Effective Organising - United Diversity

Open Co-ops: Inspirations, Legal Structure and Tools

this post originally appeared in Stir Magazine [https://www.stirtoaction.com/magazine] illustration by Daksheeta Pattni [https://www.daksheetapattni.com/] In 2002 I described United Diversity [https://uniteddiversity.coop] as “a member owned and stakeholder governed network of mutual advantage.” In truth, it was aspirational. At the time, the flexible

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United Diversity at the London Permaculture Festival

I’m off to Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival [https://uniteddiversity.coop/projects/cloud-cuckoo-land/] now, but thought I’d better whack this presentation I did at the London Permaculture Festival [https://londonpermaculturefestival.com/] up first. I gives a brief history of United Diversity plus details of our exciting plans going forward.

Agriculture

Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapes

I love Pam Warhust. She is such a inspirational, grounded and powerful woman. This is one of my favourite TED talks, by far. Please, watch and share it now. It is about the inspirational story of Incredible Edible Todmorden [https://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/] which has now spawned the Incredible

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The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation

The Mondragón Corporation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation] is an inspiration. The largest cooperative [https://uniteddiversity.coop/category/cooperative/] in the world, they are a federated network of over 250 co-operative businesses who together are the seventh biggest group in Spain. They employ over 80,000 people, have

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How Cooperatives and Community Enterprise Will Get Us Out of this Gigantic Mess

I’ve posted this excellent talk by Janelle Orsi [https://janelleorsi.com/] from the brilliant Sustainable Economies Law Center [https://www.theselc.org/] a few times over on our facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/uniteddiversity]. The whole presentation is well worth watching, but I particularly like it when she

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Liquid Democracy is NOT Delegative Democracy

> Liquid Democracy is a fast, decentralized, collaborative question-answering system, which works by enabling chained answer recommendation. It occupies the middle ground somewhere between direct and representative democracy, and is designed to ensure that the things we all hold in common stay properly maintained (by small, stealthy, distributed teams of

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Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change

I published this on the P2P Foundation blog [https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/top-40-platforms-for-crowdfunding-social-change/2012/11/14] last week, but posting here too for good measure 🙂 Crowdfunding is a new word [https://www.technology-digital.com/web20/-oed-to-consider-adding-this-years-trending-tech-word] for an old idea. The Oxford English dictionary defines [https://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/

Activism

The Genius of #KONY2012 and why all NGOs should take note

Let me start with a disclaimer: I have not watched theKONY2012 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012] video. Just listening to it made me feel a bit uneasy (my fiancée watched on her laptop whilst we both worked at home sitting opposite each other at our dining table). I

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We can accomplish more by sharing

This is the first in a series exploring the things I have learned from the open source way during my time at Red Hat. About 9 years ago I joined Red Hat and my life changed forever. As for my background, currently I'm the Senior Vice President of

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The Diagonal Economy 2: The Impact of Energy Descent

I’ve wondered how to best explain the advantages of the Diagonal Economy in confronting energy descent. I think that reference to an old post addressing “ anti-economies [https://www.jeffvail.net/2005/10/anti-economies.htm]” is perhaps the best framework.There, I discussed the classical sources of economic efficiency: economy

Activism

Collaboration for large groups

There is a dialogue taking place over on Transition Culture [https://transitionculture.org/2009/09/11/why-we-need-formal-agreements-for-national-transition-hubs/] , about how Transition hubs relate to the UK network which started this whole Transition idea. If an opportunity arose, to rewrite this MoU collaboratively, we would need a tool which can manage the

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Jeff Vail on the Diagonal Economy and the Rhizome Organisation

Jeff Vail is starting [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/diagonal-economy-1-overview.html] his long-awaited series on the next step for our post-meltdown political economies (see ToC [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/rise-of-diagonal-economy-and-transition.html] for full project description): An excerpt on how this change may come about in the core

Activism

Rural revolution in Colombia goes digital and p2p

“Latinamerica is particularly well equipped for these changes (peer production) by their cultural affinity with the values of P2P”, said Michel Bauwens on an interview [https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/16-15035-2009-08-23.html] for Pagina/12 the Argentinian journal. This statement seems to prove itself when one reads

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Participatory Leadership

We have started to separately collate material on the new forms of leadership that are emerging in networked communities. You can find our tag here [https://delicious.com/mbauwens/P2P-Leadership]. Our latest find is this table by Chris Corrigan [https://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=2282], which contrasts the new requirements

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How p2p Works: An Introduction

When we started talking to people about the project, we’d often find that some didn’t get how p2p works. Not that you have to understand it to use it, but if you do want to, we produced a couple of simple animations that explain how p2p works. (First,

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Coconut Revolution

This is the amazing story of how a small island nation resisted against the might of corporate globalization and won. Bougainville, with a populations of only 160,000 has managed to close and keep closed one of the biggest mines in the world. They have held their ground for a

Activism

The Take: Occupy. Resist. Produce.

As I’ve said before, The Take is one of the best films I’ve seen. We’re screening it at 7.30pm on Saturday December 15th @ Sessions of Spontaneity

Agriculture

David Korten – The Great Turning

Last night, when I should’ve been asleep, I watched these video clips and was left totally inspired. 🙂 I strongly encourage you to watch them too. Its great stuff! You should also buy the book: [amtap book:isbn=1887208070] UPDATE: The book in bullet points from David Korten [https://davidkorten.

Activism

Dancing with Systems: What to do when systems resist change

What to do when systems resist change; an excerpt from Donella Meadows’s unfinished last book. By Donella Meadows (Whole Earth Winter 2001) Quick Summary of Points. 1. Get the beat. 2. Listen to the wisdom of the system. 3. Expose your mental models to the open air. 4. Stay

Activism

Dancing with Systems

Versions of this piece have been published in Whole Earth, [https://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/447.html] winter 2001 and The Systems Thinker, [https://thesystemsthinker.com/] Vol. 13, No. 2 (March 2002). > > The Dance 1. Get the beat. 2. Listen to the wisdom of the system. 3. Expose