Revision as of 05:05, 19 January 2012

add to p2p essay of day

http://www.shareable.net/blog/aggregation-not-algorithms-is-the-key-to-building-trust

wiki: Open Design School

Description

“The Open Design School is a movement, a school of thought and a virtual institution which advocates design education in the spirit of open source and connected intellectual and creative generosity. We are asking like-minded creatives who are passionate about open education in the art and design sector to come forward and be part of a revolution. We are calling for authors, bloggers, designers, developers, graduates, students, professionals and academics to help us transform the way designers are being trained. Let’s redesign and open up Design Education, together. “

also on blog, and wiki re problem of localisation

Open Sharing API

see: Sharing API

URL = http://www.sharingapi.org/

Discussion

Sharing API as solution to local sharing problem

Juho Makkonen :

“Peer-to-peer borrowing and lending, sharing skills and rides and swapping heavy items like furniture—all activities that require close proximity between the offerer and the requester—are yet to experience their true breakthrough. I believe this is due to two reasons. First, these services have a difficult time with monetization, since the sums of money involved in sharing stuff and skills are a lot smaller than in cases of buying goods or sharing accommodation and transportation. Second, the critical mass required in their case is much greater, since people do not benefit at all from offers that are too far away. This is indeed a major problem with the sharing economy. We have a huge amount of different services in the areas of borrowing, sharing skills and swapping items, but the vast majority of them has not yet achieved a critical mass. They may have it in a small area—typically around where the founders are from, because it's cheap for them to market their service there—but in all the other places they might have only few users here and there. And that's why these services do not really work for anybody's benefit. Their growth is simply too slow to be self-sustainable. All these small services need a way to collaborate. Otherwise most of them will always remain small and eventually die unprofitable. This would be a shame, since a lot of marketing work has gone into building the small but passionate niche audience they have around the world, and that work should not go to waste. If we could somehow connect all these small user groups together, we'd suddenly be a lot closer to achieving mainstream success for local sharing. Readers of my previous post may know where I'm going with this. An excellent way to facilitate this kind of collaboration would be to build a common API specification for the shared stuff—goods, services, rides, spaces, you name it. Most services end up implementing an API at some point anyway, so they could as well use the same specification to do it. This would make it really easy to create all kinds of aggregation services. We could build a search engine that would search from a hundred different services that let people to borrow stuff from each other. A search engine like this would greatly increase the probability of actually finding something suitable close-by and motivate the searcher to join a service. This would lead to a greater pool of resources, more sharing, and continued growth. All services would benefit from the traffic directed from this global channel, while allowing space for niche providers to fill the gaps. So, lets begin by creating the specification. My previous post gathered a bunch of interested commentators, and together we are now starting to move this thing forward. We started by forming a Google Group for discussions. Matthew Slater just left an interesting note there, describing a site called open311.org. It describes an API intended for reporting civic issues to local governments. So we decided to build a site like this for the sharing API. It's already up at www.sharingapi.org. It's a start, and hopefully a lot will happen in the coming months. After the specification is finished, we just need as many services as possible to implement it. For instance, when we start building the API for Kassi, the service I'm involved with, we'll make sure it is done by the guidelines in the specification wiki. Among the people involved there are guys building services like CES, sharedearth.net and Yours2share—these too will be some of the first pioneers. After we get enough services on board, we could just as well build the search engine I described above. When the APIs are there, it would only take a few days of work. I invite everyone to join this project.” (http://shareable.net/blog/the-sharing-economy-has-a-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed)

Towards a Common API

Juho Makkonen :

“While it is great that there are so many people working to promote sharing, this also causes problems from the users' point of view. When there is more than ten sharing services working in the same city, it becomes tedious to find the stuff you're looking for or list what you have. As a result, it's difficult for a single service to achieve the network effect. A traditional capitalist approach would be to rely on the survival of the fittest. But could there be a more collaborative way? After all, our common goal is to boost sharing by mapping all the resources that people have to share and linking them together. Would it be possible to form a huge pool of resources that all sharing economy services could then use to their benefit? I'm going to look things from a practical (read: technological) point of view here and suggest two collaboration approaches that could solve these issues: a common API and a distributed data storage. Approach 1: Common API A common API would be a rather simple solution since it does not force current services into major changes in their infrastructure. Basically it would mean that each sharing service would build an API according to the same specification. The method would be somewhat similar to Google's Open Social initiative for social websites. We would have to define an ontology that maps all the resources that can be shared (stuff, skills, space) and their subtypes and properties related to them. For example, in the case of goods, the specification could require the API to provide some basic information of each item, such as name, picture, location, category (books, tools, etc) and how they will be shared (lending, swapping, giving away, etc). This would mean that when I wanted to show all tools that people can lend near San Francisco area I could use the same query to retrieve results from all the different services. The benefit of this approach is that it would be easy to display results from different services when a user does a search in one service, because there would be no need to build a separate integration mechanism for each service. For example, if you were searching for a certain tool from NeighborGoods and did not find it, the search would then return results from Share Some Sugar and Freecycle. And since most modern online services plan on building an API at some point, using an existing specification could save time and resources. Using this kind of API connection would benefit all parties. Those who displayed results from other services in their search would be able to offer a better service to their users. It's a good customer service and marketing practice to point to your competitors if they can serve your customer better. Those offering their APIs for others to use would get exposure and traffic when other services pointed to them, and the people would get a wider selection of available resources and would be introduced to new sharing services. This approach is not perfect. When actually borrowing the item, the users would still need to sign up for those services. They would not be able to take their data from the original service with them. This data would include feedback received from other users and other information that is vital to facilitate sharing. A person with an excellent reputation as a frequent lender and a trustworthy borrower in NeighborGoods would become a suspicious newbie in Share Some Sugar. How could this issue be addressed? It's not easy, but it could be done, at least in theory, using a technique called distributed data storage. Approach 2: Distributed data storage Diaspora is a project familiar to many due to its huge Kickstarter success. Diaspora's main idea is to create a social networking site like Facebook but with a significant difference: people own all their data and can move it as they please, and only display it to people they choose. It uses peer to peer technology to distribute data between servers (or "pods") set up by the users of the service. This means that it has no central place where all the data is stored. Applied to collaborative consumption, this would mean that some core data--like users' profile information, things they are sharing and their reputation in different services--would be an identity that could be shared between different services. Each time a user came across a new service he could conduct a "collcons connect" (similar to Facebook Connect) which would transfer the data he selects to transfer to the new service. A publish/subscribe method could be used to ensure when some data is changed in one service, the change gets transferred to all the other services using that same data. This approach would make it easy for people to discover new services and start using them, and therefore start sharing with even more people. It would also create a huge catalogue of shared resources which new entrepreneurs could then use in innovative ways. Challenges The main challenges in this kind of collaboration between services are not technological. All the things mentioned above could be done. The actual reasons that are preventing collaboration between services are very similar to those that are preventing sharing between people in collaborative consumption services: convenience and trust. Startups have limited resources and want to be agile. The collaboration cannot take too much time away from their core business of developing a good service for their users or slow them down. Moreover, most startups have their own strong vision and want to test it first before considering collaborating with others. We all think that we should eventually collaborate, but no one is ready to take the step beyond talking. Then there are the trust considerations. If I'm going to pull data from somebody else's service, I need to be able to rely on the quality of the data. And if I let them take my data, I need to trust them to handle it responsibly. For the biggest players, it might seem that smaller services areusing their content and not giving enough back. The small services might think their users have no reason to return to them if their data is available on the bigger hubs. And naturally, owning data can be also viewed as a competitive advantage, which is why walled gardens are so prevalent on the web. There is no single one-size-fits-all solution for all collaborative consumption services. But there is certainly room for more cooperation than what currently exists.” (http://shareable.net/blog/an-api-for-sharing)

for wiki: Goods Commons

More Information

Mesh directory for sharing goods: http://meshing.it/categories/5-Goods

add to Mesh, sharing directory page, make individual entries?

Sharing Directory

add to

Book Commons

books & writing , http://meshing.it/categories/2-books-writing

Sharing Energy

http://meshing.it/categories/10-energy

Examples

Indie Energy

Http://www.indieenergy.com/

The Indie Energy Networ and Energy App Exchang is an open real-time platform for 3rd party app developers to utilize live building data and applications to create energy efficiency solutions for buildings.

Kattner Associates LLC

Http://www.kattnerassociates.com Advisory and educational services about how communities large, medium and small can share heating, cooling and electricity production and distribution equipment instead of everyone for themselves. Energy meshing in this way can reduce the amount of capital investment and lessen the impact on environmental resources such as air, water and land.

LocalGen UK

URL = http://www.localgen.org.uk/ localGen provides advice and resources to local communities looking to develop the community's energy resilience by developing energy-efficiency measures and electricity generation at or close to the point of consumption

Energy Co-op of Vermont

Http://www.ecvt.net

Member-owned energy supplier in Vermont.

Green Energy Cooperative

Http://www.greenenergy.coop

Offers practical solutions for bringing top-quality fuel products to market.

Horizon Energy Cooperative Microgrid

Http://horizonmicrogrid.com

Aims to deliver renewable energy to Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Micropower Council - UK

Http://www.micropower.co.uk/

The Micropower Council represents companies and organisations active in the microgeneration sector and campaigns on behalf of its members for a genuine mass market for small scale, low and zero carbon electricity and heat generating technologies.

Energy Collective

Http://theenergycollective.com/

The Energy Collective is an independent, moderated community of professionals focused on the complex challenges of meeting the world's energy needs sustainably.

Wind Works Archive

Http://www.wind-works.org

Online archive of articles on wind energy, feed-in tariffs, and advanced renewable tariffs.

http://www.shareable.net/blog/co-ops-a-great-way-to-share

http://www.shareable.net/blog/why-facebook-threatens-internet-freedom-far-more-than-apple

- for wiki

Co-op Power

= a consumer-owned renewable energy cooperative. We operate within a regional network of autonomous Local Organizing Councils

URL = http://www.cooppower.coop/

Description

Co-op Power Creates Community-Owned Energy Resources “We have engaged in community outreach, education, and dialogue over the past five years to build consensus about how to best support our transition to a sustainable and just energy future. As a result, we have raised more than $300,000 in Member Equity, $600,000 in member loans, and $850,000 in local investment to support the development of community-scale clean energy projects and to build Co-op Power. Our members have worked together to support the development of Energia in Holyoke (a multi-family/commercial/residential energy efficiency business), Northeast Biodiesel in Greenfield (a 3.5 million gallon/year recycled vegetable oil biodiesel processing plant), five solar installation businesses, two green electrician businesses, and a window restoration/thermal window insert fabrication business in Westfield, along with building out our own energy efficiency and solar products and services. These businesses have created more than 100 jobs over the last five years. Co-op Power is launching a community solar program with community net metering this fall. We have installed over 50 solar hot water systems and another 25 renewable energy systems generating more than 100 kilowatts of electricity. We're building two 25 kW systems this fall, one in Brattleboro for the Brattleboro Food Co-op and one in Shelburne for the McCusker building. “

(http://www.cooppower.coop/index.php/about-co-op-power)

Community Wind

= wind power projects seen as a community-owned asset

URL = http://www.windustry.org/communitywind

Description

“Community wind is a growing sector of wind development that promises to increase local energy independence and prosperity without contributing to global warming.

A wind project that is a community-owned asset. Community wind projects are owned by a variety of individuals including local small business owners, farmers, local organizations including schools and universities, as well as Native American Tribes, rural electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, and religious institutions. These project can range from a single turbine to a community-owned commercial-scale wind farm.” (http://www.windustry.org/communitywind)

More Information

Report: Ownership Matters: Community-Based Wind Development in Colorado URL = http://www.windustry.org/ownership-matters-communitybased-wind-development-in-colorado

Report: Community vs. Corporate Wind: Does it Matter Who Develops the Wind in Big Stone County, MN? URL = http://www.windustry.org/community-vs-corporate-wind-does-it-matter-who-develops-the-wind-in-big-stone-county-mn

Community-Owned Wind Power Projects

More Information

Report: Ownership Matters: Community-Based Wind Development in Colorado URL = http://www.windustry.org/ownership-matters-communitybased-wind-development-in-colorado

“This publication goes through a broad overview of community-wind development. In includes some helpful resources and addresses the many different areas that community-wind development entails. The content is based on a series of presentations from 2008 by the same title.” Report: Community vs. Corporate Wind: Does it Matter Who Develops the Wind in Big Stone County, MN? URL = http://www.windustry.org/community-vs-corporate-wind-does-it-matter-who-develops-the-wind-in-big-stone-county-mn

“This report reviews various business structures for community wind development, reviews previous studies on the economic impact of both wind development in general and the relative impacts of corporate and community wind development, and investigates the specific case of the economic impact of community vs. corporate wind development for a multi-turbine project in Big Stone County, Minnesota.”

Farm and Gardening Sharing

See directory of sharing initiatives at: http://meshing.it/categories/14-farming-gardening

Fashion and Clothing Sharing

See directory at: http://meshing.it/categories/11-fashion-clothing

BankSimple

BankSimple www.banksimple.com

Description

BankSimple is creating a better interface for banking through the Web and mobile apps. In partnership with financial institutions which will hold the actual deposits, BankSimple is focusing on creating a better customer experience and simplifying the banking process by unifying all accounts into one, accessible through a bank card. Rather than making money from different fees, BankSimple plans to split the net interest margin with its partner banks (the difference between the rate they lend at and the rate they pay to depositors), thus eliminating the incentive to push more confusing products at consumers.

Capitalist Collective www.capitalistcollective.com/ Capitalist Collective is an investment research exchange that connects professional and educated self-directed individual equity investors and allows them to exchange, discuss, and debate their investment research.

Community Connect Trade Association

= CCTA)is an association of professionals and business owners who trade products and services for other things they need. CCTA members reduce expenses and increase sales by doing business with each other without using cash.

URL = http://www.communityconnecttrade.com/

Description

'CCTA’s customer service agents help you to bring the new customers that you are looking for and offset cash expenses by exchanging products and services with other CCTA member businesses. Members can also find you through our online directory. The members who buy your products and services pay you with trade credits. Each trade credit is equal to one dollar in value. You use your trade credits to buy products and services from other member businesses.”

Cooperative Community Fund

= cooperative funding of food coops

URL = http://www.community.coop/ccf/

Description

“we directly invest the principle in cooperative development by investing in credit unions, locally owned community banks that support cooperatives, the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund, the National Cooperative Bank and other socially responsible funds. Every dollar we have works hard to achieve our aims. As a result, your Cooperative Community Fund program makes your dollars work in many ways for both cooperative development and community good.” (http://www.community.coop/ccf/about.php)

FAQ

“What is a Cooperative Community Fund? A Cooperative Community Fund (CCF) is an endowment fund established for each participant co-op wherein the interest earned each year is donated by the sponsor co-op to nonprofits and cooperatives in their community. A CCF is sponsored by a local food co-op and administered within the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation.

How many food co-ops presently participate in the CooperativeCommunity Fund program? At the end of 2004, eleven food co-ops were sponsors. They are; North CoastCooperatives, Davis Food Co-op, Briarpatch Community Market, Co-opportunity, Isla Vista Food Co-op, Hanover Food Co-op, Weaver Street Market, Food Co-op Conspiracy,Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, People's Food Co-op and Quincy Natural Foods Coop. We anticipate six more food co-ops joining during 2005.

How much have the Cooperative Community Funds donated tononprofits and other cooperatives at this time? Our sponsor co-ops have already donated $30,000 to nonprofits andcooperatives in their local communities. In 2005 another $12,000 in donations will be made possible and in 2006 annual donations will grow to $15,000. By 2008 the donationswill reach $100,000 in combined giving.” (http://www.community.coop/ccf/about.php)

Sharing Food and Drink

See directory at http://meshing.it/categories/13-food-drink

Participatory Government Initiatives

Description

CityCamp is an unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. As an unconference, content for CityCamp is not programmed for a passive audience. Instead, content is created and organized by participants”

World Alliance for Citizen Participation]

CIVICUS URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58741-CIVICUS

World Alliance for Citizen Participation is an international alliance of members and partners which constitutes an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels, and spans the spectrum of civil society.

Code for America URL = http://meshing.it/companies/183-Code-for-America

Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected, and efficient by connecting web developers with people who deliver city services.

FOR THE WIKI

Google Apps for Government Google Apps for Government lets agencies cut IT costs & empower employees. FISMA certification from the federal government attests to the security of your data. All these modern, web-based applications, just $50 per user per year. government

URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4632-Gov-2-0-Radio Gov 2.0 Radio is where government and technology reformers come to talk

Government2.0

URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4653-Government2-0

Government 2.0 is a German government camp.

Govfresh Url = http://meshing.it/companies/58623-Govfresh

GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. We feature Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.Gov 2.0 Radio

GovLuv URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58546-GovLuv

GovLuv is a website that connects government representatives and citizens using the magical power of Twitter.

Cooperatives Europe www.coopseurope.coop

Cooperatives Europe promotes the co-op model for sustainable economic progress with social objectives.

to wiki politics and movements, 'monitoring global protest movements through CrowdVoice

CrowdVoice

= CrowdVoice is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing informatio

URL = http://www.crowdvoice.org/

Euro Coop www.eurocoop.org

Euro Coop is a european community of consumer cooperatives.

OhMyGov ohmygov.com/

Tracking the news & numbers that matter to government and political communicators, with a dash of social media strategy, Gov 2.0 and humor.

Open Government Initiative www.whitehouse.gov/open

Aims to establish transparency, public participation, and collaboration

Police.uk www.police.uk

Police.uk is a local crime and policing website for England and Wales. The site provides you with helpful information about crime and policing in your area.

The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/sicp/

Engages individuals, non-profits, the private sector, and government to foster innovation and work together to make greater and more lasting progress.

They Work For You www.theyworkforyou.com

Resource for citizens to keep tabs on the United Kingdom's parliaments and assemblies.

YouCut www.majorityleader.gov/YouCut/

YouCut is a program started by Republican Congressman and House whip Eric Cantor in May 2010 to present ideas for potential cost-cutting bills to be presented to the House of Representatives of the United States, and to solicit feedback on those ideas from the general public.

FreeAgent www.freeagentcentral.com

FreeAgent is an online accounting application used by thousands of freelancers and small businesses. It lets you send invoices, track time and expenses, analyse bank statements and build real-time accounts, all done simply with no confusing accounting jargon. Our customers say it puts them back in control of their business finances, and even makes doing the books fun!

FreshBooks www.freshbooks.com

As an online invoicing service, FreshBooks helps you keep your time and expense organized, send professional branded invoices, and even collect online payments by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck. That will save you time, impress your clients, and get you paid faster.

Outvesting

= the act of committing money to a business while expecting to get nothing in return

URL = http://www.outvesting.org/

Description

'in·vesting : The act of committing money to a business while expecting income or profit in return. out·vesting: The act of committing money to a business while expecting to get nothing in return, other than the satisfaction of giving a leg up”

Pay with a Tweet www.paywithatweet.com

Pay with a Tweet is a great to tool for everyone who wants to create buzz around his or her product, service, brand or just themselves. In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it. Pay with a Tweet is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network.

Social Return on Investment

= framework for valuing social impact.

How it works

“Boundary Setting and Impact Mapping1: There are two major areas here: Boundary Setting and Impact

Mapping. Boundary setting is concerned with clearly indicating what your measuring,. This may be one project within your organization, or the processes and projects of your entire organization. Impact Mapping visualizes your theory of change, or the systematic actions that will lead you to your stated social goal.

Choosing Indicators and Financial Proxies: Drawing from your impact map, SROI specialists will choose indicators of success, or results that best reflect the progress of your project. The next step is to attach financial values to these indicators. For example, if your organization helps youth attain higher education, and by doing so, they will have an average salary of $44,000, then the indicator is employment after graduation, and the financial proxy is average salary.

Collecting Data: After choosing indicators and financial proxies, an SROI specialist will collect data on your program’s impact according to the chosen indicators.

Summing Social and Financial Returns: From the collected data, an SROI specialist will organize and aggregate the data. This is the gross benefit, the total benefit to society according to your indicators. Subtracting Deadweight Loss2: However, gross benefit is not the impact of your projects because often some social impact would have happened without the presence of your programs. Therefore, an SROI specialist will ask “What would have happened anyways?”; this is called deadweight loss and will be subtracted from the gross benefit to produce the net total benefits of your programs.

The net total benefit will then be discounted for present value and placed in the SROI formula below. The final ratio represents the Social Return on Investment of your programs. ” (http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)

History

“In 1990, the Robert Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) started using business practices to solve social issues unemployment issues in San Francisco. It was here that Social Return on Investment was first developed so that REDF could understand where to direct their funding for maximizing benefit. After this, SROI was refined and used by the new economic foundation. It is currently practiced by a number of organizations throughout the world. ” (http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)

More Information

Report: Jeremy Nichollis

et al. A guide to Social Return on Investment (Cabinet Office of the Third Sector United Kingdom: new economics foundation, 2009

Report: new economic foundation.

Measuring Social Impact: the foundation of social return on investment (SROI).

URL = http:// sroi.london.edu/ Measuring-Social- Impact.pdf

Social Metrics

Description

“Traditional corporations create financial profit, but nonprofits and social enterprises are creating something too: social impact; that has value. At its heart, social metrics takes this basic fact and tries to make it understandable to different audiences for the purpose of engaging stakeholders and their respective competencies in solving social issues.

Social metrics is a fairly new field, and much of its growth has been motivated by “impact investing”, or socially motivated investing. The idea is that if one can communicate social impact in a language that investors and grantors understand, then funders will be more willing to donate to high-impact project.

