). We have created a network of interested parties, both experts and a dozen economic entities who are interested in the implementation of the license. We have run into funding issues to responsibly craft this license, but are committed to rewrite that license soon without funding.

The second project in the context of open cooperatism, is the creation of a commons-centric crypto currency for the cooperative commons, i.e. Faircoin. To this effect, we have aligned ourselves in a strategic partnership with the Catalan Integral Cooperative, and the fair.coop eco-system, which includes the use of the faircoin currency [1], has been launched this fall, with crucial cooperation from P2P Foundation associates in Catalonia and Madrid. We have been invited in the second half of April 2015 for more joint collaboration on this topic.


The second priority concerned the advancement of political and policy thinking around the commons transition.

The highlight was of course my participation, along with P2P Foundation network associates, such as John Restakis, as research director for the FLOK transition project in Ecuador. Other 'p2p-f' participants were George Dafermos, and Janice Figueiredo.

For the first time in history a commons transition plan was produced, accompanied by 18 legislative proposals and a dozen pilot projects. While the execution of the FLOK project is momentarily (or for a longer time) stalled at the nation-state level, the Commons Transition Plan has been consulted by nearly 65k viewers on the floksociety.org site; influenced the crafting of the Lemoine report on the digital economy in France; and is already cited as a reference.

The most promising concrete project is the open agricultural machining project in Sigchos district. The committed mayor has bought 2,200 ha. of land for experimentation, nominated a 'sustainable development' director, and with the help of an associate send there to assist in the planning , i.e. Kate Swade of Shared Assets, a full planning was set up, which includes a summer school process in the summer of 2015. The proposals are presently in process for funding by the SENESCYT innovation agency, but whatever outcome there, the mayor is committed to carry out this project.

After the final production in Ecuador itself, we continued working with the CTP as a reference for commons-oriented policy-making and political convergence. A 2 day workshop was organized with the assistance of the Reseaux Francophones des Communs, in la Bergerie, with French and Spanish commoners on September 22-23. This was followed by participation in a What the FLOK festival in Marseille (October 2-5), and a 10-day to Athens, Greece, which consisted of three workshops with cooperative/commons activist groups, one public lecture, and three workshops with Syriza officials, which were considered very successful by the organizers and the Nikos Poulantzas Institute. Being able to influence, or rather to open up to commons thinking, the new generation of transformative parties is high on my wishlist.

This work will continue with a visit in April 2015 to the Catalan Integral Cooperative, which will work on a civic transition towards the commons.

We have also carried out communication and publishing work, with the launch of an international website, commonstransition.org, and an ebook, will be available before the end of year or just after New Year, with the help of Stacco Troncoso, Ann Marie Utratel and Guy James of Guerrilla Translation. Both will contain new versions of the Commons Transition Plan and the policy papers on the civic economy and the partner state, to make them more useful for a generic use outside of Ecuador. The papers are also already available. A full three months (and a half) of lectures and workshops was used for communication and diffusion of the FLOK and further commons transition efforts, in the fall.

One of the hightlights of this trip was definitely visiting the 'Tiers Lieux Open Source' in Lille, i.e. meeting great Ouishare activists like Simon Sarazin and collaborative coworking spaces like Coroutine and Mutualab, where you can feel that the new p2p and collaboration driven culture is taking shape.

In addition, the P2P Foundation has been able to hire a full-time assistant since October 2014, i.e. Kevin Flanagan, to strengthen the organizational capacity of the P2P Foundation. We have now introduced professional governance software, Loomio, as a organizational and governance tool.

The post-flok transition work has a particular potential in urban settings and we started a first cooperation with the Co-Manua project in Italy, looking forward to further cooperation in the future.

