Topic proposal: Games.

@staccotroncoso mentioned this reworking of Monopoly for the commons...

http://commonspoly.cc/

Currently out of stock, but maybe we could procure a copy somewhere or make our own...

It will be back in stock by the end of the month, you can pre-order here. We'll also be working on putting some design global/manufacture local documentation up, but there's no set deadline on that.

I thought I'd already posted this, but I don't see it here... Anyway, for the record there's also Co-opoly:

https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2012/nov/21/co-opoly-monopoly-but-better

I signed up for notifcations, and I see Commonsopoly is now available for about €44, or about £50...

Was thinking of taking a punt on this, but judging by the website the latest release may have sold out again?

I bought an edition of co-opoly instead for the time being, so we could have a game of that at a future meeting. (Although it hasn't arrived yet...)

Topic proposal: The Common Good Fund

Looks like this is an example of a very old commons. Paraphrasing the video: a unique but apparently generally unknown half-millennia-old Scottish fund possessing assets worth several tens of million pounds with laws to protect it and an obligation to Scottish councils to maintain it for the public's benefit.

http://inthecommongood.org/what-is-the-common-good/

Only 55 views so far!

The video features Bob Hamilton - I remember he was involved with the Electron Club in Glasgow way back when Dorkbot Alba was a new thing...

Also, here's a video of a somewhat younger-looking Andy Wightman (author and advocate of land reform, now a Scottish Greens MSP), describing the Common Good Fund. Very much worth watching:

https://archive.org/details/TheCommonGoodInScotland

(More videos in the "related" section below it - interestingly including Knowledge as a common good. Communities of production and sharing in Greece)

(I discovered this digging around on the P2PF wiki entry for Scotland. I've created an account so I can now update and fix these links, some of which are quite old, I recommend anyone else interested do this too.)

(I discovered this digging around on the P2PF wiki entry for Scotland. I've created an account so I can now update and fix these links, some of which are quite old, I recommend anyone else interested do this too.)

I applaud this!

Really interesting topic, it would be good to find out where we are with Common Good funds are at the moment

Topic Proposal: social.coop

(Since I seem to have gotten roped into coordinating their sysadmin volunteer rota.)

See this article for what it is: https://medium.com/open-collective/social-coop-a-cooperative-decentralized-social-network-c10980c9ed91

Basically, a Mastodon instance, i.e. open-source, federated Twitter clone with moderation. But run as a member-owned/run cooperative.

It's an interesting place to hang out, if you have the spare bandwidth for the chatter. The "Fediverse" itself (sum of all federated instances) feels a lot like '90's Usenet, lots of weird, wonderful and possibly unsavoury communities, with their own culture, loosely overlapped. Lots of refugees from Twitter, like https://switter.at

Topic Proposal: Platform Coops

I know we've chatted about them a bit but I reckon they are still quite new to many people. In short: platform coops are a worker operated alternative to the new breed of gig economy apps that are taking over the world of casual/short-term work e.g. Deliveroo, Uber, TaskRabbit.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/platform-coops-sharing-economy-uk-bank-social-care-a8368921.html

So far I've not seen any good documentary videos on the topic, there are plenty of talks / lectures though.

Topic Proposal: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

This is a book by Douglas Rushkoff, which ideally I'll have finished reading before running this.

His keynote at SXSW 2016 is a ~1h summary of it, and I think it is a good exposition of one particular angle on why P2P/Commons Transition is important, although he doesn't call it that. The connection as I see it is through the need to shift our economic goal away from individual/corporate profit, to building various kinds of commons (whilst preventing gatekeepers from appropriating it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKQKCe1xl0

My search also finds a talk he gave at Google, explicitly on his book's premise, which might be an alternative video (but I haven't watched this one so far):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnmH95016w