This has led to the Social Return on Investment methodology, which uses financial analysis tools to communicate social impact. ” (http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)

Social Finance

Company

'Social Finance is dedicated to mobilizing investment capital to drive social change. We create innovative financial instruments that align the interest of private investors seeking social and financial returns, non-profit service organizations seeking sustainable funding, and governments seeking improved results for individuals, families, and communities in need.” (http://www.socialfinanceus.com/)

Add to sharing cat: Sharing Economy News via Twitter

= we've compiled the following list of our favorite Twitter users who are posting news and information about the new sharing economy.

Top Sharing Tweeps, http://shareable.net/blog/top-sharing-tweeps-to-learn-more-about-the-twittersphere

Discussion

Suresh Fernando :

“TribeSourcing, a term coined by Mark Frazier, is the most important feature of new platforms, one that borrows from the principles of mass collaboration which matches the platform to the group, community or movement within which it is situated. Currently crowdsourcing platforms are designed to enable a single entrepreneur to simply solicit funds from her network, but the relationship between her contacts is not a consideration. Current platforms don’t account for the fact that people are situated within communities and that the people within communities have established relationships. New platforms will therefore include mechanisms that enable projects within a particular community to be evaluated, voted upon and supported. They will also include collaboration features that enable members in the larger ‘tribe’ to provide non-financial support: helping with websites, business planning etc. This will reflect a recognition that entrepreneurs need more than simply financial capital. They need social capital and intellectual capital as well.” (http://shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-social-change)

Characteristics

“This move towards TribeSourcing will include a number of specific features that support ongoing projects (as opposed to isolated campaigns): the ability to run multiple different campaigns in relation to a single project (finance the development of a website, write a business plan, etc.) the ability for contributors to make monthly recurring contributions to support a venture’s ongoing operating cash flow requirements. the ability to piece out specific aspects of a project within a single campaign for funding. For example, the development of a business plan or website in support of a single event campaign. “ (http://shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-social-change)

Crowdfunding Social Good

= we have seen the emergence of several platforms, the focus of which is to support ventures that deliver social value — StartSomeGood, Bzzbnk and 33Needs

Interview

Conducted by Shareable:

“I like to think of crowd-funding is part of a whole wave of social entrepreneurship, how do you think Kickstarter's mission differs from the average tech start-up? Kickstarter’s focus is on creative projects. It’s a blend of patronage and commerce, a place for musicians, filmmakers, artists, writers, designers, et al to reach out to their fans and community for support with their projects. Creators maintain full ownership and creative control of their work; Kickstarter gives them the tools and social space to build an audience around their ideas and bring them to life. I know working at a start-up means there are no average days, but tell me a little about what you do at Kickstarter. Yes every month feels different, it's wild. Our team's organized between Community and Product. Product does development and design, Community handles curation, editorial, customer support, and outreach, among other things. My role has morphed into a kind of community product manager: collaborating on new features, writing site copy, overseeing customer service, and contributing to curation and editorial. Nearly everyone on the Community team started out getting their hands dirty in the same way: reviewing project proposals and providing support. Understanding where projects come from and how users interact with the site provides a really good foundation. You must see a lot of interesting and thoughtful projects succeed and fail to meet their fundraising goals. What're some things users can do to help distinguish their proposal? There are amazing things going on all the time. I've backed 170 projects and wish I could back hundreds more right now. Projects don't need to be flashy, they just need to have personality—soul. A strong project has a clear focus, and making a personal connection is key, which is why a video is essential. The value of video cannot be overstated! And then, inspired rewards. Offer cool things at fair prices, so people will back them. Kickstarter has also been used of late as a fundraising platform for causes (like, for instance, The Occupy Wall Street Journal) that aren't trying to make consumer products per se. How does this fit with Kickstarter's current and future plans? When people traditionally think fundraising they think of charities and causes, but Kickstarter allows neither of these things. We've built something very different that's focused on people pursuing creative passions and having fun doing it, and those include things like public art, journalism, documentaries, and performance. It's not our intention to divorce art from message, nor from emotion. But we are dedicated to a site that's completely devoted to creativity. Sites like Kickstarter are based on a certain amount of trust -- the customer believes they will receive a product that doesn't even exist yet sometime in the future. Why are people willing to put that kind of trust in the Kickstarter community? Backing a project on Kickstarter is a combination of commerce and patronage. Often you're not just buying a product, you're joining someone on their creative project, getting a window into their thoughts and process. Most projects get their initial momentum from the creator's network of friends, fans, and immediate communities. That direct relationship between creator and backer makes for pretty powerful motivation to see a project through. But ultimately, it's part of every creator's job to earn a backer's trust, especially backers who don't personally know them. And a lot of creators do a wonderful job of it. They tell a compelling story, they're passionate about their work, they're transparent with their backers, and they want to share what they ultimately create.” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/qa-with-kickstarters-daniella-jaeger)

Urbanized

= documentary examines the issues faced by architects, city planners and policymakers as the world’s population migrates into urban centers

Description

“Among designers and those of us who are merely geekily-obsessed observers, filmmaker Gary Hustwit is reaching folk hero status for his ability to turn dry design topics into engaging cinema. The director of Helvetica and Objectified is now filming Urbanized, the third in a trilogy of design documentaries. The film, which examines the issues faced by architects, city planners and policymakers as the world’s population migrates into urban centers, received much of its funding through a Kickstarter campaign.” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-top-10-shareable-crowdfunded-projects-video)

Co-opoly

= The Toolbox for Education and Social Action has created Co-Opoly, an educational board game in which players are tasked with running a collaborative, democratic business.

URL = http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1713701812/co-opoly-the-game-of-cooperatives?ref=video

Description

“The Game of Cooperatives is a creative and exciting educational game designed for the growing cooperative movement. Games have been proven to be unique resources that shape the way people learn, work, and interact with one another, but Co-opoly is more than just a board game. It is an innovative way for aspiring and existing cooperators, as well as other interested parties, to learn about co-ops and to practice cooperation. People who have played the game call it “fun and engaging” as well as “a great teaching tool about how to build and sustain” cooperatives.” (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1713701812/co-opoly-the-game-of-cooperatives?ref=video)

Crowdfunding and the Law

Janelle Orsi, SELC:

“Offering any kind of investment opportunity is an activity that is highly regulated by both state and federal law known as securities law. These laws were passed early in the last century to protect investors from slick pitch artists who traveled across the country selling worthless investments. Kansas adopted the first securities law in 1911 to “keep ‘Kansas money in Kansas’ and help local farmers and small businesses rather than enriching ‘New York Stock Exchange speculators and gamblers.’” Ironically, these laws now make it almost impossible to invest in small businesses in our communities and pretty much compel us to invest in the New York Stock Exchange. In the name of protecting investors, securities laws now make it very difficult to raise money with crowdfunding. The basics of these laws is that before any investment opportunity can be offered, the person making the offering must file extensive disclosure documents with the federal government, as well as any state in which the offering will be made. There are some exemptions to this general rule, but even the exemptions take securities law expertise to comply with. The result is that anyone offering an investment opportunity may have to spend thousands in legal fees and filing fees before even being able to mention it to any potential funders. Generally, if you bring on a large, wealthy investor, the legal compliance required is minimal because the law assumes that these people and companies need much less protection (they are defined as “accredited” investors under the securities law). The moment you want to offer an investment opportunity to the public and to non-wealthy investors, the legal requirements become far more onerous. Failure to comply with these requirements can, at a minimum, result in having to return all your investors’ money. At worst, there could be civil and even criminal penalties.” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-and-the-law)

Recommendations for U.S.

Janelle Orsi:

“1. Falling outside the securities laws The easiest and lowest cost strategy is to raise money using a method that is unlikely to fall within the legal definition of a security. Unfortunately, this definition is quite broad, especially under the laws of many states. For example, even if you offer an investment opportunity in which your investors do not expect any financial return and do not receive any ownership share of your business, this still may be considered a security if your investors are expecting something in return and there is some risk that they will not get what they are expecting. Under this definition, if you were starting up a café and you sold gift certificates for the café as a way to raise your start up capital, this could be seen as a security in certain states. Similarly, if you borrowed money to start a new business and did not promise any financial return (in the form of interest) but did promise to return your lenders’ principal, this could also be considered a security. So how can you raise money in a way that almost certainly will not be considered a security? Ask for donations! If it is completely clear that there are absolutely no strings attached to a contribution of funds, it is highly unlikely that any state would consider the securities laws to be applicable. Web sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter provide a platform for doing this and have helped many people reach their funding goals. On these platforms, people sometimes offer “perks” in exchange for contributions. To our knowledge, none of these offerings has been subjected to scrutiny by securities regulators to date, but it is possible that even the offering of a perk in exchange for a donation could convert these offerings into securities in the eyes of some state governments. And of course when you are raising money on the internet, you can be scrutinized by the regulators of all 50 states! The moment you offer anything in return to your donors and there is some risk that they will not receive it, there is a chance that your state will consider what you are offering to be a security. (This is not the case under federal law where if the investor has no expectation of a financial return the securities laws do not apply.) What if you’re not sure whether what you want to offer your funders will be considered a security under your state’s laws? You can write a letter to the department within your state government that is responsible for securities regulation describing what you plan to offer and request a “no action letter.” This is a letter stating that the securities regulators will not take enforcement action against you based on your description of what you plan to offer. If you receive a no action letter (which usually does not require the payment of a fee), you are good to go. 2. Legally compliant platforms There are two crowdfunding web sites that have spent tens of millions of dollars in legal fees so that they can offer crowdfunding opportunities that are compliant with state and federal securities laws. These are Prosper and Lending Club. You can use these web sites to raise money from the public in the form of debt (i.e. loans that must be repaid as opposed to other kinds of investments where repayment is usually contingent on the company’s success). 3. Co-ops Many state securities laws contain exemptions for cooperatives. For example, a cooperative in California that sells memberships to the public for no more than $300 each is exempt from the California rules regarding securities offerings. Co-ops in Colorado are exempt regardless of the membership contribution. If you choose to form a co-op, it’s worth exploring whether your state might have an exemption from the securities offering requirements that will make crowdfunding possible for you. Note however that this will only work if you are exempt from federal securities registration requirements because you do most of your business within the state where you are located, you are formed under the laws of that state, and you only offer securities to the residents of that state (this is know as the federal intrastate exemption). Also, if you are a farmers co-op that has received tax-advantaged status from the IRS under Section 521, lucky you. You are exempt from both federal and state securities registration requirements. This is what allows the co-op Organic Valley to raise money from the public without having to spend millions of dollars in compliance costs. 4. Private offerings A private offering is a legal term which means that you do not advertise your investment opportunity to the public. These kinds of securities offerings are less highly regulated than ones advertised to the public because of the belief that public advertising creates a greater risk of fraud. Being unable to advertise to the public seems inconsistent with the idea of crowdfunding, but not necessarily! Gather Restaurant in Berkeley successfully used a private offering to raise funds from approximately 100 investors. If you have relationships with a lot of people who might be willing to invest in your idea, this strategy can work. However, these kinds of offerings generally do require working with a lawyer, although the costs are much lower than for a public offering. 5. Direct public offerings A direct public offering involves making the required filings with relevant regulators that allow you to offer your investment to the public. This can sound overwhelming, but many states have made an effort to make this process accessible to small businesses. Many small businesses have successfully completed the process with minimal or no legal support. Because you are required to file offering documents and application forms with the state, the state regulators will make sure that you complete these documents correctly before you begin your offering. Once you have a sign-off from the state, you can be fairly confident that you’re legally in the clear (this assumes of course that you have been honest in the documents you submitted!).” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-and-the-law)

Searching For The Shareable Economy

Video via http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bwL5PDbyBhU

Description

“This video is about Drew's crowdfunding campaign for his voyage to the West Coast to interview pioneers in the Shareable economy and document the findings into a web series for all to see.”

- Enabling City

Book: Chiara Camponeschi. The Enabling City.

URL = http://enablingcity.com/

Description

Beth Buczynski:

“principles of crowdfunding can be applied to human capital as well as traditional funding to catalyze the progressive policies and infrastructure that make cities more inclusive and sustainable.

…

How do you corral raw energy into practical actions? How does one set the framework for a collaborative process through which citizens can be directly involved in shaping their environment? Published under a Creative Commons license, The Enabling City is a toolkit that empowers cities governments and community leaders to do just that. The result of a graduate project, Camponeschi hopes the book will take on a life of its own as a platform for social innovation, urban sustainability, and participatory governance. Using its plethora of examples as a guide, community members can learn how to restake their claim in the larger processes that impact their daily lives.

She writes:

- Today, I am fascinated by the world of creative communities because, to my eyes, it represents an antidote to the widespread erosion of local practices and cultures, and is also an inventive and timely way of tackling increasingly interconnected social issues. What is even more remarkable is the democratic and grassroots level in which communal change is achieved — through dialogue, openness, collaboration, and the rediscovery of the everyday. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, which focus on funding individual projects that can be caused-based or not, The Enabling City advocates "place-based creative problem-solving" to transform cities into holistic, living spaces where people make their voices heard and use everyday experiences to affect change. The toolkit helps readers to imagine and redefine the characteristincs of the city of the future, including a bottom-up approach to leadership, resource sharing, and the use of commons-based production. But for Camponeschi, coming up with a finished "product" is far less important than the community that crowdfunding helps to form around a common issue or cause. "In the civic sector, crowdfunding often emerges around a self-selected community," said Camponeschi. "Reputation is important in both a physical and virtual sense. Sometimes, even projects that aren’t completed can contribute to the common knowledge on a subject." (http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-enabling-city-crowdfunding-urban-livability)

Discussion

Chiara Camponeschi:

“We know that markets are no longer the only sources of innovation, and that citizens are capable of more than just voting during election time.We have entered an era where interactive technologies and a renewed idea of citizenship are enabling us to experiment with alternative notions of sustainability and to share knowledge in increasingly dynamic ways. We now see artists working alongside policy makers, policy makers collaborating with citizens, and citizens helping cities diagnose their problems more accurately. What emerges, then, is a community where the local and global are balanced and mediated by the city at large, and where local resources and know-how are given wider legitimacy as meaningful problem-solving tools in the quest for urban and cultural sustainability. Here, innovation is intended as a catalyst for social change — a collaborative process through which citizens can be directly involved in shaping the way a project, policy, or service is created and delivered. A shift from control to enablement turns cities into platforms for community empowerment — holistic, living spaces where people make their voices heard and draw from their everyday experiences to affect change. So be surprised by how walks have the power to make neighbourhoods more vibrant, and how art can be used to convert dull city intersections into safe community spaces. Learn how creative interventions can unleash spaces for reflection and participation, and witness how online resources can lead to offline collaboration and resource-sharing. See how the values of Web 2.0 translate into the birth of the open government and open data movement, and what a holistic approach to financing can bring to local communities and cities alike. This is what place-based creative problem solving looks like in action. This is the power of the everyday. “ (http://enablingcity.com/about)

More Information

Description

“Enabling Suburbs is a project developed by Linda Carroli, John Armstrong, Jason Haigh and Chiara Camponeschi. As a group of ‘creatives’ and initiators from various interdisciplinary arts and design backgrounds, we hope to share and talk about some of our concerns for the future of our suburbs and communities. This will require thinking about change in a place-based way focused on Aspley, a middle/outer suburb of Brisbane. Our hope is a suburban community that is willing and able to talk about the future and our contribution is a collected series of resources and tools. Why Aspley? It’s where we live and operate our respective creative enterprises – we deal with this environment every day and felt that our brand of creative and tactical futuring was warranted in addressing questions of cultural and suburban sustainability. Importantly, the project was intended to have an outward and inclusive approach that solicited wider community participation. Chiara Camponeschi, who has come to prominence through her work The Enabling City, plays a role as a catalyst and in developing our methodology for creative change and for imagining an ‘enabling suburb’. Importantly, we are informed by The Enabling City as a body of work that intersects with or draws out elements of socially engaged artistic and design practice – intervention, collaboration, social sculpture, relational aesthetics, participatory design, design fictions, redirected practice, situationist practice, site specificity, psychogeography and the like. This work refers to a broad range of place-based creative problem solving strategies which can easily come into dialogue with integrated artistic and design strategies to create a movement of interdisciplinary conversation. We wante to use our creative practices as platforms for multidimensional change. The project nods to Linda Carroli’s work Changescaping - a writing and research project emerging from her Placing project – which aims to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments with a particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers, or changescapers. In some instances, practice itself requires changing. It also draws on involvement in various design futures undertakings, such as masterclasses addressing redirective practice, design fictions and futuring. Enabling Suburbs is speculative in a way that endeavours to engage audiences in thinking, doing and being towards alternative possible futures. If we can’t or don’t imagine them or challenge ourselves to think beyond what is in the here and now, then we can’t manifest those alternatives. It’s about transition, adaptation, resilience and renewal. Through this blog, we are encouraging a more thoughtful vision of suburban life and culture, we hope to seed ideas (and maybe even memes) and present tools for change, opportunity and difference in a hopeful, meaningful and life affirming way. The Enabling Suburbs project will be a platform for: 1. Learning and research 2. Creating alternatives 3. Cultivating resources and tools 4. Communicating and sharing” (http://enablingsuburbs.wordpress.com/about/_

Changescaping

Description

'Changescaping, a project by Linda Carroli, engages one of the the Placing Project’s overall objectives to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments and futures with a particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers and in creating alternative futures. In part, that change is about how practice itself is understood. The publication seeks to profile and foreground work happening in the Australian context, as it can seem that Australians aren’t prominently featured in the discussions about DIY urbanism, urban interventions and the like. Changescaping also aims to think beyond categories like ‘DIY urbanism’ and ‘urban intervention’ as a way of potentiating and tracing new trajectories for planning, design and art in the urban environment, as well as cutting across typologies and disciplines.” (http://enablingsuburbs.wordpress.com/changescaping/)

Government 2.0 Initiatives

see: http://shareable.net/blog/the-worlds-top-10-gov-20-initiatives make directory based on that article

Ariel Waldman on Spacehack

Interview via http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman

Context

“Founded by former NASA contractor Ariel Waldman and developer Ben Ward, Spacehack is an online directory of open source and “participatory exploration” projects that enable people without a dedicated science background make a real contribution to research projects. Waldman navigates the maze of NASA websites and private enterprise projects to curate an accessible entry point to the most compelling projects.” (http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman) Interview is conducted by Paul M. Davis .

Interview

“How did Spacehack come about? When I left NASA, I created Spacehack because I had heard about all of the different ways that people could actively contribute to space exploration despite not having a formal science background. I wanted to enable people to have the same experience that I did and have the awakening that you could contribute to space exploration even if you didn’t specifically study for it in school. I wanted to create a really easy directory of what people could participate in. Another reason was that a lot of these projects were on really outdated NASA government websites or they weren’t really written that well, so I wanted to make projects that were very clear and concise, so people could understand how they could contribute. I wanted to make it a lot more accessible for people who don’t already work in the space exploration industry.

What sort of background do you need to get involved in Spacehack projects? The projects on Spacehack range from ones that anyone without any background can get involved in — projects like GalaxyZoo are a perfect example of that — and there are others like the Google Lunar X prize and robotics projects in which an engineering background helps. GalaxyZoo did a survey of their users and they asked what was the most related scientific activity these people did outside of GalaxyZoo. 80-85% of the people answered that they just watched shows on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel. I find that very powerful, because my story was that I was watching a documentary on NASA and I decided to email them on a whim. That’s what got me the job. With NASA’s budget cuts and the reduced scope of its missions, do you see projects like Spacehack and open science being able to complement NASA’s research and fill in some of the gaps? It’s an interesting time, because I’m really excited about what’s happening and I see it as more of a beginning of an era than the end of one. It’s due time that NASA no longer has a monopoly on space exploration. Just because you’re not doing something involved with NASA doesn’t mean that you’re not also equally contributing to space exploration. That’s a very positive thing for the open science movement. On the other hand, it is a little bit scary that NASA is more vulnerable for budget cuts because mainstream media spins it as “well, NASA is no longer used as a diplomacy tool, they’re just doing scientific research, and who wants to fund that?” That’s obviously a very negative effect — the overall promotion of the idea that scientific research deserves less funding. But that’s an argument that’s pretty old — it’s not anything new. It’s going to be a little bit tumultuous right now as you have an exodus of a lot of people who are working in space exploration, and they don’t have anywhere to go yet. But I think if you give it a few years, it’s going to get better, because you’re going to have a lot of jobs opening at places like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. For the people who want to work in the space industry, I think there are going to be more opportunities for them over time. For people who don’t work in space exploration but want to actively get involved, I think we are seeing the very beginning stages of a citizen science renaissance as people realize that they can actively contribute. Citizen science is something where you can direct your own interest and research. You’re not just doing work on behalf of another scientist who’s going to end up taking credit for it. Are there any examples that come to mind of this citizen science data feeding back into the research and NASA’s own projects? Sure. Planet Hunters is using Kepler data to prove that humans can find some planets that the current algorithms won’t be able to. As people are discovering planets through the Planet Hunters data set, then the people who are running the project take that data back to the Kepler scientists and do a cross-check of what has already been discovered by the algorithms. In that case, you have a humans vs. machines competition — it’s not trying to replace algorithms, but it’s trying to augment our scientific discovery with humans who are able to go through all that data.” (http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)

More Information

Spacehack Science Hack Days

- Spacehack

= an online directory of open source and “participatory exploration” projects that enable people without a dedicated science background make a real contribution to research projects.