We very actively continued our generic communication about the commons economy:

  • The wiki of the P2P Foundation now has 20k articles, which have been viewed 27,385,944 times. The audience of the blog is estimated to be 100k per month. We have been able to collect 160 references to public lectures in 2014; and 80 video recordings, with appearances for Dutch, Belgian and Ecuadorian TV stations.
  • The Flemish book, De Wereld Redden, 200 pages of conversations, with Jean Lievens, on p2p theory and transitions, continues to do well in the Flanders and a bit in the Netherlands; and will be published in France next spring, by Les Liens Qui Liberent.
  • With Penny Travlou and Stacco Troncoso we are working on a important list and directory of the 100 Women Who Are Co-Creating the P2P Society, the profiles of which will be published on our blog in 2015

Here is a summary of the three strategic priorities of the P2P Foundation for 2015 and 2016:

  • Stream 1: Co-creating and catalyzing the alternative eco-system for open and cooperative peer production, to enable reconstruction of economic and social power around the commons. This includes work on our Commons-Based Reciprocity License (or Copyfair License), Open Cooperativism and Phyles, to create ethical entrepreneurial coalitions that co-produce commons.
  • Stream 2: Reclaiming political voice and power via bottom-up Assemblies of the Commons and Chamber of the Commons putting forward social charters, in conjunction with “top-down” progressive coalitions through existing political parties. These coalitions around the commons, or ‘the politics and policies of the commons’, will further our efforts to implement Commons Transition Plans.
  • Stream 3: Creating synergies between cooperative peer production and sustainability, i.e. showing how a transition to the new modes of production, governance and ownership can solve the ecological and climate crises.

Part 2

The P2P Foundation in Brazil

Janice Figueiredo:

"The P2P Foundation has been present in Brazil since 2012, when a partnership between the P2P Foundation, the IBICT (Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia) and the UFRJ (University of Rio de Janeiro) brought Bauwens to the country to minister a 2-month course on P2P practices and the commons. The course was followed by a Wikisprint that mapped almost 100 P2P and collaborative initiatives in Brazil.

During 2014 the P2P Foundation supported a couple of projects in the country:

In September, 2014 the biannual digital magazine “P2P and Innovation” (“Revista P2P & INOVAÇÃO”) was launched, bringing together 8 articles, written by Michel Bauwens' students and one by Bauwens himself. The magazine is linked to the Collaborative Economy and P2P Production Research Group in Brazil, managed by Professor Clovis Montenegro de Lima (IBICT). The second issue of the magazine is scheduled to be released in March, 2015 and it will include a compilation of key articles describing the FLOK experience in Ecuador.

In the last months of 2014 the P2P Foundation consolidated a partnership with “Tecnopolíticas: territórios urbanos e redes digitais" , a recently created research network aimed to contribute to the practices of sustainable urban development in Brazil. The network is composed of 15+ Brazilian and international universities and several other international institutions and researchers, especially from the Ibero-american axis. It intends to produce knowledge and to explore technology to promote the intersection between digital networks and urban spatial dynamics. The project proposes the collaborative development of open and adaptable social technology, basing itself on initiatives that promote free knowledge sharing, such as the open source or peer-to-peer movements. The network will be coordinated by Professor Natacha Rena (Indisciplinar-UFMG) and Professor Fernanda Bruno (MediaLab-UFRJ).

In May, 2014, thanks to the initiative of Fabio Cunha Filho, a landing page of the P2P Foundation in Portuguese started to be worked upon. The highlights of the page are the translation into Portuguese of Bauwens' “The Political Economy of Peer Production”, done by Miguel Caetano (“A Economia Política da Produção entre Pares”) and “Em Direção à Democratização dos Meios de Monetização” (from the English "Towards the Democratization of the Means of Monetization”), also from Bauwens, translated by Fabio Cunha Filho.

In the last days of December, 2014 an article describing the FLOK Society Project in Ecuador was published in TOTVS, a Brazilian magazine aimed to concentrate articles about trends in technology, behaviour and new business mindsets, giving support to the transition towards the 21st century. The article was written by Journalist Gabriela Mafort and can be read at pages 8-11 here: http://www.totvs.com/experience/en-us/. The Portuguese version can be accessed at http://www.totvs.com/experience/pt-br/ and the Spanish version at http://www.totvs.com/experience/es/ .

