SEPTEMBER 2018

Open 2018: What did I learn?
‘At Open 2018, I had the feeling that
something new was starting to take off’
BY OLIVIER FREY, an author, co-operative
researcher and freelance consultant with a
PhD in economics. He is based in France
I have been working with co-operatives
for almost 15 years – and I am convinced
they are on the verge of a new era, thanks
to digital.
Platform co-operatives symbolise this
new generation of co-operatives that is
going to lead the change and empower
the co-operative movement as a whole.
Having previously read Ours to Hack and
to Own (OR Books, 2017) by Trebor Scholz
and Nathan Schneider, I wanted to learn
more about platform co-ops. So in July
I attended the Open 2018 conference in
London to better understand the hopes
and challenges of this movement.
During two days, people gathered from
all around the world to discuss about the
future of platform co-operatives. How
can blockchain enable Elinor Ostrom’s
eight commons principles? How can
we map the co-operative / solidarity
economy? Is it time for a Co-op coin?
How can the development of platform
co-ops be financed? Can we build a
co-operative cloud?
SO WHAT DID I LEARN DURING THOSE
TWO DAYS?
I learned about platform co-ops that
already existed, such as Resonate,
Stocksy and Savvy – but also that the
platform co-op movement as a whole is
still at an early stage.
I also discovered some interesting
initiatives and tools that can help
platform co-ops set up and grow.
This included organisations such as
Platform6, start.coop and incubator.
coop, which help fund the creation of
a new co-ops – as well as initiatives
to allocate funds collaboratively and
transparently like Cobudget, or help with
decision-making like Loomio.
But to build and run a platform co-op
you need to surround yourself with
computer engineers and people from the
tech world. Hopefully some of them at the
conference discovered (and loved) the
co-op model and will decide to work in the
sector. There are also co-ops developing
digital and data tools who seem more
than happy to help the platform co-op
movement. Co-operative Technologists,
aka CoTech, for example, is a group of
tech-based worker co-operatives that
aims “to ensure that technology plays its
part in creating a fairer world”.
If a platform coop wants to grow
and succeed, it needs to build a strong
community of users. But first it needs
people from the tech world to build the
project from the scratch.
In my opinion, one of the main
objectives of the co-op movement (as a
whole) remains to communicate more
efficiently about the model, the values,
what co-ops stand for... and about the
fact that platform co-ops offer another
vision of the future and promote exactly
what the original Internet was set up for:
decentralisation.
Another thing I noticed during the
conference was that, even though I met
representatives of Co-operatives UK and
Co-operatives Europe, there were very
few non-platform co-ops. So, as Nathan
Schneider pointed out during the event,
the question is: “Does the platform co-op
movement belong to the same community
as the traditional co-op movement or is it
something new and different?”
Finally, what also surprised me was that
there were a lot of American and English
people. I don’t know if it is because
it was held in July or because a trip to
London is expensive, but I encountered
very few French representatives. There
were a couple of French co-ops such as
Coopcycle, HappyDev and Ridygo, but
no representative from Coop FR, the
traditional French co-ops or the French
academic world. Does this mean that
the platform co-op movement is mainly
an American and English movement? Or
is it simply because there’s a language
barrier? Or is it because the French co-op
movement is lagging behind as far as
digital is concerned?
I don’t have the answers to those
questions, but if the platform co-op
movement wants to be more effective and
gather as many people and co-operatives
as possible to actively collaborate, it
must think about this cultural problem.
One thing I was happy to discover was
that there are more tech co-ops than I
had previously imagined. And I’m deeply
convinced that these organisations
should be cherished by the entire co-op
movement. I am sure that digital is
the key for the future development of
coops, whether they are farmers’ co-ops,
consumers’ co-ops, workers’ co-ops…
At Open 2018, I had the feeling that
something new was starting to take off.
Is London going to be the starting point
of the era of the platform co-op
movement, like Rochdale was for the
wider co-op movement?
Maybe it is still too early to talk about
the London Pioneers but still, it was
exciting to encounter people who were
not only talking about co-operatives,
but who were actually working for their
development, too.
SEPTEMBER 2018 | 29