Description

“Waldman navigates the maze of NASA websites and private enterprise projects to curate an accessible entry point to the most compelling projects.” (http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)

More Information

Interview: Ariel Waldman on Spacehack Science Hack Days

- Science Hack Days

Description

Ariel Waldman: 'Science Hack Day is an event that started in London in June, 2010. I brought it to San Francisco in November of last year. It’s essentially a 48-hour all-night event where people from all different backgrounds — developers, designers, scientists, and just anyone who’s enthusiastic about hacking on science — come together in the same physical space to see what they can build in one weekend. It runs the gamut — if someone wants to make a lamp that lights up every time an asteroid flies by, that’s just as awesome as someone trying to create an augmented diagnostic tool for an accelerator laboratory. At the San Francisco event, we had about 100 people, and the breakdown was 33% developers, 20% scientists, 20% designers and the rest were a mixed bag — anything from a roboticist to a marketer to a community manager. We had a 33% female turnout, which was pretty decent given that hack days are typically mostly white male developers in their 20’s and 30’s. Science Hack Day is trying to make an effort to show that different types of people can hack. You don’t necessarily have to be a developer in order to create something awesome. It’s more about the collaboration of all these people from different backgrounds.” (http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)

- update Carsharing

Ecological Effects of Carsharing

Beth Buczynski:

“a recent study by the University of California at Berkeley found that saving money isn't the only compelling reason to support car sharing initiatives. An online survey of over 9,500 individuals living in Canada and the United States revealed that car sharing programs have the power to significantly reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions in North America. The survey, which polled members of major car sharing organizations, found that for most car sharing members, individual greenhouse gas emissions increased because the program provided access to a personal vehicle for the first time. However, these small individual increases were outweighed by the significant number of people able to drastically reduce their emissions through car sharing. "The number of carless households increasing their emissions is comparatively large, constituting more than half of the respondents," noted the researches. "However, the degree to which these households are increasing emissions as a result of carsharing is small on an individual basis. The overall emission reduction is driven by the remaining respondents reducing their emissions by larger amounts that compensate for increases of the majority." Among multivehicle households shedding cars, 88% of respondents reduced emissions. Similarly, among single-vehicle households shedding cars, 93% exhibited an emission reduction. So where's this impact coming from? In general, the researchers found that participating in a car sharing program helps members to embrace a low-mileage lifestyle, even though carless households converge to this lifestyle by increasing emissions, and car-holding households converge by going car free and decreasing emissions.” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/car-sharing-antidote-to-ghg-emissions-in-north-america)

Full study via http://76.12.4.249/artman2/uploads/1/Greenhouse_Gas_Emission_Impacts_of_Carsharing_in_North_America_1.pdf

Micro-Participation in Government

= better low-level or “drive-by” participation opportunities whereby citizens can make (many) small yet valuable contributions without having to be involved over the full length of a participation project. [1]

Description

Chris Haller: “Micro-participation is a term that’s been discussed within open government circles as a way to make citizen engagement more convenient, effective, and scalable. The idea is to fit civic activity and involvement into the everyday lives of the public, resulting in more small ways to collaborate and communicate.

How to apply micro-participation This concept can be applied on a broad scale (like involving the public in discussions about their general needs and opinions) or on a more targeted scale (like getting place-based feedback on particular locales or collaborating with certain citizens on issues that directly affect them). In any case, the attraction of micro-participation methods lies in the avoidance of: long-term involvement interacting with strangers wading through lots of materials attending meetings Instead, people can let their voices be heard through dozens of small interactions, perfect for: asking questions prioritizing or ranking ideas and items brainstorming (crowd-sourcing innovation) raising concerns “ (http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)

Discussion

Chris Haller:

Why is traditional participation so difficult

Why do planners and policy makers find themselves fielding the vociferous complaints and demands of a few die-hards instead of enjoying more positive interaction with the general public? Why is it so hard to get people involved? Not because people are lazy or indifferent, but because traditional participation methods are simply not convenient for the modern citizen. The way organizations (particularly governments) usually function does not fit into most citizens’ busy daily schedules. Online innovation evangelist Dave Briggs summed up the need for micro-participation in a witty post that emphasized: Participation needs to be made easier. Fit civic activity into people’s lives as they are lived right now. For instance, folks may not have time to attend a planning meeting or mail back a questionnaire about their neighborhood, but they are plugged into their computers and mobile phones all day. Give them a chance to interact through technology, and be amazed at how many people take a few minutes to comment in a forum or answer a three-question survey. They can do this while waiting for the bus or during lunch break. Even better, use interactive maps or QR codes to enable location-specific feedback. The game-changer is this: micro-participation fits into their schedule, and that’s why it works. In a way, it’s a shame that community participation should fall so low on our society’s priority list. Planners should not have to cater to a culture that defines people as workers and consumers more than as citizens. But the micro-participation approach can be a starting point — meeting people where they are today, and hopefully leading them into a greater interest in their communities.”

(http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)

More Information

micro-participation for urban planning, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1760522

Micro-Participation in Urbanism

Discussion

Chris Haller: “Micro-participation is a term that’s been discussed within open government circles as a way to make citizen engagement more convenient, effective, and scalable. The idea is to fit civic activity and involvement into the everyday lives of the public, resulting in more small ways to collaborate and communicate. As this study demonstrates, it makes sense to consider micro-participation within the context of urban planning and development as well. This method may require a little more work for planners and policy-makers to implement at first, but it takes less work for citizens to get involved, which results in more feedback and participation for your projects. Tim Bonnemann gave a great working definition of this concept in a comment on the PEP-NET blog:

- [provide] better low-level or “drive-by” participation opportunities whereby citizens can make (many) small yet valuable contributions without having to be involved over the full length of a participation project. Imagine the practical applications of this approach within the urban planning space. The “drive-by” bit can be applied quite literally, by using signage that encourages citizens to give feedback on a project using their smartphones — right here, right now (but not while driving, of course). Technology can be a powerful tool for micro-participation efforts, but the main focus must be on ensuring convenience of the citizens.” (http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)

Open eBook Reader

See: Microtouch

- Microtouch (ALSO UPDFATE PRODUCT HACKING)

= an Open eBook Reader

URL = http://sourceforge.net/projects/microtouch/

Description

Paul M. Davis :

'it's encouraging to see that enterprising hardware hackers are building DIY, open source mobile devices that could potentially replace those tightly-controlled eReaders and mobile media and Internet devices that we clutch so tightly. Designed by the elusive maker Rossum, the Microtouch is a homebrewed mobile media device. Using an Atmega32u4 microcontroller and a touch-sensitive LCD screen, the Microtouch is on its way to being a libre iPod Touch alternative. There's a number of apps for the device, including an image browser, a paint app, and emulations of games including Pac Man and the classic text adventure Zork.

Rossum turned the Microtouch into an open eBook reader. The eReader app displays books in the epub format, reformatting the eBooks to be readable on the Microtouch's small 320x240 touchscreen. Adding to the device's coolness for those of us who grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (or, in my case, the Sega Master System,) the microtouch eBook reader runs on a humble 8-bit processor similar to those that rendered those gaming systems of yesteryear.

While it's not going to unseat the dominant mobile devices, the Microtouch is a cool project for makers and hackers, and on its way to being a credible alternative for those who find Apple, Google and Amazon's restrictions onerous. ” (http://shareable.net/blog/a-diy-open-source-ebook-reader-and-mobile-device)

More Information

The code and directions to build your own Microtouch can be found on the project page on Sourceforge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/microtouch/ you can purchase one pre-assembled, http://www.adafruit.com/products/330

- Loudsauce

= crowdfunding for ethical advertising and social change

URL = http://loudsauce.com/

Description

Beth Buczynski:

“Unlike Kickstarter, which focuses on funding individual creative projects, and IndieGoGo, which caters to "anyone with an idea," Loudsauce was designed specifically to transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation. "Loudsauce came from experience in the social sector and frustrations because much of that work is invisible," said Loudsauce co-founder Colin Mutchler during a panel discussion at SxSW Eco last week. Mutchler says Loudsauce took its cues from the mainstream advertising industry, which has made a science out of changing behavior and getting people to support one brand over another. In this way, Loudsauce can almost be considered a second-stage crowdfunding service: it gets people to help not just in the early stages of a socially responsible project, but then to help amplify these projects and get them out into the mainstream consciousness.”

Examples

'Loudsauce successes include running a commercial about the Story of Stuff during an episode of Hoarders (potentially reaching 2 million people and resulting in 40,000 visitors to the Story of Stuff website) and helping Uniting NC, a nonprofit that works to build understanding and respect for immigrants in North Carolina, place two billboards that celebrate community diversity. Right now there's a Loudsauce campaign to place a commercial about the Occupy Wall Street movement on cable television during some of the most popular shows. It's collected almost half of its $5,000 goal in just 24 hours!” (http://www.shareable.net/blog/loudsauce-crowdfunds-advertising-that-matters)

- Gov 2.0

Adriel Hampton: ““Gov 2.0” is the idea that we can do government better through crowdsourcing, through open data standards and through the connectivity of social media. Tech guru Tim O’Reilly calls it “government as a platform". As Facebook and Twitter have allowed thousands of other companies to flourish by building upon their core services, government agencies can provide new services simply by opening important data they collect and curate.” (http://shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20)

Discussion

How the Movement Created a Persistent Presence

Adriel Hampton:

Persistence. In 2009, social media junkies wanted everything now. Government, where contracting disputes regularly drag on for years, was radically foreign to techies used to full corporate life cycles less protracted. GovLoop, a community for government innovators, was just getting started with several hundred members. Three years later, the organizers, advocates and entrepreneurs who persisted have created measurable change, passing open data laws in municipalities around the world and birthing thousands of applications from governments’ big data. These include the peer-to-peer climate protection challenges created during British Columbia’s “Apps 4 Climate Action,” and the new open innovation platform at Challenge.gov, where individual and institutional entrepreneurs use federal data to create new solutions for public health and more. GovLoop just hit 50,000 members. To succeed in rolling back societal inequality, crony capitalism and the invasive police state, Occupy must persist. That means organizing, it means pacing and it means evolution. It will take years. Platform. O’Reilly’s mantra for government and its genesis in the software world works for Occupy. Protest memes and tactics are infinitely extendable in a networked world. If a new slogan or method of action falls flat, it is quickly abandoned; if it is worthwhile, it spreads easily and quickly through email and social networks and can be adapted upon for new uses. +

Cloud. Gov 2.0’s embrace of software-as-a-service and on-demand computing has meant more, better, and faster civic technology. Whether it’s Socrata’s open data applications, Utah’s data center consolidation (which reduced 35 data center sites into two for an annual $4 million savings) or SeeClickFix’s mobile non-emergency-service reporting mobile app, scalable architecture and outsourced management has meant more flexibility and increased focus on information and services. The cloud paradigm means that computing resources can easily scale up and down to meet demand, and server maintenance and upgrades are handled by a dedicated team at a remote data center while technologists focus on applications instead of the infrastructure.

Media. Gov 2.0 and its elevation of social media as an accepted channel for official communications have given Occupy and its tech-savvy supporters a valuable weapon. Three years ago, we couldn’t find 200 government officials on Twitter. Today, thanks in large part to hundreds of communicators within government and scores of outside companies, social media use is ubiquitous among officials and widely followed by the mainstream media. This phenomenon helped facilitate instances like Andy Carvin’s coverages the Arab Spring via Twitter and late-night newsdesks adopting livestreamed social media eyewitnesses as sources. Occupy didn’t need to be taught to use livesteaming and Twitter hashtags, they were already there.” (http://shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20)

Reputation Capital

Citation:

“"Reputation capital is becoming so important that it will act as a secondary currency, one that claims "you can trust me". It is shaping up as the cornerstone of the 21st-century economy […] It's the ancient power of word-of-mouth meeting the modern forces of the networked world."

Rachel Botsman [2]

Trust

Levels of Trust

Albert Cañigueral:

First level of trust: closed networks

Not everybody is ready to share with complete strangers. A number of projects address this issue by allowing users to create closed networks where matching their needs and building trust are easier to manage. For example: For sharing a ride (Amovens in Spain, Zimride in US, etc.) allow companies, universities, and even events to create local closed groups. NeighborGoods allow individuals to start a closed sharing group for as little as $6 a month.

Second level of trust: The social networks component

A lot of people are already building digital profiles on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. An additional reputation mechanism implemented by various projects is to connect users’ profiles with their profiles on social networks, so you can know more about who it is exactly you’re about to rent your house to. MovoMovo (P2P car rental in Spain) has introduced their own "Social Trust Rank", an algorithm of initial social reputation. It works based on your Facebook account and you can add your Twitter or blog too. For example, newly created or very low activity accounts will be penalized with a low “Social Trust Rank.”

Feedback systems and peer-police

“eBay has proved how the trust we typically form face-to-face can be built and assigned online by creating the grandfather of reputation systems, the Feedback Forum. After any transaction, buyers and sellers can rate each other using a simple points system (1,0,-1). Once users reach a certain number of points, they receive a star attached to their screen name, indicating their trustworthiness. The "silver shooting star" indicates the highest rating.

With around 98 to 99 percent of trades receiving positive rating the eBay approach seems to work and has been copied and adapted to a lot of other projects. One of the most common complaints with eBay is the use of nicknames instead of real names, and this is where the use of social network profiles can be a handy extra in the reputation system. CouchSurfing, with more than 3 million users from all over the world, mainly works with a reference system. People can vouch for each other (under certain strict conditions) and even become verified (after you make a financial contribution to support CouchSurfing). In addition, the more complete the profile, the more likely it is the user will be able to get a couch. For those who offer a couch there is no obligation to accept couching requests, but it is expected that the user will answer (yes/no/maybe) the received requests. Your profile shows the percentage of requests you have answered.”

Similar approaches and measures has been adopted by many other projects as, for example: Airbnb, TaskRabbits or Communitae (P2P lending site in Spain).

Being able to create a sense of community among the users of the system also provides an extra degree of trust in the system and among peers. People who rent a car from Hertz neither have any sense of community, nor any expectations on other users’ behavior. On the other hand, people using ZipCar call themselves Zipsters and that alone makes an important psychological difference when using the car rental service. “ (http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)

- Reputation

Typical characteristics of reputation system

Albert Cañigueral: “One of keys to success for collaborative consumption and sharing initiatives is that the hassle factor of engaging in such activities has been reduced to a minimum through the use of technology. Therefore, the reputation system needs to be complete, but simple enough for regular use. Highlight five of the Rachel Botsman list of issues to consider when designing a peer-to-peer reputation system: Competition: We love being at the top of the heap. Publish your user rankings to create healthy competition among peers. Quality: Celebrate and reward users who take the time to contribute quality feedback; they should become the benchmark for others. Sticky ratings: Pick a primary scoring system (stars, ticks, tiers, thumbs, badges, numerical ratings) and give the ratings sticky names, such as “Power Seller”. People like me: We like to know, and tend to value, what our friends and people like us think of other people. Integrate “inner-circle” vouching mechanisms (for example, went to the same school, work in the same office) into your reputation system. Peer-police: An open reputation system must be peer-policed but if things do go wrong, your organization needs to be on hand quickly to offer support, resolve disputes and weed out the vandals and abusers. "Reputation is a summary of one's past actions within ... a specific community, presented in a manner that can help other community members to make decisions... whether and how to relate to the individual" – Chrysanthos Dellarocas One can not forget that business practices, trust and reputation do not work the same way for different people from different cultures. Qifang, the Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform, which caters to students, has lowered default rates by cleverly leveraging cultural norms by requesting borrowers to provide family details, so they'll feel pressure not to shame the family name.” (http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)

- Reputation Banks

Albert Cañigueral: “What's missing in collaborative consumption today? Roo Rogers answer was clear: "We still need great, centralized databases of reputation. If we’re good Zipsters, and good eBay tradesman, our rep should follow us. People should be able to see our record, tied to a fixed identity, and do business with us more confidently."

Startups like TrustCloud would like to become the portable reputation system for the web. The company is building an algorithm to collect (if you choose to opt in) your online "data exhaust" -- the trail you leave as you engage with others on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, commentary-filled sites like TripAdvisor, and beyond -- and calculate your reliability, consistency, and responsiveness. The result would be a contextual badge you'd carry to any website, a trust rating similar to the credit rating you have in the offline world. Facebook also has the potential to become the arbiter of online trust. "The incentive to be a good player in that ecosystem goes up dramatically when it's associated with my real identity," says Carl Sjogreen, manager of Facebook's platform product team., "because if someone leaves a bad review of me on AirBnB, that will carry with me to the rest of the web.” These are new territories and there are still a lot of unanswered questions: How to balance different sources of activity? Does all “sharing history” count the same? Should your offline citizen behavior be part of it? Should governments be involved at all?” (http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)

Trust Cloud

See: TrustCloud

TrustCloud

= TrustCloud’s mission is to solve the peer-to-peer trust challenge and empower collaborative consumption.

URL = http://trustcloud.com/

Description

“here’s what we figured: each member in the sharing community has a certain domain expertise, like sharing couches, cars, boats, tools, skill or whatnot. Our domain expertise is a networked trust solution, which we can tweak to serve the needs of specific communities. What the hell, let’s share. And get the Sharing Economy really rolling. Improve Reputation systems on peer-to-peer services New users to peer-to-peer sites have no reputation at all It takes a long time for users to build reputation because >90% users don’t write reviews Lacks passive social reputation metrics which tech-savvy target users believe in Ultimately, lower confidence in users reduces P2P website sales “

Solar Grid Parity

Description

'Solar grid parity is considered the tipping point for solar power, when installing solar power will cost less than buying electricity from the grid. It’s also a tipping point for the electricity system, when millions of Americans can choose energy production and self-reliance over dependence on their electric utility.” (http://grist.org/solar-power/2012-01-12-solar-grid-parity-101/)

More Information

Details via http://grist.org/solar-power/2012-01-12-solar-grid-parity-101/

New Rules Project

URL = http://www.newrules.org/

Description

'The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics. The rules call for: Decisions made by those impacted Communities accepting responsibility for the welfare of their members and the next generation Households and communities possessing or owning sufficient productive capacity to generate real wealth NewRules.org discusses the importance of rules and catalogs the best. We make the rules and the rules make us.” (http://www.newrules.org/)

update video entry with http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/13/rachel-botsman-wired-11

update Connectivism with http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/902/1664

check tapscott video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rgk7k9qsZI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

put as article on energy section, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/02/ideas-bank/energy-sharing

update media section with article:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/12/institutions-confidence-and-the-news-crisis/

Future of News Movement

In addition to Clay Shirky:

the “Future of News” movement. That essay, Confidence Game, focusses principally on Jay Rosen and me, both of NYU’s Carter Institute, and Jeff Jarvis of CUNY, though noting some similarity of vision with Emily Bell of Columbia, Dan Gillmor of Arizona, and John Paton, publisher of the Journal-Register Company. (Unmentioned fellow travelers include, mutatis mutandis, Steve Yelvington, Chris Anderson, Amanda Michel, Steve Buttry, Jonathan Stray, and Alan Mutter.)

(http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/12/institutions-confidence-and-the-news-crisis/)

- Creating Shared Value

Article: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer. Creating Shared Value. Harvard Business Review, 2011 URL = http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value

Description

They define it as “creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.” [3]

- Shared Value

= creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges [4]

Discussion

Panel discussion at 2011 Net Impact Conference

Ali Hart:

“At the 2011 Net Impact Conference, shared value was the focus of a session topic, proving that this idea is bubbling up in business. Participating on the panel was Enterprise Holdings, Inc., which owns and operates Alamo, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and National Car brands. Lee Broughton, Head of Corporate Sustainability for Enterprise Holdings, Inc., relayed that Enterprise is the largest owner of passenger vehicles in the world, with a fleet of 1.6 million in the US alone. As recently reported here, Enterprise released its first sustainability report and has taken on the challenge of improving urban mobility. Not only is the company investing in alternative fuel research, but also it’s investing in EVs. Enterprise Rent-A-Car invested in and committed to 500 Nissan LEAFs and instead of scattering them throughout the country, the organization partnered with 30 of its locations in major markets, clustering the vehicles in an effort to socialize them. The company views this as a win-win-win: more people will have the opportunity to drive Nissan LEAFs or see them driving around which will potentially inspire them to purchase one; Enterprise Rent-A-Car will bolster its sustainability cred; and Nissan will save money on advertising. This partnership creates value for all parties involved – Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Nissan and society, since EVs are more environmentally friendly than gas-guzzlers. Also on the panel was Starbucks, which just announced its new initiative, Create Jobs for USA in partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN). Starbucks donated the first $5 million to launch the Create Jobs for USA program and is asking Starbucks customers to donate at least $5. Donations will go directly to OFN, which funds small businesses, including social enterprises and nonprofits. According to OFN, $3,000 in donations creates or maintains a job in a community. While exciting, this is arguably more of a philanthropic partnership than an example of shared value. Starbucks also discussed how it’s achieving shared value with an initiative to recycle all customer cups by 2015. Interestingly, Starbucks invited competitors in its supply chain to come up with innovative ways to achieve this goal. What Starbucks found was that when the competitors were invited, their existing suppliers showed up with potential solutions; nothing like a little competition to get the innovation flowing. While clearly beneficial to the Starbucks brand and the communities in which the company operates, the economic benefits remain to be seen. If the recyclable cups cost more to produce, Starbucks might make up for the cost in increased sales as people vote with their dollars to support the effort. Only time will tell. All in all, it’s inspiring to see so many large brands finding value in shared value. That these efforts are being incorporated into company strategies means that we really can do well from doing good.” (http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/shared-value-partnerships-makings-collaborative-economy/)

More Information

Article: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer. Creating Shared Value. Harvard Business Review, 2011 URL = http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value

- European Charter of the Commons Campaign

= A European Citizen's Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the municipality of Naples, with the the first high level technical meeting of jurists taking place recently (in December) at the International University College of Turin.