Brazil has a vibrant and intense ecosystem of collaborative communities and practices that includes an active free software community, a dynamic cultural landscape, solidarity economy practices, the use of alternative and open currencies, hackatons, co-working spaces, urban farming initiatives, crowdfunding platforms, alternative education propositions, platforms for citizen engagement and sharing resources initiatives. In 2015, a group of P2P researchers and an extended network of academics, activists, independent researchers and P2P enthusiasts intend to document such initiatives, as well as to group together on a site relevant academic and non-academic works already published in Brazil on the field."

The P2P Lab in Greece

By Vasilis Kostakis:

The P2P Lab is a Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation & Governance and P2P Foundation spin-off interested in interdisciplinary research on free/open source technologies and practices. Our Greece-based lab was created in December 2012 as a community-driven space, and since then it has evolved into a for-benefit organization which features a FabLab; a co-working space; a physical library with literature on the Commons; and a guest room designed to host international collaborators and colleagues.

In a nutshell, our long-term goal is to build the necessary infrastructures upon which the Commoners can create sustainable livings and thus empower and promote the circulation of the Commons versus the accumulation of capital. In 2014, the P2P Lab collaborators published various articles and books, in English, Greek and Spanish, which can be freely accessed at our Publications page. Many of those were based on hands-on projects/case studies that were run by our members and collaborators, like the “3Ducation project”.

During the first half of the next year we will be designing certain research projects with the aim to develop bottom-up, Commons-oriented pilots that would explore and implement the productive model “design global-manufacture local”. The P2P Foundation is a key partner in our effort to materialize the vision of our book Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy, i.e., to build a Commons-oriented, sustainable society.

Guerrilla Translation

Ann Marie Utratel, co-founder:

We developed Guerrilla Translation as a P2P translation collective and cooperative, founded in Spain. Our group is a small but international set of avid readers, content curators and social/environmental issue-focused people who love to translate and love to share. We presently work in the language pair of Spanish and English, and want to develop additional language pair nodes. All work is done in-house, artisanally, without using translation software, and we use and promote innovative, peer-production licensing. We are not volunteers, instead we are building our own innovative cooperative business model to support our unique vision of a self-sustaining system of pro-bono and paid work within our collective, which “walks the talk” of much contemporary writing on the new economy and its power to change. Our core mission and values are oriented and inspired by the ideal of a commons-based equitable society, and we see ourselves as communication facilitators toward that end.

Unlike other traditional translation agencies, we don't have pre-determined or fixed roles and positions; we're flexible and multi-skilled individuals who work in a peer-to-peer style which captures our individual strengths and magnifies our abilities. Also, we're a permeable organization where members can opt in and out of work commitments depending on their own individual needs and realities. Our primary challenge in the short term is refining our team-building mechanisms. We specialize in a wide variety of topics related to social change, such as: the P2P/Commons movement, and social / environmental justice collectives and movements, the collaborative economy, technological innovation, cryptocurrencies, permaculture, open software and licensing, feminism, art/activism, and many other related topics. Our distinctive characteristic which attracts our clients is our involvement in these movements, actually helping to create the evolving lexicon in the target language.

We have developed an internal governance model expanding on an existing model produced and implemented by BetterMeans, called the Open Enterprise Governance Model, which values meritocracy or “equipotentiality” as we have re-envisioned it, and which also incorporates a multi-tier system of external pricing as well as a balanced, multi-part income stream for members, where income is detached from labor but fairly distributed, allowing for the ability to continue our flagship pro-bono work. In addition, we have developed our use of online systems for workflow management, consensus documentation and inter-team coordination.