URL = http://www.commonssense.it/

Description

“The dichotomy of private property and the state, on which the current constitutional tradition is grounded, has proven itself incapable of resisting the distortions produced by more than 20 years of neoliberal order. The outcome has been a global and severe constitutional imbalance, favoring the private sector and specifically corporate interests at the expense of the people. Massive transfers of common resources from the public to the private sphere are occurring throughout the world, with total disregard of any constitutional guarantees of the public interest, due process, and just compensation. Our democracies are increasingly being jeopardized by collusive state and market actors; government representatives that put the short term profits of individuals and corporations ahead of the interests of the common people. From Greece to Spain, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Italy to Bolivia, Ecuador, rural India and China, the people are increasingly aware of the need for a different model of globalization. These activists are currently engaged in acts of reclaiming commons all around the world. From those resisting the privatization of resources (for example in Italy with the water referendum) to the recent occupations of public spaces against neoliberalism ( for example the Indignados in Spain and the people of Greece). In solidarity with these movements, we initiate a campaign for the European Charter of the Commons. The International University College and its Institute for the Study of Political Economy and Law together with the Municipality of Naples, the Institut international D’etudes et recherches sur les biens communs, and European Alternatives are launching under the Lisbon Treaty Regulation No. 211/2011, a European Citizen Initiative for the European Charter of the Commons, pursuing the legal status and protection of the commons within the European Union. We define the Commons as two part; it is both about reclaiming access to fundamental resources as well as the very democratic process that governs their distribution Resources that are fundamental to human life include both natural commons like water, food, energy and the atmosphere, as well as man made commons, like technology, medicine, the internet and culture. Reclaiming the commons also requires a reshaping of the democratic process as it stands today, offering an alternative to the model that has prevailed under state and market models. Governing the commons demands a shift of power from the centralized state and free market to local communities, placing the power to satisfy the long term needs of these communities as well as those of future generations, back into the hands of community member through bottom up, local and direct democracy.” (http://www.commonssense.it/)

Text

Draft Version

“European Charter of the Commons (version created at IUC on December 2nd and 3rd) Legal Basis (to be completed) The Problem 1. There is an immediate and urgent need to defend the commonwealth of Europe from the all pervasive economic logic that is producing crisis and social suffering. 2. A true commonwealth of Europe is possible only by means of constitutional safeguards of the commons through a direct participatory process. 3. A severe imbalance of global power favoring the unaccountable corporate sector over public institutions has produced in Europe an unsustainable transfer of authority from the public to the private sector, which serves the profit of the few over the interests of the many. 4. State and corporate interests are today concurring in an incremental process of enclosure of the commons, limiting common spaces, turning the citizens into individualized consumers, in a constant and apparently irresistible process of commodification of nature, culture and heritage. 5. It is impossible to address the increasing European democratic deficit through an intergovernmental cession of State sovereignty, because the current power ratio, the collusion between the private and public sectors, between state and market actors, precludes national elected officials to represent the common interests of the people. 6. The people hereby through this Charter take direct responsibility in building our European commonwealth on local, national and supranational levels. The Vision 7. The commons must be rediscovered and fully appreciated as collective goods or services to which access is necessary for a balanced fulfillment of the fundamental needs of the people. 8. All natural and social resources that the people, in their different contexts, create, recognize and claim as commons must be governed in the logic of access and not of exclusion, of quality of relationship rather than quantitative logic, which places the commons at the center of political organization. 9. It is necessary that the commons are understood not only as living resources, such as forests, biodiversity, water, glaciers, seabeds, shores, energy, knowledge and cultural goods, but also as organized public services, such as schools, healthcare facilities, and transportation. 10. The interest and ability of future generations to equal access the commons must always be taken into consideration in any kind of public or private decision affecting them. 11. All the commons, no matter if publicly or privately owned, shall be endowed with a model of governance that rejects the principle of profit and embraces that of care, reproduction and sustainability. 12. The Charter shall include a Europe- wide catalogue of the commons to be updated regularly because the commons, not being a mere commodity, are a highly dynamic social institution changing in time and space. 13. Such catalogue must be integral part of a Constitutional process, based on the irreversibility of ecological legal protection, eventually to be granted constitutional status as heritage of Europe in trust for future generations. The Demand 14. Privatization and liberalization of public services to private competition, just like expropriation of private property, must occur only when there is a documented public interest, declared by law and subject to judicial supervision of both national and European Courts. 15. In the exceptional cases in which privatization may occur, there must be full compensation, recognized and guaranteed ex ante to restore the commons. 16. Everybody can always access the courts of law to protect the commons by mean of injunctive relief. 17. Only the direct, constitutional protection of the commons can guarantee a new, correct balance between the public and the private sector. 18. An immediate moratorium on all privatization and liberalization of the commons must be introduced in order to allow the making of a legitimate Charter of the Commons. 19. A Directive should be issued to all member states to provide for the protection of the commons according to the above. We hereby require the Commission to transform this popular citizen’s initiative into a new form of legitimate and democratic European Constitutional Law. The Commission must take all the necessary steps in order for the European Parliament, to be elected in 2014, to be granted Constitutional Assembly Status in order to adopt a Constitution of the Commons.”

Discussion

First Workshop

“On the 2nd and 3rd of December, 2011, the International University College of Turin hosted (along with the Department of Economics “S. Cognetti de Martiis” of the University of Turin) an International workshop on a Draft European Charter of the Commons. The workshop brought together economists, philosophers, social theorists, lawyers and activists to discuss the proposal for a European Charter of the Commons to be presented to the EU Commission as a European Citizens’ Initiative (for those that are unfamiliar with ECIs, these are proposals which EU citizens may present to the Commission, requesting the latter to propose a given legal act that is deemed necessary for the implementation of the European Treaties). I am not going to give a detailed account here of the myriad discussions that took place in that context, also in order not to jump start the activist networks and the promoters that are behind this initiative. Instead, I am going to use this as an opportunity to elucidate the idea of “cultural performance”, the brainchild of American sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, which I believe allows one (particularly those that took part to the workshop) to make sense of why certain discussions took place, and why they were properly relevant to the task of drafting a European Charter of the Commons. For Alexander, the increasing complexity of modern societies makes it harder to stage “social performances“ (i.e. instances of cultural communication) that command the same allegiance and respect as rituals did in simpler societies. This is because many of the elements of a social performance (like the background representations upon which the performance builds, actors, means of symbolic production, mise-en-scène and audiences) have become increasingly de-fused, i.e. they are further and further apart and more fragmented, making it harder to achieve the compelling, moving character of ritual. In light of this, it is crucial, for a social performance to be successful, that it be capable of bringing together once again all such elements in a seamless fashion, allowing a “flow” of meaning that project the background representations, through the actors and the mise-en-scène of their performance, to the intended audience. When this happens, “[t]he mere action of performing accomplishes the performance’s intended effect”[1]. So, for example, one of the problems faced by a Draft European Charter of the Commons is to be able to “speak” to its intended audience, which – however – is fragmented, including on the one hand the EC Commission (and its focus on Treaty implementation, implying allegiance to the free-market ideology broadly embedded in the Treaties) and, on the other, “the commoners of Europe” which – despite not being a uniform group themselves – seem however to be quite distant from the positions that the Commission is institutionally bound to take. Is it even possible to stage a “performance” that be able to speak to both? And how to stage a performance that, purely by being staged, achieve its intended effect of projecting given representations about the “commons” (in the broadest possible sense) onto the desired audience? These questions show how the choices to be faced here were not easy, confronting participants with the dilemma of drafting a narrow proposal that appealed to the Commission but would not be recognisable by commoners as their charter, or retain boldness and “authenticity” and speak to the commoners and for the commoners. This choice, it seems to me, appeared to be inevitable in the light of the basic (and deep) fragmentation of the dual audience to which the Charter is directed (EC Commission on the one hand, European commoners on the other). Eventually, a consensus seems to have emerged for a bold project that be true to the “constitutional” aspiration that underpins it, even at the risk of facing rejection by the Commission. As a consequence, I believe, the Charter of the Commons, as a performance, will speak differently to the two audiences. On the one hand, as far as the EU Commission is concerned, if the proposal were to retain its boldness it would not so much attempt to engage the latter in a debate on the commons – given the excessive distance in the respective positions – but rather to challenge the Commissions’ institutional role as the holder of a monopoly over legislative initiative within the European Union (perhaps as a choice, embedded in the Treaties by heads of state, to prevent initiatives “from below” that would otherwise bypass them). On the other hand, the “performance” that the Charter ought to deliver to the European Commoners will, instead, retain broadness and diversity in a manner that speaks for the commons, understood as anything that can be managed in a participatory manner by a community, according to principles of “care, reproduction and sustainability” [2]. Most importantly, the drafting and submission of the Charter ought to enact an instance of “commoning”, bringing disparate audiences (e.g. from environmentalists to free software activists) together around a common project. The possibility to make the European Charter of the Commons an occasion for the Commoners of Europe to band together, retaining consistency – in their action – to their stated intentions, seems to me to be the most promising side of the whole project. If, in fact, the European Charter of the Commons will be able to enact an instance of commoning in putting forth a legal stance for the commons, it will indeed have achieved the point where “[t]he mere action of performing accomplishes the performance’s intended effect”.” (http://www.commonssense.it/s1/?p=728)

Rome Forum Announcement=

“The Rome forum brings together over forty organisations, networks and social movements from at least seven European countries to take forward common transnational campaigns on the themes of the commons and minimum income within the fight for precarious working and living conditions, relying also on the new instrument of the European Citizens' Initiative. The event will be a real opportunity to build European networks and campaigns that will take concrete forms in follow-up meetings in Spain, the UK, Romania, Bulgaria and France in the following months to continue the work begun in Rome. The emphasis on concrete campaigns will be the starting point to engage in a reflection on the revision of the EU Treaties, to propose an alternative vision of Europe.

A European Citizen's Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the municipality of Naples, with the the first high level technical meeting of jurists taking place recently (in December) at the International University College of Turin. Proposals for an Initiative on minimum income have been taken forwards, amongst others, by the Basic Income Network, following the proposals advanced by the European Parliament in October 2010.

The Italian organisations behind this the event are the International University College Turin, European Alternatives, Teatro Valle, Centro Studi per l'Alternativa Comune, Municipality of Naples, Basic Income Network, Tilt, Il Manifesto, Rete della Conoscenza, Altramente and Arci.”

- Commons Sense Forum i

URL = Http://www.commonssense.it/

Description

The Commons Sense Forum is a project of the International University College of Turin (IUC), a leading centre for the interdisciplinary and critical study of law, economics and finance. The IUC is exploring the framework of the “Commons,” communally-held tangible and intangible resources (i.e. public water, forests, the atmosphere – but also shared culture, ideas, information, and traditions), as an alternative to the gridlocked public v. private and state controlled v. free market debate.

Societal Constitutionalism

Discussion

“in February 2011 at the International University College of Turin, Gunther Teubner presented an interesting paper in which he provided several interesting suggestions for thinking about the phenomenon of societal constitutionalism.

The Teubner version of “societal constitutionalism” is, of course, imbued with the sociologically-informed cybernetic approach of systems theory, which he is one of the main supporters of. This approach postulates the existence of multiple communicative systems – i.e. autopoietically closed structures of communication – like politics, law, the economy, the mass media, and so on. Each of these structures unfolds and evolves according to its own idiosyncratic “foundational rationality”, encompassing the self-understanding of a system, as well as its understanding of the relationship with other social systems. As a consequence, the presence of as many such “foundational rationalities” as there are social systems accommodates the possibility of radical change of a fundamental, “constitutional” nature in relation to each individual social system. So, for example, for Teubner it is fundamental to alter the implosive tendencies of the capitalist economy by acting from within. One of the ways this is done is, to quote Teubner himself, through:

- Politicisation of the consumer: Instead of being taken as given, individual and collective preferences are openly politicised through consumer activism, boycotts, product-criticism, eco-labelling, public interest litigation and other expressions of ecological sustainability. Such politicisation of economic action represents a transformation of the inner constitution, touching the most sensitive area of the circulation of money, namely, the willingness of consumers and investors to pay.” (http://www.commonssense.it/s1/?p=639)

Manifesto for European Common Goods

Text

“The crisis affecting the global economy and consequently the Euro during these months requires a radically different response from those actually envisaged and carried out. The way Europe and European governments and electors will handle the Greek crisis will set an important precedent for the next crises and their entailed risks of sovereign defaults. The probable decisions by the Greek government, practically left alone as other governments in similar deficit crises, are based on the massive sale of public goods to unspecified buyers in order to raise the money necessary to guarantee the next loans. This is not only a wrong decision in political terms, but also in practical terms. Politically we have had ample experience in the past quarter of century that deregulations and privatisations were not synonymous with efficiency, investments, modernisation and competition. On the contrary, there is a long list in Europe and around the world, of resounding failures and actual destruction of value by the same market forces that were extolled as the long lasting solution to any national and international economic problem. The last financial, market and economic global crisis has shown beyond any doubt that markets alone are not capable to rule themselves, that there is no invisible hand balancing the different interests and that public money has rescued the same oligopolies that were supposed to not to exist in a healthy competitive environment, fostered by a deregulated market. There is no free lunch and there is no unregulated market oriented to a common good. We believe strongly on ethical and political grounds and on practical experience that public policies are not just to regulate a neo-laissez-faire, nor just to support private interests in the name of a supposed national competitiveness, nor just to redistribute a dwindling income. Public policies have to work for public interests, under democratic oversight, which means that they have the task to foster public goods and long-term investments, supported by an efficient management and by a meaningful taxation for the good of society. Instead of letting Greek goods be sold at a ridiculous price either to major power that have a strong interest in controlling markets in order to strengthen their competitiveness (at the fatal expense of our interests) or to private investors that are totally irresponsible to societies, electors and national interests, we propose to use in a more effective way the public money we already spend in EU/ IMF loans and in ECB support measures. Greek public goods, as those of other possible critical countries, should be sold to a European economic conglomerate, either public or participated by a majority public stake, in order to raise directly from governments and international institutions the necessary money. This allows to preserve two vital interests both at European and national level: • the goods are redeemable by the interested country in due time and at reasonable conditions or they can produce proportional profits to the governments, but they are managed taking into account both economic and social needs. If sovereign funds are available, we do not see why public-owned enterprises are unfeasible under appropriate management and oversight. • the goods are preserved as European economic and industrial assets, instead of being dispersed and exposed to a very uncertain future. Europe has created a formidable integrated entity, especially at the economic level, so it would be suicidal if, in times of top emergency, Europe would refrain from carrying out a no-nonsense industrial policy. “ (http://www.europeancommongoods.org/eng.php)

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Test!
+*
+add to p2p essay of day
+http://www.shareable.net/blog/aggregation-not-algorithms-is-the-key-to-building-trust
+*
+wiki: Open Design School
+URL = http://www.opendesignschool.com/
+=Description=
+“The Open Design School is a movement, a school of thought and a virtual institution which advocates design education in the spirit of open source and connected intellectual and creative generosity. We are asking like-minded creatives who are passionate about open education in the art and design sector to come forward and be part of a revolution. We are calling for authors, bloggers, designers, developers, graduates, students, professionals and academics to help us transform the way designers are being trained. Let’s redesign and open up Design Education, together. “
+[[Category:Education]]
+[[Category:Design]]
+*
+also on blog, and wiki re problem of localisation
+Open Sharing API
+see: [[Sharing API]]
+URL = http://www.sharingapi.org/
+=Discussion=
+==Sharing API as solution to local sharing problem==
+Juho Makkonen :
+“Peer-to-peer borrowing and lending, sharing skills and rides and swapping heavy items like furniture—all activities that require close proximity between the offerer and the requester—are yet to experience their true breakthrough. I believe this is due to two reasons. First, these services have a difficult time with monetization, since the sums of money involved in sharing stuff and skills are a lot smaller than in cases of buying goods or sharing accommodation and transportation. Second, the critical mass required in their case is much greater, since people do not benefit at all from offers that are too far away.
+This is indeed a major problem with the sharing economy. We have a huge amount of different services in the areas of borrowing, sharing skills and swapping items, but the vast majority of them has not yet achieved a critical mass. They may have it in a small area—typically around where the founders are from, because it's cheap for them to market their service there—but in all the other places they might have only few users here and there. And that's why these services do not really work for anybody's benefit. Their growth is simply too slow to be self-sustainable.
+All these small services need a way to collaborate. Otherwise most of them will always remain small and eventually die unprofitable. This would be a shame, since a lot of marketing work has gone into building the small but passionate niche audience they have around the world, and that work should not go to waste. If we could somehow connect all these small user groups together, we'd suddenly be a lot closer to achieving mainstream success for local sharing.
+Readers of my previous post may know where I'm going with this. An excellent way to facilitate this kind of collaboration would be to build a common API specification for the shared stuff—goods, services, rides, spaces, you name it. Most services end up implementing an API at some point anyway, so they could as well use the same specification to do it.
+This would make it really easy to create all kinds of aggregation services. We could build a search engine that would search from a hundred different services that let people to borrow stuff from each other. A search engine like this would greatly increase the probability of actually finding something suitable close-by and motivate the searcher to join a service. This would lead to a greater pool of resources, more sharing, and continued growth. All services would benefit from the traffic directed from this global channel, while allowing space for niche providers to fill the gaps.
+So, lets begin by creating the specification. My previous post gathered a bunch of interested commentators, and together we are now starting to move this thing forward. We started by forming a Google Group for discussions. Matthew Slater just left an interesting note there, describing a site called open311.org. It describes an API intended for reporting civic issues to local governments.
+So we decided to build a site like this for the sharing API. It's already up at www.sharingapi.org. It's a start, and hopefully a lot will happen in the coming months.
+After the specification is finished, we just need as many services as possible to implement it. For instance, when we start building the API for Kassi, the service I'm involved with, we'll make sure it is done by the guidelines in the specification wiki. Among the people involved there are guys building services like CES, sharedearth.net and Yours2share—these too will be some of the first pioneers.
+After we get enough services on board, we could just as well build the search engine I described above. When the APIs are there, it would only take a few days of work.
+I invite everyone to join this project.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/the-sharing-economy-has-a-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed)
+==Towards a Common API==
+Juho Makkonen :
+“While it is great that there are so many people working to promote sharing, this also causes problems from the users' point of view. When there is more than ten sharing services working in the same city, it becomes tedious to find the stuff you're looking for or list what you have. As a result, it's difficult for a single service to achieve the network effect. A traditional capitalist approach would be to rely on the survival of the fittest. But could there be a more collaborative way? After all, our common goal is to boost sharing by mapping all the resources that people have to share and linking them together. Would it be possible to form a huge pool of resources that all sharing economy services could then use to their benefit?
+I'm going to look things from a practical (read: technological) point of view here and suggest two collaboration approaches that could solve these issues: a common API and a distributed data storage.
+Approach 1: Common API
+A common API would be a rather simple solution since it does not force current services into major changes in their infrastructure. Basically it would mean that each sharing service would build an API according to the same specification. The method would be somewhat similar to Google's Open Social initiative for social websites. We would have to define an ontology that maps all the resources that can be shared (stuff, skills, space) and their subtypes and properties related to them. For example, in the case of goods, the specification could require the API to provide some basic information of each item, such as  name, picture, location, category (books, tools, etc) and how they will be shared (lending, swapping, giving away, etc). This would mean that when I wanted to show all tools that people can lend near San Francisco area I could use the same query to retrieve results from all the different services.
+The benefit of this approach is that it would be easy to display results from different services when a user does a search in one service, because there would be no need to build a separate integration mechanism for each service. For example, if you were searching for a certain tool from NeighborGoods and did not find it, the search would then return results from Share Some Sugar and Freecycle. And since most modern online services plan on building an API at some point, using an existing specification could save time and resources.
+Using this kind of API connection would benefit all parties. Those who displayed results from other services in their search would be able to offer a better service to their users. It's a good customer service and marketing practice to point to your competitors if they can serve your customer better. Those offering their APIs for others to use would get exposure and traffic when other services pointed to them, and the people would get a wider selection of available resources and would be introduced to new sharing services.
+This approach is not perfect. When actually borrowing the item, the users would still need to sign up for those services. They would not be able to take their data from the original service with them. This data would include feedback received from other users and other information that is vital to facilitate sharing. A person with an excellent reputation as a frequent lender and a trustworthy borrower in NeighborGoods would become a suspicious newbie in Share Some Sugar.
+How could this issue be addressed? It's not easy, but it could be done, at least in theory, using a technique called distributed data storage.
+Approach 2: Distributed data storage
+Diaspora is a project familiar to many due to its huge Kickstarter success. Diaspora's main idea is to create a social networking site like Facebook but with a significant difference: people own all their data and can move it as they please, and only display it to people they choose. It uses peer to peer technology to distribute data between servers (or "pods") set up by the users of the service. This means that it has no central place where all the data is stored.
+Applied to collaborative consumption, this would mean that some core data--like users' profile information, things they are sharing and their reputation in different services--would be an identity that could be shared between different services. Each time a user came across a new service he could conduct a "collcons connect" (similar to Facebook Connect) which would transfer the data he selects to transfer to the new service. A publish/subscribe method could be used to ensure when some data is changed in one service, the change gets transferred to all the other services using that same data.
+This approach would make it easy for people to discover new services and start using them, and therefore start sharing with even more people. It would also create a huge catalogue of shared resources which new entrepreneurs could then use in innovative ways.
+Challenges
+The main challenges in this kind of collaboration between services are not technological. All the things mentioned above could be done. The actual reasons that are preventing collaboration between services are very similar to those that are preventing sharing between people in collaborative consumption services: convenience and trust.
+Startups have limited resources and want to be agile. The collaboration cannot take too much time away from their core business of developing a good service for their users or slow them down. Moreover, most startups have their own strong vision and want to test it first before considering collaborating with others. We all think that we should eventually collaborate, but no one is ready to take the step beyond talking.
+Then there are the trust considerations. If I'm going to pull data from somebody else's service, I need to be able to rely on the quality of the data. And if I let them take my data, I need to trust them to handle it responsibly. For the biggest players, it might seem that smaller services areusing their content and not giving enough back. The small services might think their users have no reason to return to them if their data is available on the bigger hubs. And naturally, owning data can be also viewed as a competitive advantage, which is why walled gardens are so prevalent on the web.
+There is no single one-size-fits-all solution for all collaborative consumption services. But there is certainly room for more cooperation than what currently exists.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/an-api-for-sharing)
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Technology]]
+[[Category:Standards]]
+[[Category:P2P Infrastructure]]
+*
+for wiki: Goods Commons
+=More Information=
+Mesh directory for sharing goods: http://meshing.it/categories/5-Goods
+[[Category:Goods]]
+[[Category:Commons]]
+* add to Mesh, sharing directory page, make individual entries?
+Sharing Directory
+accessories & gifts  http://meshing.it/categories/1-accessories-gifts
+books & writing , http://meshing.it/categories/2-books-writing
+business & innovation , http://meshing.it/categories/3-business-innovation ([[Book Commons]]
+careers, jobs & vocation , http://meshing.it/categories/4-careers-jobs-vocations
+creativity, media & the arts , http://meshing.it/categories/7-creativity-media-the-arts
+diy , http://meshing.it/categories/8-diy
+education , http://meshing.it/categories/9-education
+energy , http://meshing.it/categories/10-energy [[Sharing Energy]]
+entertainment , http://meshing.it/categories/23-entertainment
+farming & gardening , http://meshing.it/categories/14-farming-gardening
+fashion & clothing , http://meshing.it/categories/11-fashion-clothing
+finance & economics , http://meshing.it/categories/12-finance-economics
+food & drink , http://meshing.it/categories/13-food-drink
+government , http://meshing.it/categories/6-government
+health & fitness , http://meshing.it/categories/15-health-fitness
+home improvement , http://meshing.it/categories/18-home-improvement
+kids' stuff , http://meshing.it/categories/20-kids-stuff
+marketing services , http://meshing.it/categories/21-marketing-services
+mobility , http://meshing.it/categories/28-mobility
+natural resources & environment , http://meshing.it/categories/24-natural-resources-environment
+real estate , http://meshing.it/categories/25-real-estate
+seasonal & holidays , http://meshing.it/categories/26-seasonal-holidays
+technology & data , http://meshing.it/categories/27-technology-data
+travel , http://meshing.it/categories/29-travel
+upcycling & recycling , http://meshing.it/categories/30-upcycling-recycling
+*add to
+Book Commons
+books & writing , http://meshing.it/categories/2-books-writing
+Sharing Energy
+http://meshing.it/categories/10-energy
+=Examples=
+* Indie Energy
+Http://www.indieenergy.com/
+The Indie Energy Networ and Energy App Exchang is an open real-time platform for 3rd party app developers to utilize live building data and applications to create energy efficiency solutions for buildings.
+Kattner Associates LLC
+Http://www.kattnerassociates.com
+Advisory and educational services about how communities large, medium and small can share heating, cooling and electricity production and distribution equipment instead of everyone for themselves. Energy meshing in this way can reduce the amount of capital investment and lessen the impact on environmental resources such as air, water and land.
+LocalGen UK
+URL = http://www.localgen.org.uk/
+localGen provides advice and resources to local communities looking to develop the community's energy resilience by developing energy-efficiency measures and electricity generation at or close to the point of consumption
+* Energy Co-op of Vermont
+Http://www.ecvt.net
+Member-owned energy supplier in Vermont.
+* Green Energy Cooperative
+Http://www.greenenergy.coop
+Offers practical solutions for bringing top-quality fuel products to market.
+* Horizon Energy Cooperative Microgrid
+Http://horizonmicrogrid.com
+Aims to deliver renewable energy to Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom.
+* [[Micropower Council - UK]]
+Http://www.micropower.co.uk/
+The Micropower Council represents companies and organisations active in the microgeneration sector and campaigns on behalf of its members for a genuine mass market for small scale, low and zero carbon electricity and heat generating technologies.
+* [[Energy Collective]]
+Http://theenergycollective.com/
+The Energy Collective is an independent, moderated community of professionals focused on the complex challenges of meeting the world's energy needs sustainably.
+[[Wind Works Archive]]
+Http://www.wind-works.org
+Online archive of articles on wind energy, feed-in tariffs, and advanced renewable tariffs.
+[[Category:Energy]]
+[[Category:Cooperatives]]
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+*
+http://www.shareable.net/blog/co-ops-a-great-way-to-share
+http://www.shareable.net/blog/why-facebook-threatens-internet-freedom-far-more-than-apple
+** for wiki
+[[Co-op Power]]
+= a consumer-owned renewable energy cooperative. We operate within a regional network of autonomous Local Organizing Councils
+URL = http://www.cooppower.coop/
+=Description=
+Co-op Power Creates Community-Owned Energy Resources
+“We have engaged in community outreach, education, and dialogue over the past five years to build consensus about how to best support our transition to a sustainable and just energy future. As a result, we have raised more than $300,000 in Member Equity, $600,000 in member loans, and $850,000 in local investment to support the development of community-scale clean energy projects and to build Co-op Power. Our members have worked together to support the development of Energia in
+Holyoke (a multi-family/commercial/residential energy efficiency business), Northeast Biodiesel in Greenfield (a 3.5 million gallon/year recycled vegetable oil biodiesel processing plant), five solar installation businesses, two green electrician businesses, and a window restoration/thermal window insert fabrication business in Westfield, along with building out our own energy efficiency and solar products and services. These businesses have created more than 100 jobs over the last five years.
+Co-op Power is launching a community solar program with community net metering this fall. We have installed over 50 solar hot water systems and another 25 renewable energy systems generating more than 100 kilowatts of electricity. We're building two 25 kW systems this fall, one in Brattleboro for the Brattleboro Food Co-op and one in Shelburne for the McCusker building. “
+(http://www.cooppower.coop/index.php/about-co-op-power)
+[[Category:Energy]]
+[[Category:Cooperatives]]
+*
+Community Wind
+=  wind  power projects seen as a community-owned asset
+URL =  http://www.windustry.org/communitywind
+=Description=
+“Community wind is a growing sector of wind development that promises to increase local energy independence and prosperity without contributing to global warming.
+A wind project that is a community-owned asset. Community wind projects are owned by a variety of individuals including local small business owners, farmers, local organizations including schools and universities, as well as Native American Tribes, rural electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, and religious institutions. These project can range from a single turbine to a community-owned commercial-scale wind farm.”
+(http://www.windustry.org/communitywind)
+=More Information=
+Report: Ownership Matters: Community-Based Wind Development in Colorado
+URL = http://www.windustry.org/ownership-matters-communitybased-wind-development-in-colorado
+Report: Community vs. Corporate Wind: Does it Matter Who Develops the Wind in Big Stone County, MN?
+URL  = http://www.windustry.org/community-vs-corporate-wind-does-it-matter-who-develops-the-wind-in-big-stone-county-mn
+# http://www.windustry.org/communitywind#overview
+# http://www.windustry.org/community-wind
+# http://www.windustry.org/cw-case-studies
+# http://www.windustry.org/policy-amp-research/benefits-of-wind-and-community-wind/the-benefits-of-wind-energy-and-community-wi
+[[Category:Energy]]
+[[Category:Peerproperty]]
+Community-Owned Wind Power Projects
+See also: [[Community Wind]]
+=More Information=
+Report: Ownership Matters: Community-Based Wind Development in Colorado
+URL = http://www.windustry.org/ownership-matters-communitybased-wind-development-in-colorado
+“This publication goes through a broad overview of community-wind development. In includes some helpful resources and addresses the many different areas that community-wind development entails. The content is based on a series of presentations from 2008 by the same title.”
+Report: Community vs. Corporate Wind: Does it Matter Who Develops the Wind in Big Stone County, MN?
+URL  = http://www.windustry.org/community-vs-corporate-wind-does-it-matter-who-develops-the-wind-in-big-stone-county-mn
+“This report reviews various business structures for community wind development, reviews previous studies on the economic impact of both wind development in general and the relative impacts of corporate and community wind development, and investigates the specific case of the economic impact of community vs. corporate wind development for a multi-turbine project in Big Stone County, Minnesota.”
+[[Category:Energy]]
+[[Category:Peerproperty]]
+*
+*
+[[Farm and Gardening Sharing]]
+See directory of sharing initiatives at: http://meshing.it/categories/14-farming-gardening
+[[Category:Agrifood]]
+*
+[[Fashion and Clothing Sharing]]
+See directory at: http://meshing.it/categories/11-fashion-clothing
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+*
+BankSimple
+BankSimple
+www.banksimple.com
+=Description=
+BankSimple is creating a better interface for banking through the Web and mobile apps. In partnership with financial institutions which will hold the actual deposits, BankSimple is focusing on creating a better customer experience and simplifying the banking process by unifying all accounts into one, accessible through a bank card. Rather than making money from different fees, BankSimple plans to split the net interest margin with its partner banks (the difference between the rate they lend at and the rate they pay to depositors), thus eliminating the incentive to push more confusing products at consumers.
+[[Category:Money]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+*
+Capitalist Collective
+www.capitalistcollective.com/
+Capitalist Collective is an investment research exchange that connects professional and educated self-directed individual equity investors and allows them to exchange, discuss, and debate their investment research.
+[[Category:Money]]
+*
+Community Connect Trade Association
+= CCTA)is an association of professionals and business owners who trade products and services for other things they need.  CCTA members reduce expenses and increase sales by doing business with each other without using cash.
+URL = http://www.communityconnecttrade.com/
+=Description=
+'CCTA’s customer service agents help you to bring the new customers that you are looking for and offset cash expenses by exchanging products and services with other CCTA member businesses. Members can also find you through our online directory. The members who buy your products and services pay you with trade credits. Each trade credit is equal to one dollar in value.  You use your trade credits to buy products and services from other member businesses.”
+[[Category:Demonetization]]
+[[Category:Money]]
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+*
+Cooperative Community Fund
+= cooperative funding of food coops
+URL = http://www.community.coop/ccf/
+=Description=
+“we directly invest the principle in cooperative development by investing in credit unions, locally owned community banks that support cooperatives, the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund, the National Cooperative Bank and other socially responsible funds. Every dollar we have works hard to achieve our aims. As a result, your Cooperative Community Fund program makes your dollars work in many ways for both cooperative development and community good.”
+(http://www.community.coop/ccf/about.php)
+=FAQ=
+“What is a Cooperative Community Fund?
+A Cooperative Community Fund (CCF) is an endowment fund established for each participant co-op wherein the interest earned each year is donated by the sponsor co-op to nonprofits and cooperatives in their community. A CCF is sponsored by a local food co-op and administered within the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation.
+How many food co-ops presently participate in the CooperativeCommunity Fund program?
+At the end of 2004, eleven food co-ops were sponsors. They are; North CoastCooperatives, Davis Food Co-op, Briarpatch Community Market, Co-opportunity, Isla Vista Food Co-op, Hanover Food Co-op, Weaver Street Market, Food Co-op Conspiracy,Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, People's Food Co-op and Quincy Natural Foods Coop. We anticipate six more food co-ops joining during 2005.
+How much have the Cooperative Community Funds donated tononprofits and other cooperatives at this time?
+Our sponsor co-ops have already donated $30,000 to nonprofits andcooperatives in their local communities. In 2005 another $12,000 in donations will be made possible and in 2006 annual donations will grow to $15,000. By 2008 the donationswill reach $100,000 in combined giving.”
+(http://www.community.coop/ccf/about.php)
+[[Category:Cooperatives]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+[[Category:Agrifood]]
+*
+Sharing Food and Drink
+See directory at http://meshing.it/categories/13-food-drink
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Agrifood]]
+*
+Participatory Government Initiatives
+=Directory=
+A selection from The [[Mesh]] directory at http://meshing.it/categories/6-government
+Americans Elect 2012
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4440-Americans-Elect-2012
+Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process. We're using the Internet to give every single voter—Democrat, Republican or independent—the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. The people will choose the issues.
+Areyoulocal.co.uk
+Areyoulocal.co.uk helps strengthen relationships among residents, groups, and businesses.
+Bright Neighbor
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/174-Bright-Neighbor
+Bright Neighbor combines community involvement and social tools to help local governments and communities increase livability and sustainability.
+City in Transition Initiative
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/3038-City-in-Transition-Initiative
+The Cities in Transition Initiative is a three-year project designed to build a sustained network of leading policymakers and practitioners in five older industrial U.S. cities: Detroit and Flint, Michigan; Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio
+City of Boston: Citizen Connect
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/3604-City-of-Boston-Citizen-Connect
+The Citizens Connect mobile app helps residents make their neighborhoods even better. The app, which works on Android phones and iPhones, makes helps constituents report potholes, graffiti and other service issues.
+CityCamp
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/3018-CityCamp
+CityCamp is an unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. As an unconference, content for CityCamp is not programmed for a passive audience. Instead, content is created and organized by participants
+CivicApps.org
+CivicApps.org aims to encourage every citizen to be an active participant in government by putting the data in their hands. The CivicApps.org site was developed to source, profile, and accelerate innovative ideas using Web and mobile technologies
+CIVICUS
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58741-CIVICUS
+[[World Alliance for Citizen Participation]] is an international alliance of members and partners which constitutes an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels, and spans the spectrum of civil society.
+Code for America
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/183-Code-for-America
+Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected, and efficient by connecting web developers with people who deliver city services.
+Data.gov
+Data.gov is a community that bridges policy makers, technologists, data owners, and citizens-each of us wants to get information to people who need to make decisions each day
+Google Apps for Government
+Google Apps for Government lets agencies cut IT costs & empower employees. FISMA certification from the federal government attests to the security of your data. All these modern, web-based applications, just $50 per user per year.
+government
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4632-Gov-2-0-Radio
+Gov 2.0 Radio is where government and technology reformers come to talk
+Government2.0
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4653-Government2-0
+Government 2.0 is a German government camp.
+Govfresh
+Url = http://meshing.it/companies/58623-Govfresh
+GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. We feature Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.Gov 2.0 Radio
+GovLuv
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58546-GovLuv
+GovLuv is a website that connects government representatives and citizens using the magical power of Twitter.
+Livable Streets Initiative
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/220-Livable-Streets-Initiative-
+The Livable Streets Initiative is an online community for people working to create sustainable cities through urban planning, design, and transportation policy. We provide free, open source, web-based, resources to citizens
+**
+CivicApps
+URL =
+CivicApps.org aims to encourage every citizen to be an active participant in government by putting the data in their hands. The CivicApps.org site was developed to source, profile, and accelerate innovative ideas using Web and mobile technologies
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Participation]]
+**
+to wiki [[CityCamp]]
+CityCamp
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/3018-CityCamp
+=Description=
+CityCamp is an unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. As an unconference, content for CityCamp is not programmed for a passive audience. Instead, content is created and organized by participants”
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Participation]]
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+[[Category:Conferences]]
+*
+World Alliance for Citizen Participation]
+CIVICUS
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58741-CIVICUS
+[[World Alliance for Citizen Participation]] is an international alliance of members and partners which constitutes an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels, and spans the spectrum of civil society.
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Participation]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+**
+Code for America
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/183-Code-for-America
+Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected, and efficient by connecting web developers with people who deliver city services.
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Participation]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+**
+FOR THE WIKI
+Google Apps for Government
+Google Apps for Government lets agencies cut IT costs & empower employees. FISMA certification from the federal government attests to the security of your data. All these modern, web-based applications, just $50 per user per year.
+government
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4632-Gov-2-0-Radio
+Gov 2.0 Radio is where government and technology reformers come to talk
+Government2.0
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/4653-Government2-0
+Government 2.0 is a German government camp.
+Govfresh
+Url = http://meshing.it/companies/58623-Govfresh
+GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. We feature Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.Gov 2.0 Radio
+GovLuv
+URL = http://meshing.it/companies/58546-GovLuv
+GovLuv is a website that connects government representatives and citizens using the magical power of Twitter.
+*
+Cooperatives Europe
+www.coopseurope.coop
+Cooperatives Europe promotes the co-op model for sustainable economic progress with social objectives.
+**
+to wiki politics and movements, 'monitoring global protest movements through [[CrowdVoice]]
+CrowdVoice
+= CrowdVoice is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing informatio
+URL = http://www.crowdvoice.org/
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Media]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+**
+Euro Coop
+www.eurocoop.org
+Euro Coop is a european community of consumer cooperatives.