We've had fantastic exposure and feedback in our first year. Our Spanish to English translations have been republished in Open Democracy, Reality Sandwich, Adbusters, Shareable, Occupy.com, and the P2P Foundation blog, among others. So far, we’ve translated and published David Graeber, Naomi Klein, Robert Jensen, Gabriella Coleman, Charles Eisenstein, Katie Teague, Henia Belalia, Michel Bauwens, Douglas Rushkoff, Dmytri Kleiner and Steve Lambert, among others, into Spanish. We've also enjoyed a great deal of word-of-mouth recommendations. Oh, and we also won an award at OuishareFest 2014, which did not hurt at all.

Some of our 2015 plans:

  • Revamp our website to make it language-specific, and for ease of navigation (in progress, relaunching January 2015).
  • Continue to develop an ongoing collaborative project focused on creating an international, networked book distribution system - including translation, promotion, production and distribution resources - working with a variety of Spanish and Latin American publishers and on-demand printers. This project is being developed in collaboration with the author David Bollier (using his book “Think Like a Commoner” in a Spanish translation as a "pilot" project), the crowdfunding platform Goteo, and publisher/distributor Traficantes de Sueños (crowdfund planned for Spring 2015).
  • Working with the P2P Foundation, we’re continuing to research and develop new forms of international coop alliances in concert with the CIC, las Indias, United Diversity, and other players.
  • Ongoing participation in the customized development of specialized value-tracking software for our unique economic redistribution model, in conjunction with Mikorizal Software, Sensorica and other players.
  • Team-building and recruitment, striking a balance between being discriminating as far as skills and the ability to work both independently and within a cooperative team, contrasted with the level of inclusion and cohesive, familiar dynamics we prefer.

P2Pvalue

As reported by Chris Pinchen:

We had an intense year participating in the P2Pvalue project which is already yielding some excellent results such as:

the creation of the biggest directory of Commons Based Peer Production projects and communities http://directory.p2pvalue.eu/

a decentralized and FLOSS alternative to Google Drive Real-Time API, which means that developers can now take benefit of simultaneous collaboration features in their apps without selling their soul to Google https://github.com/P2Pvalue/incubator-wave

a theoretical synthesis of Commons Based Peer Production, the findings of which will be disseminated in various formats during 2015 http://p2pvalue.eu/sites/default/files/u28/D12_31July_TheoreticalFindingsA%20%281%29.pdf

analysis of institutional design characteristics of CBPP communities and software platforms based on decentralized architectures and bottom-up peer-to-peer coordination, extracting the most important ones that were compiled into a set of guidelines or best-practices

We are continuing building links with communities as well as the P2Pvalue Stakeholder Board (http://p2pvalue.eu/consortium/stakeholder-board), disseminating information and material, organising events such as the 2nd FLOSS4P2P Worksop which will take place in London in March 2015 http://p2pvalue.eu/2nd-floss4p2p-workshop, as well as planning improvements to the directory and some datathons to exploit it.

2015 looks like it will be equally intense and rewarding as we engage with testbed communites on further software development and ethnographical research.


Part 3: What some of our friends have been doing

Albert Cañigueral

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

- I kept developing materials around the Collaborative Economy in Spanish language via OuiShare, ConsumoColaborativo and by publishing the book "Vivir mejor con menos". Due to conflicts with incumbent industries the topic was regularly covered by press and other media.

- I kept co-developing the Spanish speaking community of OuiShare. At the end of 2014 we finally became a non-profit association in Spain in order to engage in larger projects. We had our first events in México.

- I had a minor role on bootstrapping Sharitories.net project that gained a lot of moment on late 2014

- I started to be more involved with policy related topics such as EESC opinion paper on collaborative consumption.


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016 // I need to figure this out! :)

- OuiShare will organize a large scale event in Spain on 2015 to consolidate the local communities.

- We are developing the initial version of a MOOC around the collaborative economy (in Spanish). There will be a focus on education materials generation (ideally co-created) under OuiShare Academy umbrella.

- I will spend some time in Latin America, very likely Bogotá and México.

- There will be local (May) and national (~November) elections in Spain on 2015. Collaborative economy will be part of the debate and we plan to have an active role on this debate.



Nicholas Anastasopoulos

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

2014 included research and collaboration among commons oriented peers which took place in Quito and Athens, an extraordinarily inspiring year for which I am proud.

I had the good fortune to conduct research as Prometeo Researcher in Quito and be part for four months of the FLOK Society Project <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Main_Page> team where collaborative spirit sparked off a variety of ideas and projects not only in Ecuador but worldwide, the effects of which we will be witnessing in the years to come. I conducted research on the topic of Sustainability, Buen Vivir and the Commons, the fruits of which were presented in a lecture and feed various papers.

Back at home the /Koino Athina <http://koinoathina.wordpress.com/>/ (Commons Athens) collective which we co-founded in January has been developing research-oriented activities around the urban reality of Athens around various axes and aspects of the commons (koino=commons).

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 – 2016

Organizing of the MET Workshop addressing the idea of the METropolitan commons and centered around three ex-airports and their futures, in three cities (Mariscal-Sucre/Quito, Elliniko/ Athens, Tempelhof/ Berlin). This workshop is an outcome of all the various discussions, meetings and connections that were produced in 2014 around these issues. Preliminary information for the workshop, which will soon become an open call in a P2P collaborative process may be found here <http://themetworkshop.wordpress.com/>.

I also plan to complete during the first two months my book in greek to be published in 2015 with the Estia publishing house, which reflects my research of many years and treats the areas of research around ecocommunities, communities and the commons.

Marc Dangeard, Entrepreneur Commons

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Entrepreneur Commons is on hold for now as chapters have disbanded one after the other after I stopped working on it to take care of personal stuff. There is still some activity in London and I have not given up on re-starting the process later on.

As I moved back to France this year I also made contacts there to raise interest around CommonAccord, a Law Commons bringing the Open Source model to Legal docs (Law is Code).


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

Talking to a French organization who is just starting a program to help students from the suburbs who want to start their own business. They have the concept equivalent to "Entrepreneur Commons by Company_name) so I would like to take this opportunity to get Entrepreneur Commons going again.

And then I will keep pushing CommonAccord as I am convinced this is a much needed solution and very well suited for entrepreneurs getting started with their business. I was very happy to see that others in this group are involved in CommonAccord as well.

Primavera De Filippi

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

  • work on the P2Pvalue project (http://p2pvalue.eu) analysing the institutional design characteristics of CBPP communities and software platforms based on decentralized architectures and bottom-up peer-to-peer coordination, and extracting the most important ones that we compiled into a set of guidelines or best-practices


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

  • keep doing what I've been doing in 2014, but better  ;)
  • get more involved with the work that is being done at FairCoop (http://fair.coop) which is fascinating  :)


Joel Dietz, Swarm project

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Switched from community currency project (Evergreen) to cryptoledger crowdfunding project (SWARM). Fundamental idea is that it allows multi-stakeholder arrangements and more rapid funding via issuing each person a share in a project, powered by the 2.0 wave of blockchain technology. Currently largest barriers are regulatory, and we also need more funding to scale out our team.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

Early adopters (and funders) have almost been from the crypto in-crowd, but I want to facilitate the adoption of these dynamic multi-stakeholder arrangements in the larger "sharing economy," especially among those most discontent with the current venture capital model. At some point I would also like to re-add the "community currency" aspect to it, so that you could create your own internal currency that is secured by blockchain technology but easily transferable.

I also believe one major component here is going to be reputational systems, which I am excited to contribute to in some fashion.


Eric Hunting

Cultivating Post-Industrial Lifestyle

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Pursued development of Urban Nomad/Mobilist/Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions and development of demonstration furnitecture.

Explored Wikihouse and Tiny House development and sought (unsuccessfully) creation of CNC workshop.