+**
+OhMyGov
+ohmygov.com/
+Tracking the news & numbers that matter to government and political communicators, with a dash of social media strategy, Gov 2.0 and humor.
+**
+Open Government Initiative
+www.whitehouse.gov/open
+Aims to establish transparency, public participation, and collaboration
+**
+Police.uk
+www.police.uk
+Police.uk is a local crime and policing website for England and Wales. The site provides you with helpful information about crime and policing in your area.
+**
+The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation
+www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/sicp/
+Engages individuals, non-profits, the private sector, and government to foster innovation and work together to make greater and more lasting progress.
+**
+They Work For You
+www.theyworkforyou.com
+Resource for citizens to keep tabs on the United Kingdom's parliaments and assemblies.
+**
+YouCut
+www.majorityleader.gov/YouCut/
+YouCut is a program started by Republican Congressman and House whip Eric Cantor in May 2010 to present ideas for potential cost-cutting bills to be presented to the House of Representatives of the United States, and to solicit feedback on those ideas from the general public.
+**
+FreeAgent
+www.freeagentcentral.com
+FreeAgent is an online accounting application used by thousands of freelancers and small businesses. It lets you send invoices, track time and expenses, analyse bank statements and build real-time accounts, all done simply with no confusing accounting jargon. Our customers say it puts them back in control of their business finances, and even makes doing the books fun!
+**
+FreshBooks
+www.freshbooks.com
+As an online invoicing service, FreshBooks helps you keep your time and expense organized, send professional branded invoices, and even collect online payments by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck. That will save you time, impress your clients, and get you paid faster.
+**
+Outvesting
+= the act of committing money to a business while expecting to get nothing in return
+URL = http://www.outvesting.org/
+=Description=
+'in·vesting : The act of committing money to a business while expecting income or profit in return.
+out·vesting: The act of committing money to a business while expecting to get nothing in return, other than the satisfaction of giving a leg up”
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+[[Category:Encyclopedia]]
+[[Category:Money]]
+[[Category:Ireland]]
+**
+Pay with a Tweet
+www.paywithatweet.com
+Pay with a Tweet is a great to tool for everyone who wants to create buzz around his or her product, service, brand or just themselves. In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it. Pay with a Tweet is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network.
+**
+Social Return on Investment
+= framework for valuing social impact.
+See also: [[Social Metrics]]
+=How it works=
+“Boundary Setting and Impact Mapping1: There are two major areas here: Boundary Setting and Impact
+Mapping. Boundary setting is concerned with clearly indicating what your measuring,. This may be one project within your organization, or the processes and projects of your entire organization. Impact
+Mapping visualizes your theory of change, or the systematic actions that will lead you to your stated
+social goal.
+Choosing Indicators and Financial Proxies: Drawing from your impact map, SROI specialists will
+choose indicators of success, or results that best reflect the progress of your project. The next step is to
+attach financial values to these indicators. For example, if your organization helps youth attain higher
+education, and by doing so, they will have an average salary of $44,000, then the indicator is
+employment after graduation, and the financial proxy is average salary.
+Collecting Data: After choosing indicators and financial proxies, an SROI specialist will collect data on
+your program’s impact according to the chosen indicators.
+Summing Social and Financial Returns: From the collected data, an SROI specialist will organize and
+aggregate the data. This is the gross benefit, the total benefit to society according to your indicators.
+Subtracting Deadweight Loss2: However, gross benefit is not the impact of your projects because
+often some social impact would have happened without the presence of your programs. Therefore, an
+SROI specialist will ask “What would have happened anyways?”; this is called deadweight loss and will be subtracted from the gross benefit to produce the net total benefits of your programs.
+The net total benefit will then be discounted for present value and placed in the SROI formula below.
+The final ratio represents the Social Return on Investment of your programs. ”
+(http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)
+=History=
+“In 1990, the Robert Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) started using business practices to solve
+social issues unemployment issues in San Francisco. It was here that Social Return on Investment was
+first developed so that REDF could understand where to direct their funding for maximizing benefit.
+After this, SROI was refined and used by the new economic foundation. It is currently practiced by a
+number of organizations throughout the world. ”
+(http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)
+=More Information=
+* Report: Jeremy Nichollis
+et al. A guide to
+Social Return on Investment
+(Cabinet Office of
+the Third Sector
+United Kingdom: new economics foundation, 2009
+* Report: new economic foundation.
+Measuring Social Impact: the
+foundation of social
+return on investment (SROI).
+URL = http:// sroi.london.edu/ Measuring-Social- Impact.pdf
+[[Category:P2P Accounting]]
+**
+Social Metrics
+=Description=
+“Traditional corporations create financial profit, but nonprofits and social enterprises are creating
+something too: social impact; that has value. At its heart, social metrics takes this basic fact and tries to
+make it understandable to different audiences for the purpose of engaging stakeholders and their
+respective competencies in solving social issues.
+Social metrics is a fairly new field, and much of its growth has been motivated by “impact investing”, or socially motivated investing. The idea is that if one can communicate social impact in a language that investors and grantors understand, then funders will be more willing to donate to high-impact project.
+This has led to the [[Social Return on Investment]] methodology, which uses financial analysis tools to
+communicate social impact. ”
+(http://www.socialassets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Social-Metric-Primer1.pdf)
+[[Category:P2P Accounting]]
+**
+Social Finance
+=Company=
+'Social Finance is dedicated to mobilizing investment capital to drive social change. We create innovative financial instruments that align the interest of private investors seeking social and financial returns, non-profit service organizations seeking sustainable funding, and governments seeking improved results for individuals, families, and communities in need.”
+(http://www.socialfinanceus.com/)
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+Add to sharing cat:
+Sharing Economy News via Twitter
+= we've compiled the following list of our favorite Twitter users who are posting news and information about the new sharing economy.
+Top Sharing Tweeps, http://shareable.net/blog/top-sharing-tweeps-to-learn-more-about-the-twittersphere
+=Directory=
+@ShareableDesign
+That's us folks. Shareable Magazine's Twitter stream covering the sharing trend and offering the largest collection of sharing how-to posts.
+@mbauwens
+Founder of p2pfoundation with updates on open and free, participatory, and commons developments.
+@onthecommons
+On the Commons is a citizens’ network that highlights the importance of the commons in our lives, and promotes innovative commons-based solutions.
+@rachelbotsman
+Author on the power of collaborative technologies to transform business, public services and the way we live.
+@collcons
+Collaborative Consumption is the explosion in traditional sharing, lending, renting and swapping redefined through tech and peer communities
+@camerontw
+Sustainable service systems designs, critical design thinking from the Chair of Design Thinking and Sustainability department, School of Design Strategies, Parsons
+@instigating
+Lisa Gansky, entrepreneur and author of The Mesh, a book about the sharing economy and more.
+@rushkoff
+Influential media theorist, author of Life, Inc. and Program or be Programmed, and convener of the upcoming Contact p2p festival.
+Art and Life
+@rowdykittens
+Social change through simple living.
+@creativecommons
+A nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others.
+@ninaksimon
+Designs participatory, interactive, slightly strange museum exhibits all over the place.
+@freeculture
+A diverse, non-partisan group of students and young people who are working to get their peers involved in the free culture movement.
+@GAFFTA
+Gray Area Foundation for the Arts is dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. They nurture connections between art, design, sound and technology.
+@writesinla
+Los Angeles freelance writer covering culture, literature and sustainable living.
+Business
+@trustcurrency
+Alternative economy - coops, timebanking, currencies, community self-sufficiency, and more.
+@opensourceway
+Open source as applied to everything in work and life.
+@harkopen
+Open source hardware community. News, projects and tutorials from the first dedicated open hardware hosting service.
+@Deskmag
+Twitter account for the magazine about coworking.
+@jenangel
+Media activist and publicist interested in food, activism, media, communications, and progressive business development
+@accesstrumps
+News and insights around the sharing economy
+@socialadvoc8
+Collaborative consumption and social innovation tweeter extraordinaire.
+Cities
+@TracyDavis
+Planning commissioner & civic blogger, tweeting about land use and local issues.
+@LocalManagers
+City/County Management Association: Leaders at the Core of Better Communities
+@urbandata
+Local & global urban affairs: City planning, health equity, governance 2.0, design, data & community indicator
+@BrokenCityLab
+Broken City Lab is an artist-led collective working in art and collaborative social practice, interested in the city, tactics, interventions, Windsor & Detroit.
+@MikeLydon
+Founding Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. Co-Author of The Smart Growth Manual. Life is better on two wheels.
+@UrbanSubversion
+Passionate about acitivites that broaden our usage of urban functionality
+@ehooge
+Cities and social innovation in the digital age.  Tweets a steady stream of urban goodness with a European perspective.
+@pps_placemaking
+The Project for Public Space's news stream of the placemaking movement.
+Communities and Neighborhoods
+@leoromero
+A great source of neighborhood community building tools and insights.
+@rentalic
+A fast growing peer to peer rental service.
+@NeighborGoods
+Save and earn money by sharing your stuff with your neighbors.
+@hyperlocavore
+Hyperlocavore.com is a yardsharing community.
+@ShareSomeSugar
+Social & Community Entrepreneur, Brand & Business Strategist, Design Management.
+@sharethemesh
+A global community where access to goods and services trumps ownership.
+@cohousing
+A news stream of the cohousing movement, US focus.
+Gov 2.0
+@govfresh
+Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people. Focusing on open air government.
+@digiphile
+Alex Howard, the Gov 2.0 Radar Correspondent for O'Reilly Media.
+@codeforamerica
+Recruiting top web professionals to give a year of service building web 2.0 apps for city governments.
+@ushahidi
+Africa-based non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection,visualization and interactive mapping.
+@Tech4Dev
+Using mobile technologies to support & strengthen humanitarian work in the fields of global health & disaster relief.
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Resources]]
+**
+TribeSourcing
+=Discussion=
+Suresh Fernando :
+“TribeSourcing, a term coined by Mark Frazier, is the most important feature of new platforms, one that borrows from the principles of mass collaboration which matches the platform to the group, community or movement within which it is situated. Currently crowdsourcing platforms are designed to enable a single entrepreneur to simply solicit funds from her network, but the relationship between her contacts is not a consideration. Current platforms don’t account for the fact that people are situated within communities and that the people within communities have established relationships. New platforms will therefore include mechanisms that enable projects within a particular community to be evaluated, voted upon and supported. They will also include collaboration features that enable members in the larger ‘tribe’ to provide non-financial support: helping with websites, business planning etc. This will reflect a recognition that entrepreneurs need more than simply financial capital. They need social capital and intellectual capital as well.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-social-change)
+=Characteristics=
+“This move towards TribeSourcing will include a number of specific features that support ongoing projects (as opposed to isolated campaigns):
+the ability to run multiple different campaigns in relation to a single project (finance the development of a website, write a business plan, etc.)
+the ability for contributors to make monthly recurring contributions to support a venture’s ongoing operating cash flow requirements.
+the ability to piece out specific aspects of a project within a single campaign for funding. For example, the development of a business plan or website in support of a single event campaign. “
+(http://shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-social-change)
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+**
+Crowdfunding Social Good
+= we have seen the emergence of several platforms, the focus of which is to support ventures that deliver social value — StartSomeGood, Bzzbnk and 33Needs
+=Directory=
+# http://www.startsomegood.com/
+# https://prod.buzzbnk.org/
+# http://33needs.com/
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+**add to wiki, consider for coopwiki interview collection
+Daniella Jaeger on Kickstarter
+=Interview=
+Conducted by Shareable:
+“I like to think of crowd-funding is part of a whole wave of social entrepreneurship, how do you think Kickstarter's mission differs from the average tech start-up?
+Kickstarter’s focus is on creative projects. It’s a blend of patronage and commerce, a place for musicians, filmmakers, artists, writers, designers, et al to reach out to their fans and community for support with their projects. Creators maintain full ownership and creative control of their work; Kickstarter gives them the tools and social space to build an audience around their ideas and bring them to life.
+I know working at a start-up means there are no average days, but tell me a little about what you do at Kickstarter.
+Yes every month feels different, it's wild. Our team's organized between Community and Product. Product does development and design, Community handles curation, editorial, customer support, and outreach, among other things. My role has morphed into a kind of community product manager: collaborating on new features, writing site copy, overseeing customer service, and contributing to curation and editorial. Nearly everyone on the Community team started out getting their hands dirty in the same way: reviewing project proposals and providing support. Understanding where projects come from and how users interact with the site provides a really good foundation.
+You must see a lot of interesting and thoughtful projects succeed and fail to meet their fundraising goals. What're some things users can do to help distinguish their proposal?
+There are amazing things going on all the time. I've backed 170 projects and wish I could back hundreds more right now. Projects don't need to be flashy, they just need to have personality—soul. A strong project has a clear focus, and making a personal connection is key, which is why a video is essential. The value of video cannot be overstated! And then, inspired rewards. Offer cool things at fair prices, so people will back them.
+Kickstarter has also been used of late as a fundraising platform for causes (like, for instance, The Occupy Wall Street Journal) that aren't trying to make consumer products per se. How does this fit with Kickstarter's current and future plans?
+When people traditionally think fundraising they think of charities and causes, but Kickstarter allows neither of these things. We've built something very different that's focused on people pursuing creative passions and having fun doing it, and those include things like public art, journalism, documentaries, and performance. It's not our intention to divorce art from message, nor from emotion. But we are dedicated to a site that's completely devoted to creativity.
+Sites like Kickstarter are based on a certain amount of trust -- the customer believes they will receive a product that doesn't even exist yet sometime in the future. Why are people willing to put that kind of trust in the Kickstarter community?
+Backing a project on Kickstarter is a combination of commerce and patronage. Often you're not just buying a product, you're joining someone on their creative project, getting a window into their thoughts and process. Most projects get their initial momentum from the creator's network of friends, fans, and immediate communities. That direct relationship between creator and backer makes for pretty powerful motivation to see a project through. But ultimately, it's part of every creator's job to earn a backer's trust, especially backers who don't personally know them. And a lot of creators do a wonderful job of it. They tell a compelling story, they're passionate about their work, they're transparent with their backers, and they want to share what they ultimately create.”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/qa-with-kickstarters-daniella-jaeger)
+[[Category:Interviews]]
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+[[Category:Collaborarive Economy]]
+**
+Urbanized
+=  documentary examines the issues faced by architects, city planners and policymakers as the world’s population migrates into urban centers
+=Description=
+“Among designers and those of us who are merely geekily-obsessed observers, filmmaker Gary Hustwit is reaching folk hero status for his ability to turn dry design topics into engaging cinema. The director of Helvetica and Objectified is now filming Urbanized, the third in a trilogy of design documentaries. The film, which examines the issues faced by architects, city planners and policymakers as the world’s population migrates into urban centers, received much of its funding through a Kickstarter campaign.”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-top-10-shareable-crowdfunded-projects-video)
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+[[Category:Webcasts]]
+**
+Co-opoly
+= The Toolbox for Education and Social Action has created Co-Opoly, an educational board game in which players are tasked with running a collaborative, democratic business.
+URL = http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1713701812/co-opoly-the-game-of-cooperatives?ref=video
+=Description=
+“The Game of Cooperatives is a creative and exciting educational game designed for the growing cooperative movement. Games have been proven to be unique resources that shape the way people learn, work, and interact with one another, but Co-opoly is more than just a board game. It is an innovative way for aspiring and existing cooperators, as well as other interested parties, to learn about co-ops and to practice cooperation. People who have played the game call it “fun and engaging” as well as “a great teaching tool about how to build and sustain” cooperatives.”
+(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1713701812/co-opoly-the-game-of-cooperatives?ref=video)
+[[Category:Gaming]]
+[[Category:Cooperatives]]
+**
+==[[Crowdfunding and the Law]]==
+Janelle Orsi, SELC:
+“Offering any kind of investment opportunity is an activity that is highly regulated by both state and federal law known as securities law. These laws were passed early in the last century to protect investors from slick pitch artists who traveled across the country selling worthless investments. Kansas adopted the first securities law in 1911 to “keep ‘Kansas money in Kansas’ and help local farmers and small businesses rather than enriching ‘New York Stock Exchange speculators and gamblers.’”
+Ironically, these laws now make it almost impossible to invest in small businesses in our communities and pretty much compel us to invest in the New York Stock Exchange. In the name of protecting investors, securities laws now make it very difficult to raise money with crowdfunding.
+The basics of these laws is that before any investment opportunity can be offered, the person making the offering must file extensive disclosure documents with the federal government, as well as any state in which the offering will be made. There are some exemptions to this general rule, but even the exemptions take securities law expertise to comply with. The result is that anyone offering an investment opportunity may have to spend thousands in legal fees and filing fees before even being able to mention it to any potential funders.
+Generally, if you bring on a large, wealthy investor, the legal compliance required is minimal because the law assumes that these people and companies need much less protection (they are defined as “accredited” investors under the securities law). The moment you want to offer an investment opportunity to the public and to non-wealthy investors, the legal requirements become far more onerous.
+Failure to comply with these requirements can, at a minimum, result in having to return all your investors’ money. At worst, there could be civil and even criminal penalties.”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-and-the-law)
+==Recommendations for U.S.==
+Janelle Orsi:
+“1. Falling outside the securities laws
+The easiest and lowest cost strategy is to raise money using a method that is unlikely to fall within the legal definition of a security.
+Unfortunately, this definition is quite broad, especially under the laws of many states. For example, even if you offer an investment opportunity in which your investors do not expect any financial return and do not receive any ownership share of your business, this still may be considered a security if your investors are expecting something in return and there is some risk that they will not get what they are expecting. Under this definition, if you were starting up a café and you sold gift certificates for the café as a way to raise your start up capital, this could be seen as a security in certain states. Similarly, if you borrowed money to start a new business and did not promise any financial return (in the form of interest) but did promise to return your lenders’ principal, this could also be considered a security.
+So how can you raise money in a way that almost certainly will not be considered a security? Ask for donations! If it is completely clear that there are absolutely no strings attached to a contribution of funds, it is highly unlikely that any state would consider the securities laws to be applicable. Web sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter provide a platform for doing this and have helped many people reach their funding goals. On these platforms, people sometimes offer “perks” in exchange for contributions. To our knowledge, none of these offerings has been subjected to scrutiny by securities regulators to date, but it is possible that even the offering of a perk in exchange for a donation could convert these offerings into securities in the eyes of some state governments. And of course when you are raising money on the internet, you can be scrutinized by the regulators of all 50 states!
+The moment you offer anything in return to your donors and there is some risk that they will not receive it, there is a chance that your state will consider what you are offering to be a security. (This is not the case under federal law where if the investor has no expectation of a financial return the securities laws do not apply.)
+What if you’re not sure whether what you want to offer your funders will be considered a security under your state’s laws? You can write a letter to the department within your state government that is responsible for securities regulation describing what you plan to offer and request a “no action letter.” This is a letter stating that the securities regulators will not take enforcement action against you based on your description of what you plan to offer. If you receive a no action letter (which usually does not require the payment of a fee), you are good to go.
+. Legally compliant platforms
+There are two crowdfunding web sites that have spent tens of millions of dollars in legal fees so that they can offer crowdfunding opportunities that are compliant with state and federal securities laws. These are Prosper and Lending Club. You can use these web sites to raise money from the public in the form of debt (i.e. loans that must be repaid as opposed to other kinds of investments where repayment is usually contingent on the company’s success).
+. Co-ops
+Many state securities laws contain exemptions for cooperatives. For example, a cooperative in California that sells memberships to the public for no more than $300 each is exempt from the California rules regarding securities offerings. Co-ops in Colorado are exempt regardless of the membership contribution. If you choose to form a co-op, it’s worth exploring whether your state might have an exemption from the securities offering requirements that will make crowdfunding possible for you. Note however that this will only work if you are exempt from federal securities registration requirements because you do most of your business within the state where you are located, you are formed under the laws of that state, and you only offer securities to the residents of that state (this is know as the federal intrastate exemption). Also, if you are a farmers co-op that has received tax-advantaged status from the IRS under Section 521, lucky you. You are exempt from both federal and state securities registration requirements. This is what allows the co-op Organic Valley to raise money from the public without having to spend millions of dollars in compliance costs.
+. Private offerings
+A private offering is a legal term which means that you do not advertise your investment opportunity to the public. These kinds of securities offerings are less highly regulated than ones advertised to the public because of the belief that public advertising creates a greater risk of fraud. Being unable to advertise to the public seems inconsistent with the idea of crowdfunding, but not necessarily! Gather Restaurant in Berkeley successfully used a private offering to raise funds from approximately 100 investors. If you have relationships with a lot of people who might be willing to invest in your idea, this strategy can work. However, these kinds of offerings generally do require working with a lawyer, although the costs are much lower than for a public offering.
+. Direct public offerings
+A direct public offering involves making the required filings with relevant regulators that allow you to offer your investment to the public. This can sound overwhelming, but many states have made an effort to make this process accessible to small businesses. Many small businesses have successfully completed the process with minimal or no legal support. Because you are required to file offering documents and application forms with the state, the state regulators will make sure that you complete these documents correctly before you begin your offering. Once you have a sign-off from the state, you can be fairly confident that you’re legally in the clear (this assumes of course that you have been honest in the documents you submitted!).”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/crowdfunding-and-the-law)
+[[Category:P2P Law]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+[[Category:P2P Accounting]]
+**
+Searching For The Shareable Economy
+Video via http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bwL5PDbyBhU
+=Description=
+“This video is about Drew's crowdfunding campaign for his voyage to the West Coast to interview pioneers in the Shareable economy and document the findings into a web series for all to see.”
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Webcasts]]
+** Enabling City
+Book: Chiara Camponeschi. The Enabling City.
+URL = http://enablingcity.com/
+=Description=
+Beth Buczynski:
+“principles of crowdfunding  can be applied to human capital as well as traditional funding to catalyze the progressive policies and infrastructure that make cities more inclusive and sustainable.
+…
+How do you corral raw energy into practical actions? How does one set the framework for a collaborative process through which citizens can be directly involved in shaping their environment?
+Published under a Creative Commons license, The Enabling City is a toolkit that empowers cities governments and community leaders to do just that.
+The result of a graduate project, Camponeschi hopes the book will take on a life of its own as a platform for social innovation, urban sustainability, and participatory governance. Using its plethora of examples as a guide, community members can learn how to restake their claim in the larger processes that impact their daily lives.
+She writes:
+- Today, I am fascinated by the world of creative communities because, to my eyes, it represents an antidote to the widespread erosion of local practices and cultures, and is also an inventive and timely way of tackling increasingly interconnected social issues. What is even more remarkable is the democratic and grassroots level in which communal change is achieved — through dialogue, openness, collaboration, and the rediscovery of the everyday.
+Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, which focus on funding individual projects that can be caused-based or not, The Enabling City advocates "place-based creative problem-solving" to transform cities into holistic, living spaces where people make their voices heard and use everyday experiences to affect change.
+The toolkit helps readers to imagine and redefine the characteristincs of the city of the future, including a bottom-up approach to leadership, resource sharing, and the use of commons-based production.
+But for Camponeschi, coming up with a finished "product" is far less important than the community that crowdfunding helps to form around a common issue or cause.
+"In the civic sector, crowdfunding often emerges around a self-selected community," said Camponeschi. "Reputation is important in both a physical and virtual sense. Sometimes, even projects that aren’t completed can contribute to the common knowledge on a subject."
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-enabling-city-crowdfunding-urban-livability)
+=Discussion=
+Chiara Camponeschi:
+“We know that markets are no longer the only sources of innovation, and that citizens are capable of more than just voting during election time.We have entered an era where interactive technologies and a renewed idea of citizenship are enabling us to experiment with alternative notions of sustainability and to share knowledge in increasingly dynamic ways. We now see artists working alongside policy makers, policy makers collaborating with citizens, and citizens helping cities diagnose their problems more accurately.