Contributed info to the CHT Hackbase Lanzerote project and the Hackbase Architecture site.

Frankly, a very traumatic year due to the impact on my business by the implosion of the college textbook market, the invasion of mass-produced counterfeit books, and the all-out harassment by the US publishers against everyone else in the industry. (in retaliation for losing a landmark Supreme Court case at the end of the previous year) Expect average price of a college textbook in the US to hit $500 this coming year, a coming political war over on-line book sales, and for students to start getting sued for where they choose to buy books--and still the academic community won't take notice or action... This could be a key issue for P2P in the coming year. Higher education is on the cusp of a catastrophe. There needs to be a new model for the contemporary textbook and a new P2P publishing model that simply obsolesces the traditional industry outright and altogether. But I personally lack the inside connections to organize any movement in the academic community.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

Continue to pursue development of Urban Nomad/Mobilist/Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions. Would like to develop a series of mobile furnitecture pods based on crossing roadcase/flightcase construction with traditional Japanese design. Also interested in exploring the potential for repurposed cargo trailers.

Would like to further contribute to Hackbase development. See potential convergence with other Post-Industrial lifestyle exhibitions/demonstrations.

Still struggling with workshop/workspace issues but anticipate acquiring desktop laser cutter as prototyping aid. See potential in emerging market of standardized laser cutter and CNC components from China as basis of open source designs and value networked business opportunities. There's potential here to do for laser cutters and CNCs what the generic PC did for computing.

Considering development of Makers' Guide To Modular Building and Furnitecture books but still searching for collaborative illustrator.


Annemarie Naylor

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

Launched the Common Libraries initiative; supported a number of community owned telecommunication network projects and the Carnegie UK Trust’s Enterprising Libraries pilot programme; explored the potential for former Ministry of Defence sites – including infrastructure assets – to be community owned and managed; attended OuiShare Fest 2014 and won a prize of a one-week acceleration program in Paris, France; made first contact with the P2P Foundation (!); presented at the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin and the Off Grid Festival in Somerset; contributed to an Open Coops Deep Dive in Berlin and Meissen; launched the Our Data Coop research project; worked on numerous library service transformation, action learning and research projects for central and local government; contributed to Living on the Edge 4 at the UnMonastery in Matera as well as to the town’s successful EU Capital of Culture Bid; presented at TedxBrum and Locality’s Annual Convention on the subject of knowledge commons development and management; met SO MANY AMAZING new people – my mind is well and truly blown!


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

  • To continue exploring the potential for the common ownership and management of intangible assets
  • To connect with other people interested in developing initiatives designed to propel common land acquisition, development and management around the world
  • To identify a (better organised) partner in crime – all interested parties are encouraged to get in touch!
  • To slow down (yeah – right!) - and, learn to enjoy the journey ;)


Rachel O'Dwyer

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work


I organised a second iteration of openhere www.openhere.data.ie, a conference and festival on the digital commons. In 2012, the inaugural openhere festival focused on disruptive telecommunications practices and ways of developing and sustaining commons-core infrastructure in communications networks. In 2014, we focused on where 'material' forms of commons and commoning intersected with 'immaterial' commons: how might knowledge-sharing and peer-production in online spaces transform material economies and equally, in what ways do we need to pay more consideration to the material, environmental and economic consolidation of digital spaces, ). This included a three-stranded focus on 1. money and developing alternative currencies that support the commons; 2. a focus on distributed manufacturing and open hardware and 3. a focus on open source ecology and the environmental impact of digital networks. You can check out the videos from the conference here https://vimeo.com/user33775574

Directly after I worked with the Robin Hood Cooperative for a week long office in Dublin to develop new proposals for a cooperative hedge fund and investment model.


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

So far...

I'm hoping to work more with policies and design for alternative currencies. I'm researching where questions around the ownership of core communications infrastructure now intersect with questions about who controls the transfer and flow of value. I'm also going to be working with the Robin Hood Cooperative throughout the next year. This includes long term designs and development for the cooperative as well as short term projects and interventions set for 2015.

I want to work with the p2p foundation in the coming year as much as possible. I'm very excited to find new ways of sharing and applying research in peer-production and the commons :)

I do some work with the provisional university here in Dublin, together we organised the contemporary capitalism series in 2013 and last year an event on the right to the city and critiques of the smart city. http://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com. Provisional university is a research collective headed by Patrick Bresnihan and Mick Byrne and together they do amazing work on the commons and the city. We're hopefully working together more closely this year to produce material for the blog, but I also hope that p2p would like to work more closely with them - yourselves aside, Paddy and Mick are more invested in and knowledgeable of the commons than anyone I've ever encountered.


Zoe Romano

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

- I opened a makerspace in Milan called Wemake (http://wemake.cc) focused on open design and fashion and how these fields can be developed around p2p and commons (especially hardware) and most of my activities were developed within this environment, here's some of them: -> Maker in Residency with Gerard Rubio and his project OpenKnit: opensource knitting machine http://wemake.cc/2014/10/16/openknit/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wemake_cc/sets/72157649172222032/ - > Workshop with Reshalaser project based in Egypt for an opensource portable lasercutter http://wemake.cc/2014/09/25/reshalaser-costruiamo-un-laser-open-source/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wemake_cc/sets/72157648503473618/ - > Workshop Making things open - How to develop open source design http://wemake.cc/2014/09/17/making-things-open/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wemake_cc/sets/72157647737453214/ - > Community nights on Arduino and 3dprinting - the idea of growing local communities is at the core of our idea of makerspace, that's why we started once a month on tuesday (third and fourth) with two topics and soon a third is coming around hacking and knitting. http://wemake.cc/tag/community/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wemake_cc/sets/72157644997953948/

- Launched Open Pod Bay - a project for hackerspaces, makerspaces or fablabs to manage and control accesses to the space and to the machines. It allows registered members to access the space, book and activate machines, keep logs of the accesses and see it in real time online http://wemake.cc/open-pod-bay/

- > Taking part of the project Reprogrammed Art - focused on interactive art and open source http://www.reprogrammed-art.cc/

Being in a context like Milan means dealing with traditional approaches to design (especially fashion and furniture).Interest in new perspectives is growing but there's a lot still to do especially in order to foster substantial changes.

- I published a chapter of a book on Empowering users through design - The title of the chapter is> Open Sourcing Wearables: the Impact of Open Technologies and User Engagement in the Design of Body-Borne Interactive Products. http://zoescope.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/empowering-users-through-design-book/


2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

- keep working on building milan's local community around open design and digital fabrication

- develop open source projects for the fostering of a p2p economy and self organizing around design.

Ann Marie Utratel, Guerrilla Translation

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

- Invested considerable sweat equity in building Guerrilla Translation with my partner Stacco Troncoso and our team. We also helped represent the P2P Foundation at the Open Everything Convergence in Cloughjourdan, Ireland; attended OuiShare Fest 2014 and won a prize of a one-week acceleration program in Paris, France; collaborated in the development and growth of FairCoop; built the CommonsTransition website, wiki and e-book; and, along the way, met a number of other people involved in the p2p/commons movement in person. In all, it was a truly action-packed year full of surprises, lessons and connections.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

- Re-launch Guerrilla Translation in January 2015 as language-specific websites (Spanish and English) redesigned and upgraded; further the CommonsTransition efforts through awareness-building media and events; collaborate on the new CopyFair license projects; develop a collective dedicated to P2P Media and make as many new friends in-person as time and resources will allow.