+What emerges, then, is a community where the local and global are balanced and mediated by the city at large, and where local resources and know-how are given wider legitimacy as meaningful problem-solving tools in the quest for urban and cultural sustainability. Here, innovation is intended as a catalyst for social change — a collaborative process through which citizens can be directly involved in shaping the way a project, policy, or service is created and delivered. A shift from control to enablement turns cities into platforms for community empowerment — holistic, living spaces where people make their voices heard and draw from their everyday experiences to affect change.
+So be surprised by how walks have the power to make neighbourhoods more vibrant, and how art can be used to convert dull city intersections into safe community spaces. Learn how creative interventions can unleash spaces for reflection and participation, and witness how online resources can lead to offline collaboration and resource-sharing. See how the values of Web 2.0 translate into the birth of the open government and open data movement, and what a holistic approach to financing can bring to local communities and cities alike.
+This is what place-based creative problem solving looks like in action. This is the power of the everyday. “
+(http://enablingcity.com/about)
+=More Information=
+See also: [[Enabling Suburbs]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+[[Category:Policy]]
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Books]]
+** Enabling Suburbs
+=  encouraging a more thoughtful vision of suburban life and culture
+URL = http://enablingsuburbs.wordpress.com/
+=Description=
+“Enabling Suburbs is a project developed by Linda Carroli, John Armstrong, Jason Haigh and Chiara Camponeschi. As a group of ‘creatives’ and initiators from various interdisciplinary arts and design backgrounds, we hope to share and talk about some of our concerns for the future of our suburbs and communities. This will require thinking about change in a place-based way focused on Aspley, a middle/outer suburb of Brisbane. Our hope is a suburban community that is willing and able to talk about the future and our contribution is a collected series of resources and tools.
+Why Aspley? It’s where we live and operate our respective creative enterprises – we deal with this environment every day and felt that our brand of creative and tactical futuring was warranted in addressing questions of cultural and suburban sustainability. Importantly, the project was intended to have an outward and inclusive approach that solicited wider community participation. Chiara Camponeschi, who has come to prominence through her work The Enabling City, plays a role as a catalyst and in developing our methodology for creative change and for imagining an ‘enabling suburb’.
+Importantly, we are informed by The Enabling City as a body of work that intersects with or draws out elements of socially engaged artistic and design practice – intervention, collaboration, social sculpture, relational aesthetics, participatory design, design fictions, redirected practice, situationist practice, site specificity, psychogeography and the like. This work refers to a broad range of place-based creative problem solving strategies which can easily come into dialogue with integrated artistic and design strategies to create a movement of interdisciplinary conversation. We wante to use our creative practices as platforms for multidimensional change.
+The project nods to Linda Carroli’s work Changescaping - a writing and research project emerging from her Placing project – which aims to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments with a particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers, or changescapers. In some instances, practice itself requires changing. It also draws on involvement in various design futures undertakings, such as masterclasses addressing redirective practice, design fictions and futuring. Enabling Suburbs is speculative in a way that endeavours to engage audiences in thinking, doing and being towards alternative possible futures. If we can’t or don’t imagine them or challenge ourselves to think beyond what is in the here and now, then we can’t manifest those alternatives. It’s about transition, adaptation, resilience and renewal.
+Through this blog, we are encouraging a more thoughtful vision of suburban life and culture, we hope to seed ideas (and maybe even memes) and present tools for change, opportunity and difference in a hopeful, meaningful and life affirming way.
+The Enabling Suburbs project will be a platform for:
+. Learning and research
+. Creating alternatives
+. Cultivating resources and tools
+. Communicating and sharing”      (http://enablingsuburbs.wordpress.com/about/_
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+**
+Changescaping
+=Description=
+'Changescaping, a project by Linda Carroli, engages one of the the Placing Project’s overall objectives to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments and futures with a particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers and in creating alternative futures. In part, that change is about how practice itself is understood. The publication seeks to profile and foreground work happening in the Australian context, as it can seem that Australians aren’t prominently featured in the discussions about DIY urbanism, urban interventions and the like. Changescaping also aims to think beyond categories like ‘DIY urbanism’ and ‘urban intervention’ as a way of potentiating and tracing new trajectories for planning, design and art in the urban environment, as well as cutting across typologies and disciplines.”
+(http://enablingsuburbs.wordpress.com/changescaping/)
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+[[Category:Australia]]
+**
+Government 2.0 Initiatives
+see: http://shareable.net/blog/the-worlds-top-10-gov-20-initiatives
+make directory based on that article
+**
+ Ariel Waldman on Spacehack
+Interview via http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman
+=Context=
+“Founded by former NASA contractor Ariel Waldman and developer Ben Ward, Spacehack is an online directory of open source and “participatory exploration” projects that enable people without a dedicated science background make a real contribution to research projects. Waldman navigates the maze of NASA websites and private enterprise projects to curate an accessible entry point to the most compelling projects.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)
+Interview is conducted by Paul M. Davis .
+=Interview=
+“How did Spacehack come about?
+When I left NASA, I created Spacehack because I had heard about all of the different ways that people could actively contribute to space exploration despite not having a formal science background. I wanted to enable people to have the same experience that I did and have the awakening that you could contribute to space exploration even if you didn’t specifically study for it in school. I wanted to create a really easy directory of what people could participate in.
+Another reason was that a lot of these projects were on really outdated NASA government websites or they weren’t really written that well, so I wanted to make projects that were very clear and concise, so people could understand how they could contribute. I wanted to make it a lot more accessible for people who don’t already work in the space exploration industry.
+What sort of background do you need to get involved in Spacehack projects?
+The projects on Spacehack range from ones that anyone without any background can get involved in — projects like GalaxyZoo are a perfect example of that — and there are others like the Google Lunar X prize and robotics projects in which an engineering background helps.
+GalaxyZoo did a survey of their users and they asked what was the most related scientific activity these people did outside of GalaxyZoo. 80-85% of the people answered that they just watched shows on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel. I find that very powerful, because my story was that I was watching a documentary on NASA and I decided to email them on a whim. That’s what got me the job.
+With NASA’s budget cuts and the reduced scope of its missions, do you see projects like Spacehack and open science being able to complement NASA’s research and fill in some of the gaps?
+It’s an interesting time, because I’m really excited about what’s happening and I see it as more of a beginning of an era than the end of one. It’s due time that NASA no longer has a monopoly on space exploration. Just because you’re not doing something involved with NASA doesn’t mean that you’re not also equally contributing to space exploration. That’s a very positive thing for the open science movement.
+On the other hand, it is a little bit scary that NASA is more vulnerable for budget cuts because mainstream media spins it as “well, NASA is no longer used as a diplomacy tool, they’re just doing scientific research, and who wants to fund that?” That’s obviously a very negative effect — the overall promotion of the idea that scientific research deserves less funding. But that’s an argument that’s pretty old — it’s not anything new.
+It’s going to be a little bit tumultuous right now as you have an exodus of a lot of people who are working in space exploration, and they don’t have anywhere to go yet. But I think if you give it a few years, it’s going to get better, because you’re going to have a lot of jobs opening at places like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. For the people who want to work in the space industry, I think there are going to be more opportunities for them over time.
+For people who don’t work in space exploration but want to actively get involved, I think we are seeing the very beginning stages of a citizen science renaissance as people realize that they can actively contribute. Citizen science is something where you can direct your own interest and research. You’re not just doing work on behalf of another scientist who’s going to end up taking credit for it.
+Are there any examples that come to mind of this citizen science data feeding back into the research and NASA’s own projects?
+Sure. Planet Hunters is using Kepler data to prove that humans can find some planets that the current algorithms won’t be able to. As people are discovering planets through the Planet Hunters data set, then the people who are running the project take that data back to the Kepler scientists and do a cross-check of what has already been discovered by the algorithms. In that case, you have a humans vs. machines competition — it’s not trying to replace algorithms, but it’s trying to augment our scientific discovery with humans who are able to go through all that data.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)
+=More Information=
+[[Spacehack]]
+[[Science Hack Days]]
+[[Category:Science]]
+[[Category:Interviews]]
+** Spacehack
+= an online directory of open source and “participatory exploration” projects that enable people without a dedicated science background make a real contribution to research projects.
+=Description=
+“Waldman navigates the maze of NASA websites and private enterprise projects to curate an accessible entry point to the most compelling projects.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)
+=More Information=
+Interview: [[ Ariel Waldman on Spacehack]]
+[[Science Hack Days]]
+[[Category:Science]]
+[[Category:Interviews]]
+** Science Hack Days
+=Description=
+Ariel Waldman:
+'Science Hack Day is an event that started in London in June, 2010. I brought it to San Francisco in November of last year. It’s essentially a 48-hour all-night event where people from all different backgrounds — developers, designers, scientists, and just anyone who’s enthusiastic about hacking on science — come together in the same physical space to see what they can build in one weekend. It runs the gamut — if someone wants to make a lamp that lights up every time an asteroid flies by, that’s just as awesome as someone trying to create an augmented diagnostic tool for an accelerator laboratory.
+At the San Francisco event, we had about 100 people, and the breakdown was 33% developers, 20% scientists, 20% designers and the rest were a mixed bag — anything from a roboticist to a marketer to a community manager. We had a 33% female turnout, which was pretty decent given that hack days are typically mostly white male developers in their 20’s and 30’s. Science Hack Day is trying to make an effort to show that different types of people can hack. You don’t necessarily have to be a developer in order to create something awesome. It’s more about the collaboration of all these people from different backgrounds.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/opening-the-final-frontier-an-interview-with-spacehacks-ariel-waldman)
+[[Category:Science]]
+[[Category:Conferences]]
+** update Carsharing
+==[[Ecological Effects of Carsharing]]==
+Beth Buczynski:
+“a recent study by the University of California at Berkeley found that saving money isn't the only compelling reason to support car sharing initiatives.
+An online survey of over 9,500 individuals living in Canada and the United States revealed that car sharing programs have the power to significantly reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions in North America.
+The survey, which polled members of major car sharing organizations, found that for most car sharing members, individual greenhouse gas emissions increased because the program provided access to a personal vehicle for the first time. However, these small individual increases were outweighed by the significant number of people able to drastically reduce their emissions through car sharing.
+"The number of carless households increasing their emissions is comparatively large, constituting more than half of the respondents," noted the researches. "However, the degree to which these households are increasing emissions as a result of carsharing is small on an individual basis. The overall emission reduction is driven by the remaining respondents reducing their emissions by larger amounts that compensate for increases of the majority."
+Among multivehicle households shedding cars, 88% of respondents reduced emissions. Similarly, among single-vehicle households shedding cars, 93% exhibited an emission reduction.
+So where's this impact coming from?
+In general, the researchers found that participating in a car sharing program helps members to embrace a low-mileage lifestyle, even though carless households converge to this lifestyle by increasing emissions, and car-holding households converge by going car free and decreasing emissions.”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/car-sharing-antidote-to-ghg-emissions-in-north-america)
+Full study via http://76.12.4.249/artman2/uploads/1/Greenhouse_Gas_Emission_Impacts_of_Carsharing_in_North_America_1.pdf
+**
+Micro-Participation in Government
+= better low-level or “drive-by” participation opportunities whereby citizens can make (many) small yet valuable contributions without having to be involved over the full length of a participation project. [http://intellitics.com/]
+=Description=
+Chris Haller:
+“Micro-participation is a term that’s been discussed within open government circles as a way to make citizen engagement more convenient, effective, and scalable. The idea is to fit civic activity and involvement into the everyday lives of the public, resulting in more small ways to collaborate and communicate.
+How to apply micro-participation
+This concept can be applied on a broad scale (like involving the public in discussions about their general needs and opinions) or on a more targeted scale (like getting place-based feedback on particular locales or collaborating with certain citizens on issues that directly affect them). In any case, the attraction of micro-participation methods lies in the avoidance of:
+long-term involvement
+interacting with strangers
+wading through lots of materials
+attending meetings
+Instead, people can let their voices be heard through dozens of small interactions, perfect for:
+asking questions
+prioritizing or ranking ideas and items
+brainstorming (crowd-sourcing innovation)
+raising concerns “
+(http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)
+=Discussion=
+Chris Haller:
+==Why is traditional participation so difficult==
+Why do planners and policy makers find themselves fielding the vociferous complaints and demands of a few die-hards instead of enjoying more positive interaction with the general public? Why is it so hard to get people involved? Not because people are lazy or indifferent, but because traditional participation methods are simply not convenient for the modern citizen. The way organizations (particularly governments) usually function does not fit into most citizens’ busy daily schedules.
+Online innovation evangelist Dave Briggs summed up the need for micro-participation in a witty post that emphasized: Participation needs to be made easier. Fit civic activity into people’s lives as they are lived right now. For instance, folks may not have time to attend a planning meeting or mail back a questionnaire about their neighborhood, but they are plugged into their computers and mobile phones all day. Give them a chance to interact through technology, and be amazed at how many people take a few minutes to comment in a forum or answer a three-question survey. They can do this while waiting for the bus or during lunch break. Even better, use interactive maps or QR codes to enable location-specific feedback. The game-changer is this: micro-participation fits into their schedule, and that’s why it works.
+In a way, it’s a shame that community participation should fall so low on our society’s priority list. Planners should not have to cater to a culture that defines people as workers and consumers more than as citizens. But the micro-participation approach can be a starting point — meeting people where they are today, and hopefully leading them into a greater interest in their communities.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)
+=More Information=
+micro-participation for urban planning, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1760522
+[[Category:Policy]]
+[[Category:Politics]]
+**
+Micro-Participation in Urbanism
+=Discussion=
+Chris Haller:
+“Micro-participation is a term that’s been discussed within open government circles as a way to make citizen engagement more convenient, effective, and scalable. The idea is to fit civic activity and involvement into the everyday lives of the public, resulting in more small ways to collaborate and communicate. As this study demonstrates, it makes sense to consider micro-participation within the context of urban planning and development as well. This method may require a little more work for planners and policy-makers to implement at first, but it takes less work for citizens to get involved, which results in more feedback and participation for your projects.
+Tim Bonnemann gave a great working definition of this concept in a comment on the PEP-NET blog:
+- [provide] better low-level or “drive-by” participation opportunities whereby citizens can make (many) small yet valuable contributions without having to be involved over the full length of a participation project.
+Imagine the practical applications of this approach within the urban planning space. The “drive-by” bit can be applied quite literally, by using signage that encourages citizens to give feedback on a project using their smartphones — right here, right now (but not while driving, of course). Technology can be a powerful tool for micro-participation efforts, but the main focus must be on ensuring convenience of the citizens.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/micro-participation-connects-citizens-to-their-governments)
+[[Category:Urbanism]]
+[[Category:Participation]]
+**
+Open eBook Reader
+See: [[Microtouch]]
+[[Category:Standards]]
+[[Category:Media]]
+[[Category:P2P Infrastructure]]
+** Microtouch (ALSO UPDFATE PRODUCT HACKING)
+= an [[Open eBook Reader]]
+URL = http://sourceforge.net/projects/microtouch/
+=Description=
+Paul M. Davis :
+'it's encouraging to see that enterprising hardware hackers are building DIY, open source mobile devices that could potentially replace those tightly-controlled eReaders and mobile media and Internet devices that we clutch so tightly.
+Designed by the elusive maker Rossum, the Microtouch is a homebrewed mobile media device. Using an Atmega32u4 microcontroller and a touch-sensitive LCD screen, the Microtouch is on its way to being a libre iPod Touch alternative. There's a number of apps for the device, including an image browser, a paint app, and emulations of games including Pac Man and the classic text adventure Zork.
+Rossum turned the Microtouch into an open eBook reader. The eReader app displays books in the epub format, reformatting the eBooks to be readable on the Microtouch's small 320x240 touchscreen. Adding to the device's coolness for those of us who grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (or, in my case, the Sega Master System,) the microtouch eBook reader runs on a humble 8-bit processor similar to those that rendered those gaming systems of yesteryear.
+While it's not going to unseat the dominant mobile devices, the Microtouch is a cool project for makers and hackers, and on its way to being a credible alternative for those who find Apple, Google and Amazon's restrictions onerous. ”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/a-diy-open-source-ebook-reader-and-mobile-device)
+=More Information=
+The code and directions to build your own Microtouch can be found on the project page on Sourceforge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/microtouch/
+you can purchase one pre-assembled, http://www.adafruit.com/products/330
+[[Category:Standards]]
+[[Category:Media]]
+** Loudsauce
+= crowdfunding for ethical advertising and social change
+URL = http://loudsauce.com/
+=Description=
+Beth Buczynski:
+“Unlike Kickstarter, which focuses on funding individual creative projects, and IndieGoGo, which caters to "anyone with an idea," Loudsauce was designed specifically to transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation.
+"Loudsauce came from experience in the social sector and frustrations because much of that work is invisible," said Loudsauce co-founder Colin Mutchler during a panel discussion at SxSW Eco last week.
+Mutchler says Loudsauce took its cues from the mainstream advertising industry, which has made a science out of changing behavior and getting people to support one brand over another.
+In this way, Loudsauce can almost be considered a second-stage crowdfunding service: it gets people to help not just in the early stages of a socially responsible project, but then to help amplify these projects and get them out into the mainstream consciousness.”
+=Examples=
+'Loudsauce successes include running a commercial about the Story of Stuff during an episode of Hoarders (potentially reaching 2 million people and resulting in 40,000 visitors to the Story of Stuff website) and helping Uniting NC, a nonprofit that works to build understanding and respect for immigrants in North Carolina, place two billboards that celebrate community diversity.
+Right now there's a Loudsauce campaign to place a commercial about the Occupy Wall Street movement on cable television during some of the most popular shows. It's collected almost half of its $5,000 goal in just 24 hours!”
+(http://www.shareable.net/blog/loudsauce-crowdfunds-advertising-that-matters)
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Media]]
+[[Category:Peerfunding]]
+** Gov 2.0
+Adriel Hampton:
+““Gov 2.0” is the idea that we can do government better through crowdsourcing, through open data standards and through the connectivity of social media. Tech guru Tim O’Reilly calls it “government as a platform". As Facebook and Twitter have allowed thousands of other companies to flourish by building upon their core services, government agencies can provide new services simply by opening important data they collect and curate.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20)
+=Discussion=
+==How the Movement Created a Persistent Presence==
+Adriel Hampton:
+Persistence. In 2009, social media junkies wanted everything now. Government, where contracting disputes regularly drag on for years, was radically foreign to techies used to full corporate life cycles less protracted. GovLoop, a community for government innovators, was just getting started with several hundred members. Three years later, the organizers, advocates and entrepreneurs who persisted have created measurable change, passing open data laws in municipalities around the world and birthing thousands of applications from governments’ big data. These include the peer-to-peer climate protection challenges created during British Columbia’s “Apps 4 Climate Action,” and the new open innovation platform at Challenge.gov, where individual and institutional entrepreneurs use federal data to create new solutions for public health and more. GovLoop just hit 50,000 members. To succeed in rolling back societal inequality, crony capitalism and the invasive police state, Occupy must persist. That means organizing, it means pacing and it means evolution. It will take years.
+Platform. O’Reilly’s mantra for government and its genesis in the software world works for Occupy. Protest memes and tactics are infinitely extendable in a networked world. If a new slogan or method of action falls flat, it is quickly abandoned; if it is worthwhile, it spreads easily and quickly through email and social networks and can be adapted upon for new uses. +
+Cloud. Gov 2.0’s embrace of software-as-a-service and on-demand computing has meant more, better, and faster civic technology. Whether it’s Socrata’s open data applications, Utah’s data center consolidation (which reduced 35 data center sites into two for an annual $4 million savings) or SeeClickFix’s mobile non-emergency-service reporting mobile app, scalable architecture and outsourced management has meant more flexibility and increased focus on information and services. The cloud paradigm means that computing resources can easily scale up and down to meet demand, and server maintenance and upgrades are handled by a dedicated team at a remote data center while technologists focus on applications instead of the infrastructure.
+Media. Gov 2.0 and its elevation of social media as an accepted channel for official communications have given Occupy and its tech-savvy supporters a valuable weapon. Three years ago, we couldn’t find 200 government officials on Twitter. Today, thanks in large part to hundreds of communicators within government and scores of outside companies, social media use is ubiquitous among officials and widely followed by the mainstream media. This phenomenon helped facilitate instances like Andy Carvin’s coverages the Arab Spring via Twitter and late-night newsdesks adopting livestreamed social media eyewitnesses as sources. Occupy didn’t need to be taught to use livesteaming and Twitter hashtags, they were already there.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/occupy-the-cloud-what-occupy-wall-street-can-take-from-gov-20)
+**
+Reputation Capital
+Citation:
+“"Reputation capital is becoming so important that it will act as a secondary currency, one that claims "you can trust me". It is shaping up as the cornerstone of the 21st-century economy […] It's the ancient power of word-of-mouth meeting the modern forces of the networked world."
+Rachel Botsman [http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/blog-and-writings/Reputation%20Economy%20BOSS.pdf]
+**
+Trust
+==Levels of Trust==
+Albert Cañigueral:
+===First level of trust: closed networks===
+Not everybody is ready to share with complete strangers. A number of projects address this issue by allowing users to create closed networks where matching their needs and building trust are easier to manage. For example:
+For sharing a ride (Amovens in Spain, Zimride in US, etc.) allow companies, universities, and even events to create local closed groups.
+NeighborGoods allow individuals to start a closed sharing group for as little as $6 a month.
+===Second level of trust: The social networks component===
+A lot of people are already building digital profiles on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. An additional reputation mechanism implemented by various projects is to connect users’ profiles with their profiles on social networks, so you can know more about who it is exactly you’re about to rent your house to.
+MovoMovo (P2P car rental in Spain) has introduced their own "Social Trust Rank", an algorithm of initial social reputation. It works based on your Facebook account and you can add your Twitter or blog too. For example, newly created or very low activity accounts will be penalized with a low “Social Trust Rank.”
+===Feedback systems and peer-police===
+“eBay has proved how the trust we typically form face-to-face can be built and assigned online by creating the grandfather of reputation systems, the Feedback Forum. After any transaction, buyers and sellers can rate each other using a simple points system (1,0,-1). Once users reach a certain number of points, they receive a star attached to their screen name, indicating their trustworthiness. The "silver shooting star" indicates the highest rating.
+With around 98 to 99 percent of trades receiving positive rating the eBay approach seems to work and has been copied and adapted to a lot of other projects. One of the most common complaints with eBay is the use of nicknames instead of real names, and this is where the use of social network profiles can be a handy extra in the reputation system.
+CouchSurfing, with more than 3 million users from all over the world, mainly works with a reference system. People can vouch for each other (under certain strict conditions) and even become verified (after you make a financial contribution to support CouchSurfing). In addition, the more complete the profile, the more likely it is the user will be able to get a couch. For those who offer a couch there is no obligation to accept couching requests, but it is expected that the user will answer (yes/no/maybe) the received requests. Your profile shows the percentage of requests you have answered.”
+Similar approaches and measures has been adopted by many other projects as, for example: Airbnb, TaskRabbits or Communitae (P2P lending site in Spain).
+Being able to create a sense of community among the users of the system also provides
+an extra degree of trust in the system and among peers. People who rent a car from Hertz neither have any sense of community, nor any expectations on other users’ behavior. On the other hand, people using ZipCar call themselves Zipsters and that alone makes an important psychological difference when using the car rental service. “
+(http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)
+** Reputation
+==Typical characteristics of reputation system==
+Albert Cañigueral:
+“One of keys to success for collaborative consumption and sharing initiatives is that the hassle factor of engaging in such activities has been reduced to a minimum through the use of technology. Therefore, the reputation system needs to be complete, but simple enough for regular use.
+Highlight five of the Rachel Botsman list of issues to consider when designing a peer-to-peer reputation system:
+Competition: We love being at the top of the heap. Publish your user rankings to create healthy competition among peers.
+Quality: Celebrate and reward users who take the time to contribute quality feedback; they should become the benchmark for others.
+Sticky ratings: Pick a primary scoring system (stars, ticks, tiers, thumbs, badges, numerical ratings) and give the ratings sticky names, such as “Power Seller”.
+People like me: We like to know, and tend to value, what our friends and people
+like us think of other people. Integrate “inner-circle” vouching mechanisms (for example, went to the same school, work in the same office) into your reputation system.
+Peer-police: An open reputation system must be peer-policed but if things do go wrong, your organization needs to be on hand quickly to offer support, resolve disputes and weed out the vandals and abusers.
+"Reputation is a summary of one's past actions within ... a specific community, presented in a manner that can help other community members to make decisions... whether and how to relate to the individual" – Chrysanthos Dellarocas
+One can not forget that business practices, trust and reputation do not work the same way for different people from different cultures. Qifang, the Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform, which caters to students, has lowered default rates by cleverly leveraging cultural norms by requesting borrowers to provide family details, so they'll feel pressure not to shame the family name.”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)
+** Reputation Banks
+Albert Cañigueral:
+“What's missing in collaborative consumption today? Roo Rogers answer was clear:
+"We still need great, centralized databases of reputation. If we’re good Zipsters, and good eBay tradesman, our rep should follow us. People should be able to see our record, tied to a fixed identity, and do business with us more confidently."
+Startups like TrustCloud would like to become the portable reputation system for the web. The company is building an algorithm to collect (if you choose to opt in) your online "data exhaust" -- the trail you leave as you engage with others on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, commentary-filled sites like TripAdvisor, and beyond -- and calculate your reliability, consistency, and responsiveness. The result would be a contextual badge you'd carry to any website, a trust rating similar to the credit rating you have in the offline world.
+Facebook also has the potential to become the arbiter of online trust. "The incentive to be a good player in that ecosystem goes up dramatically when it's associated with my real identity," says Carl Sjogreen, manager of Facebook's platform product team., "because if someone leaves a bad review of me on AirBnB, that will carry with me to the rest of the web.”
+These are new territories and there are still a lot of unanswered questions: How to balance different sources of activity? Does all “sharing history” count the same? Should your offline citizen behavior be part of it? Should governments be involved at all?”
+(http://shareable.net/blog/can-i-trust-you-really-the-reputation-currency-0)
+**
+Trust Cloud
+See: [[TrustCloud]]
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Relational]]
+**
+TrustCloud
+= TrustCloud’s mission is to solve the peer-to-peer trust challenge and empower collaborative consumption.
+URL = http://trustcloud.com/
+=Description=
+“here’s what we figured: each member in the sharing community has a certain domain expertise, like sharing couches, cars, boats, tools, skill or whatnot. Our domain expertise is a networked trust solution, which we can tweak to serve the needs of specific communities. What the hell, let’s share. And get the Sharing Economy really rolling.
+Improve Reputation systems on peer-to-peer services
+New users to peer-to-peer sites have no reputation at all
+It takes a long time for users to build reputation because >90% users don’t write reviews
+Lacks passive social reputation metrics which tech-savvy target users believe in
+Ultimately, lower confidence in users reduces P2P website sales “
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Relational]]
+**
+Solar Grid Parity
+=Description=
+'Solar grid parity is considered the tipping point for solar power, when installing solar power will cost less than buying electricity from the grid. It’s also a tipping point for the electricity system, when millions of Americans can choose energy production and self-reliance over dependence on their electric utility.”
+(http://grist.org/solar-power/2012-01-12-solar-grid-parity-101/)
+=More Information=
+Details via http://grist.org/solar-power/2012-01-12-solar-grid-parity-101/
+[[Category:Energy]]
+**
+New Rules Project
+URL  = http://www.newrules.org/
+=Description=
+'The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics. The rules call for:
+Decisions made by those impacted
+Communities accepting responsibility for the welfare of their members and the next generation
+Households and communities possessing or owning sufficient productive capacity to generate real wealth
+NewRules.org discusses the importance of rules and catalogs the best.  We make the rules and the rules make us.”
+(http://www.newrules.org/)
+[[Category:Ecology]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+[[Category:Governance]]
+update video entry with http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/13/rachel-botsman-wired-11
+**
+update Connectivism with http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/902/1664
+**
+check tapscott video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rgk7k9qsZI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
+**
+put as article on energy section, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/02/ideas-bank/energy-sharing
+**
+update media section with article:
+http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/12/institutions-confidence-and-the-news-crisis/
+**
+Future of News Movement
+In addition to Clay Shirky:
+the “Future of News” movement. That essay, Confidence Game, focusses principally on Jay Rosen and me, both of NYU’s Carter Institute, and Jeff Jarvis of CUNY, though noting some similarity of vision with Emily Bell of Columbia, Dan Gillmor of Arizona, and John Paton, publisher of the Journal-Register Company. (Unmentioned fellow travelers include, mutatis mutandis, Steve Yelvington, Chris Anderson, Amanda Michel, Steve Buttry, Jonathan Stray, and Alan Mutter.)
+(http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/12/institutions-confidence-and-the-news-crisis/)
+[[Category:Media]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+** Creating Shared Value
+Article: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer.  Creating Shared Value.  Harvard Business Review, 2011
+URL = http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value
+=Description=
+They define it as “creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.” [http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/shared-value-partnerships-makings-collaborative-economy/]
+** Shared Value
+=  creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges  [http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/shared-value-partnerships-makings-collaborative-economy/]
+=Discussion=
+==Panel discussion at 2011 Net Impact Conference==
+Ali Hart:
+“At the 2011 Net Impact Conference, shared value was the focus of a session topic, proving that this idea is bubbling up in business.
+Participating on the panel was Enterprise Holdings, Inc., which owns and operates Alamo, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and National Car brands. Lee Broughton, Head of Corporate Sustainability for Enterprise Holdings, Inc., relayed that Enterprise is the largest owner of passenger vehicles in the world, with a fleet of 1.6 million in the US alone. As recently reported here, Enterprise released its first sustainability report and has taken on the challenge of improving urban mobility. Not only is the company investing in alternative fuel research, but also it’s investing in EVs.
+Enterprise Rent-A-Car invested in and committed to 500 Nissan LEAFs and instead of scattering them throughout the country, the organization partnered with 30 of its locations in major markets, clustering the vehicles in an effort to socialize them. The company views this as a win-win-win: more people will have the opportunity to drive Nissan LEAFs or see them driving around which will potentially inspire them to purchase one; Enterprise Rent-A-Car will bolster its sustainability cred; and Nissan will save money on advertising. This partnership creates value for all parties involved – Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Nissan and society, since EVs are more environmentally friendly than gas-guzzlers.
+Also on the panel was Starbucks, which just announced its new initiative, Create Jobs for USA in partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN). Starbucks donated the first $5 million to launch the Create Jobs for USA program and is asking Starbucks customers to donate at least $5. Donations will go directly to OFN, which funds small businesses, including social enterprises and nonprofits. According to OFN, $3,000 in donations creates or maintains a job in a community. While exciting, this is arguably more of a philanthropic partnership than an example of shared value.
+Starbucks also discussed how it’s achieving shared value with an initiative to recycle all customer cups by 2015. Interestingly, Starbucks invited competitors in its supply chain to come up with innovative ways to achieve this goal. What Starbucks found was that when the competitors were invited, their existing suppliers showed up with potential solutions; nothing like a little competition to get the innovation flowing. While clearly beneficial to the Starbucks brand and the communities in which the company operates, the economic benefits remain to be seen. If the recyclable cups cost more to produce, Starbucks might make up for the cost in increased sales as people vote with their dollars to support the effort. Only time will tell.
+All in all, it’s inspiring to see so many large brands finding value in shared value. That these efforts are being incorporated into company strategies means that we really can do well from doing good.”
+(http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/shared-value-partnerships-makings-collaborative-economy/)
+=More Information=
+Article: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer.  [[Creating Shared Value]].  Harvard Business Review, 2011
+URL = http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value
+[[Category:Collaborative Economy]]
+[[Category:Sharing]]
+[[Category:Economics]]
+[[Category:Encyclopedia]]
+[[Category:Business]]
+[[Category:P2P Accounting]]
+**
+** European Charter of the Commons Campaign
+= A European Citizen's Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the municipality of Naples, with the the first high level technical meeting of jurists taking place recently (in December) at the International University College of Turin.
+URL = http://www.commonssense.it/
+=Description=
+“The dichotomy of private property and the state, on which the current constitutional tradition is grounded, has proven itself incapable of resisting the distortions produced by more than 20 years of neoliberal order. The outcome has been a global and severe constitutional imbalance, favoring the private sector and specifically corporate interests at the expense of the people.
+Massive transfers of common resources from the public to the private sphere are occurring throughout the world, with total disregard of any constitutional guarantees of the public interest, due process, and just compensation. Our democracies are increasingly being jeopardized by collusive state and market actors; government representatives that put the short term profits of individuals and corporations ahead of the interests of the common people.
+From Greece to Spain, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Italy to Bolivia, Ecuador, rural India and China, the people are increasingly aware of the need for a different model of globalization. These activists are currently engaged in acts of reclaiming commons all around the world. From those resisting the privatization of resources (for example in Italy with the water referendum) to the recent occupations of public spaces against neoliberalism ( for example the Indignados in Spain and the people of Greece). In solidarity with these movements, we initiate a campaign for the European Charter of the Commons.
+The International University College and its Institute for the Study of Political Economy and Law together with the Municipality of Naples, the Institut international D’etudes et recherches sur les biens communs, and European Alternatives are launching under the Lisbon Treaty Regulation No. 211/2011, a European Citizen Initiative for the European Charter of the Commons, pursuing the legal status and protection of the commons within the European Union.
+We define the Commons as two part; it is both about reclaiming access to fundamental resources as well as the very democratic process that governs their distribution Resources that are fundamental to human life include both natural commons like water, food, energy and the atmosphere, as well as man made commons, like technology, medicine, the internet and culture. Reclaiming the commons also requires a reshaping of the democratic process as it stands today, offering an alternative to the model that has prevailed under state and market models. Governing the commons demands a shift of power from the centralized state and free market to local communities, placing the power to satisfy the long term needs of these communities as well as those of future generations, back into the hands of community member through bottom up, local and direct democracy.”
+(http://www.commonssense.it/)
+=Text=
+==Draft Version==
+“European Charter of the Commons (version created at IUC on December 2nd and 3rd)
+Legal Basis (to be completed)
+The Problem
+.  There is an immediate and urgent need to defend the commonwealth of Europe from the all pervasive economic logic that is producing crisis and social suffering.
+. A true commonwealth of Europe is possible only by means of  constitutional safeguards of the commons through a direct participatory process.
+. A severe imbalance of global power favoring the unaccountable corporate sector over public institutions has produced in Europe an unsustainable transfer of authority from the public to the private sector, which serves the profit of the few over the interests of the many.
+. State and corporate interests are today concurring in an incremental process of enclosure of the commons, limiting common spaces, turning the citizens into individualized consumers, in a constant and apparently irresistible process of commodification of nature, culture and heritage.
+. It is impossible to address the increasing European democratic deficit through an intergovernmental cession of State sovereignty, because the current power ratio, the collusion between the private and public sectors, between state and market actors, precludes national elected officials to represent the common interests of the people.
+. The people hereby through this Charter take direct responsibility in building our European commonwealth on local, national and supranational levels.
+The Vision
+. The commons must be rediscovered and fully appreciated as collective goods or services to which access is necessary for a balanced fulfillment of the fundamental needs of the people.
+. All natural and social resources that the people, in their different contexts,  create, recognize and claim as commons must be governed in the logic of access and not of exclusion, of quality of relationship rather than quantitative logic, which places the commons at the center of  political organization.
+.  It is necessary that the commons are understood not only as living resources, such as forests, biodiversity, water, glaciers, seabeds, shores, energy, knowledge and cultural goods, but also as organized public services, such as schools, healthcare facilities, and transportation.
+. The interest and ability of future generations to equal access the commons must always be taken into consideration in any kind of public or private decision affecting them.
+. All the commons, no matter if publicly or privately owned, shall be endowed with a model of governance that rejects the principle of profit and embraces that of care, reproduction and sustainability.
+. The Charter shall include a Europe- wide catalogue of the commons to be updated regularly because the commons, not being a mere commodity, are a highly dynamic social institution changing in time and space.
+. Such catalogue must be integral part of a Constitutional process, based on the irreversibility of ecological legal protection, eventually to be granted constitutional status as heritage of Europe in trust for future generations.
+The Demand
+. Privatization and liberalization of public services to private competition, just like expropriation of private property, must occur only when there is a documented public interest, declared by law and subject to judicial supervision of both national and European Courts.
+.  In the exceptional cases in which privatization may occur, there must be full compensation, recognized and guaranteed ex ante to restore the commons.
+. Everybody can always access the courts of law to protect the commons by mean of injunctive relief.
+. Only the direct, constitutional protection of the commons can guarantee a new, correct balance between the public and the private sector.
+. An immediate moratorium on all privatization and liberalization of the commons must be introduced in order to allow the making of a legitimate Charter of the Commons.
+. A Directive should be issued to all member states to provide for the protection of the commons according to the above.
+We hereby require the Commission to transform this popular citizen’s initiative into a new form of legitimate and democratic European Constitutional Law.   The Commission must take all the necessary steps in order for the European Parliament, to be elected in 2014, to be granted Constitutional Assembly Status in order to adopt a Constitution of the Commons.”
+=Discussion=
+==First Workshop==
+“On the 2nd and 3rd of December, 2011, the International University College of Turin hosted (along with the Department of Economics “S. Cognetti de Martiis” of the University of Turin) an International workshop on a Draft European Charter of the Commons. The workshop brought together economists, philosophers, social theorists, lawyers and activists to discuss the proposal for a European Charter of the Commons to be presented to the EU Commission as a European Citizens’ Initiative (for those that are unfamiliar with ECIs, these are proposals which EU citizens may present to the Commission, requesting the latter to propose a given legal act that is deemed necessary for the implementation of the European Treaties).
+I am not going to give a detailed account here of the myriad discussions that took place in that context, also in order not to jump start the activist networks and the promoters that are behind this initiative. Instead, I am going to use this as an opportunity to elucidate the idea of “cultural performance”, the brainchild of American sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, which I believe allows one (particularly those that took part to the workshop) to make sense of why certain discussions took place, and why they were properly relevant to the task of drafting a European Charter of the Commons.
+For Alexander, the increasing complexity of modern societies makes it harder to stage “social performances“ (i.e. instances of cultural communication) that command the same allegiance and respect as rituals did in simpler societies. This is because many of the elements of a social performance (like the background representations upon which the performance builds, actors, means of symbolic production, mise-en-scène and audiences) have become increasingly de-fused, i.e. they are further and further apart and more fragmented, making it harder to achieve the compelling, moving character of ritual.
+In light of this, it is crucial, for a social performance to be successful, that it be capable of bringing together once again all such elements in a seamless fashion, allowing a “flow” of meaning that project the background representations, through the actors and the mise-en-scène of their performance, to the intended audience. When this happens, “[t]he mere action of performing accomplishes the performance’s intended effect”[1].
+So, for example, one of the problems faced by a Draft European Charter of the Commons is to be able to “speak” to its intended audience, which – however – is fragmented, including on the one hand the EC Commission (and its focus on Treaty implementation, implying allegiance to the free-market ideology broadly embedded in the Treaties) and, on the other, “the commoners of Europe” which – despite not being a uniform group themselves – seem however to be quite distant from the positions that the Commission is institutionally bound to take. Is it even possible to stage a “performance” that be able to speak to both? And how to stage a performance that, purely by being staged, achieve its intended effect of projecting given representations about the “commons” (in the broadest possible sense) onto the desired audience?
+These questions show how the choices to be faced here were not easy, confronting participants with the dilemma of drafting a narrow proposal that appealed to the Commission but would not be recognisable by commoners as their charter, or retain boldness and “authenticity” and speak to the commoners and for the commoners. This choice, it seems to me, appeared to be inevitable in the light of the basic (and deep) fragmentation of the dual audience to which the Charter is directed (EC Commission on the one hand, European commoners on the other). Eventually, a consensus seems to have emerged for a bold project that be true to the “constitutional” aspiration that underpins it, even at the risk of facing rejection by the Commission. As a consequence, I believe, the Charter of the Commons, as a performance, will speak differently to the two audiences.
+On the one hand, as far as the EU Commission is concerned, if the proposal were to retain its boldness it would not so much attempt to engage the latter in a debate on the commons – given the excessive distance in the respective positions – but rather to challenge the Commissions’ institutional role as the holder of a monopoly over legislative initiative within the European Union (perhaps as a choice, embedded in the Treaties by heads of state, to prevent initiatives “from below” that would otherwise bypass them).
+On the other hand, the “performance” that the Charter ought to deliver to the European Commoners will, instead, retain broadness and diversity in a manner that speaks for the commons, understood as anything that can be managed in a participatory manner by a community, according to principles of “care, reproduction and sustainability” [2]. Most importantly, the drafting and submission of the Charter ought to enact an instance of “commoning”, bringing disparate audiences (e.g. from environmentalists to free software activists) together around a common project. The possibility to make the European Charter of the Commons an occasion for the Commoners of Europe to band together, retaining consistency – in their action – to their stated intentions, seems to me to be the most promising side of the whole project. If, in fact, the European Charter of the Commons will be able to enact an instance of commoning in putting forth a legal stance for the commons, it will indeed have achieved the point where “[t]he mere action of performing accomplishes the performance’s intended effect”.”
+(http://www.commonssense.it/s1/?p=728)
+=Rome Forum Announcement==
+“The Rome forum brings together over forty organisations, networks and social movements from at least seven European countries to take forward common transnational campaigns on the themes of the commons and minimum income within the fight for precarious working and living conditions, relying also on the new instrument of the European Citizens' Initiative. The event will be a real opportunity to build European networks and campaigns that will take concrete forms in follow-up meetings in Spain, the UK, Romania, Bulgaria and France in the following months to continue the work begun in Rome. The emphasis on concrete campaigns will be the starting point to engage in a reflection on the revision of the EU Treaties, to propose an alternative vision of Europe.
+A European Citizen's Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the municipality of Naples, with the the first high level technical meeting of jurists taking place recently (in December) at the International University College of Turin. Proposals for an Initiative on minimum income have been taken forwards, amongst others, by the Basic Income Network, following the proposals advanced by the European Parliament in October 2010.
+The Italian organisations behind this the event are the International University College Turin, European Alternatives, Teatro Valle, Centro Studi per l'Alternativa Comune, Municipality of Naples, Basic Income Network, Tilt, Il Manifesto, Rete della Conoscenza, Altramente and Arci.”
+[[Category:Commons]]
+[[Category:Italy]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+[[Category:Europe]]
+[[Category:Politics]]
+**  Commons Sense Forum i
+URL = Http://www.commonssense.it/
+=Description=
+The Commons Sense Forum is a project of the International University College of Turin (IUC), a leading centre for the interdisciplinary and critical study of law, economics and finance. The IUC is exploring the framework of the “Commons,” communally-held tangible and intangible resources (i.e. public water, forests, the atmosphere – but also shared culture, ideas, information, and traditions), as an alternative to the gridlocked public v. private and state controlled v. free market debate.
+[[Category:Commons]]
+[[Category:Italy]]
+[[Category:Movements]]
+[[Category:Europe]]
+[[Category:Politics]]
+**
+Societal Constitutionalism
+=Discussion=
+“in February 2011 at the International University College of Turin, Gunther Teubner presented an interesting paper in which he provided several interesting suggestions for thinking about the phenomenon of societal constitutionalism.
+The Teubner version of “societal constitutionalism” is, of course, imbued with the sociologically-informed cybernetic approach of systems theory, which he is one of the main supporters of. This approach postulates the existence of multiple communicative systems – i.e. autopoietically closed structures of communication – like politics, law, the economy, the mass media, and so on. Each of these structures unfolds and evolves according to its own idiosyncratic “foundational rationality”, encompassing the self-understanding of a system, as well as its understanding of the relationship with other social systems. As a consequence, the presence of as many such “foundational rationalities” as there are social systems accommodates the possibility of radical change of a fundamental, “constitutional” nature in relation to each individual social system.
+So, for example, for Teubner it is fundamental to alter the implosive tendencies of the capitalist economy by acting from within. One of the ways this is done is, to quote Teubner himself, through:
+- Politicisation of the consumer: Instead of being taken as given, individual and collective preferences are openly politicised through consumer activism, boycotts, product-criticism, eco-labelling, public interest litigation and other expressions of ecological sustainability. Such politicisation of economic action represents a transformation of the inner constitution, touching the most sensitive area of the circulation of money, namely, the willingness of consumers and investors to pay.”
+(http://www.commonssense.it/s1/?p=639)
+**
+Manifesto for European Common Goods
+=Text=
+“The crisis affecting the global economy and consequently the Euro during these months requires a radically different response from those actually envisaged and carried out. The way Europe and European governments and electors will handle the Greek crisis will set an important precedent for the next crises and their entailed risks of sovereign defaults.
+The probable decisions by the Greek government, practically left alone as other governments in similar deficit crises, are based on the massive sale of public goods to unspecified buyers in order to raise the money necessary to guarantee the next loans.
+This is not only a wrong decision in political terms, but also in practical terms. Politically we have had ample experience in the past quarter of century that deregulations and privatisations were not synonymous with efficiency, investments, modernisation and competition.
+On the contrary, there is a long list in Europe and around the world, of resounding failures and actual destruction of value by the same market forces that were extolled as the long lasting solution to any national and international economic problem.
+The last financial, market and economic global crisis has shown beyond any doubt that markets alone are not capable to rule themselves, that there is no invisible hand balancing the different interests and that public money has rescued the same oligopolies that were supposed to not to exist in a healthy competitive environment, fostered by a deregulated market. There is no free lunch and there is no unregulated market oriented to a common good.
+We believe strongly on ethical and political grounds and on practical experience that public policies are not just to regulate a neo-laissez-faire, nor just to support private interests in the name of a supposed national competitiveness, nor just to redistribute a dwindling income.
+Public policies have to work for public interests, under democratic oversight, which means that they have the task to foster public goods and long-term investments, supported by an efficient management and by a meaningful taxation for the good of society.
+Instead of letting Greek goods be sold at a ridiculous price either to major power that have a strong interest in controlling markets in order to strengthen their competitiveness (at the fatal expense of our interests) or to private investors that are totally irresponsible to societies, electors and national interests, we propose to use in a more effective way the public money we already spend in EU/ IMF loans and in ECB support measures.
+Greek public goods, as those of other possible critical countries, should be sold to a European economic conglomerate, either public or participated by a majority public stake, in order to raise directly from governments and international institutions the necessary money.
+This allows to preserve two vital interests both at European and national level:
+• the goods are redeemable by the interested country in due time and at reasonable conditions or they can produce proportional profits to the governments, but they are managed taking into account both economic and social needs. If sovereign funds are available, we do not see why public-owned enterprises are unfeasible under appropriate management and oversight.
+• the goods are preserved as European economic and industrial assets, instead of being dispersed and exposed to a very uncertain future. Europe has created a formidable integrated entity, especially at the economic level, so it would be suicidal if, in times of top emergency, Europe would refrain from carrying out a no-nonsense industrial policy. “
+(http://www.europeancommongoods.org/eng.php)
+[[Category:Commons]]
+[[Category:Politics]]
+[[Category:Policy]]
+[[Category:Movements]]

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