David Week

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work

a. Together with my colleague Lucinda Hartley, we expanded on certain raw materials of “citizen participation” in the adaptive/tactical urbanism movement and reframed as follows: tactical urban can be re-interpreted and improved by thinking of it as P2P codesign by citizens. But in order to be sustainable, these processes have to be augmented by the reintroduction of the commons into urban property types, and by newer more agile forms of governance (inspired by liquid democracy) to fill the huge gap between public and private. We presented these ideas at the national Urban Design conference in Adelaide, at the global Adaptive Urbanism conference in Christchurch NZ, and at Melbourne Knowledge Week.

b. Began advising Scatter Grounds, a collective of African diaspora built envlronment professionals, on how to use the above three-part model (P2P codesign, commons, adaptive democracy) to developing stronger African migrant communities in Melbourne.

c. Began the task of restructuring Assai on collegiate lines (more like a university with income) including intellectual commons, adhocracy, cooperativism and P2P mentorship.

2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016

a. See if we can extend the work of the Codesign Studio from pure tactical urbanism, to P2P codesign + commons + adaptive democracy, within the demands of the social enterprise model.

b. Document and publish the three-part urban model.

c. (At long last) blog-to-book on rethinking the home as centre of the economy, including concepts of the home as a consciously-managed commons, and defence of the home from intrusion of capitalist industry into the home through industrial use of the home as source of unpaid labour, as site of endless material consumption, and as dumping ground for industrially-produced stress.

d. Continue to transfer Assai from corporation to college, and shift Assai client base from bureaucracies to communities. Expand to include not just professionals, but also artists, building new life-business models through that interaction."

Penny Travlou

1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work*


- published a book chapter on Ethnographies of Co-Creation and Collaboration as Models of Creativity, in S. Rettberg and S. Baldwin (Eds) Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice. West Virginia University Press: pp. 245-304. 2014.

http://elmcip.net/critical-writing/ethnographies-co-creation-and-collaboration-models-creativity


- participated as guest speaker at the day symposium (19 March 2014) “What I Know Is” at the University of Stirling, UK. The event focused on online collaborative knowledge-building and WIKIMEDIA UK. My presentation was on network communities, creativity and collaborative spaces.


- co-organised with Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett (Furtherfield) three panel sessions and a workshop at the Royal Geographical Society’s Annual Conference in London (27 - 31 August). The theme of the panel sessions was “Spatialities of Co-Creation, Collaboration and Peer Production in the Digital Age” while the workshop focused on ‘creativity as a commons’.

http://conference.rgs.org/Conference/sessions/view.aspx?session=fb4e420f-9b0b-43e9-9063-a069206a30d5&programme=87


- co-organised and participated in an online symposium on ‘Commoning the Networks” hosted by the Centre of Creative Interdisciplinary Research into Collaborative Environments (CIRCLE), University of Edinburgh, 21 September 2014.

This international online symposium was designed as an intensive reading group, which undertook focused discussion informed by reading materials circulated in advance. The main questions that the participants addressed in the discussion were: How do debates about networks intersect with those on the concept of the commons? Is it possible to undertake a process of “commoning the Networks”? How could this be implemented in practical terms? Which are the techniques, technologies, language requirements and relevant methodologies to make this possible? What can we learn from the ways in which interactions occur amongst networks, both vertically/horizontally and rhizomatically/progressively? How could a feminist methodology facilitate movement, processing and exchange of ideas and practices in multiple directions amongst and across diverse networks, within an ethos that engages with creativity through a process of “commoning the Networks?”


- participated in the “Global Hangout: Education is a Commons – 7 Days of Online Collaborations”. This was the first global and interconnected event organized by Near Future Education Lab in collaboration with the P2P Foundation and a network of partners and supporters, globally.

http://www.artisopensource.net/network/artisopensource/2014/05/30/the-7-days-of-the-near-future-of-education/



  • 2) what are your plans and projects for 2015 - 2016 *


To develop further my research and ethnographic fieldwork on a) co-creation, collaboration and peer production, b) creativity as a commons and c) commoning the networks


To expand further the network I work with and establish new collaborations within the P2P community


To continue working on the list of the 100 women who are co-creating the P2P society

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