Platform Cooperativism: Special Lunch Session with Michel Bauwens - Response: Thomas Dönnebrink European Experiments With Worker Ownership And Self-Governance

Structure
1. Michel Bauwens: introduction to
platform economics
2. European figures and examples
3. Michel continues
4. Discussion

Welcome to the special lunch session with Michel Bauwens here at the Hoerle lecture Hall
of the New School in the context of the platform cooperativism conference.
My name is Thomas Dönnebrink. I live in Berlin where I am one of the OuiShare Connectors
and working as a freelancer in the field of the collaborative economy and society. I am
particularly interested in the convergence of ideas, networks and movements aiming at
having an impact on changing the world for the better.
Thanks for the invitation to this conference and for the opportunity to moderate and add my
contribution to this lunch session with Michel
And here we go. Unless life wants to take a different road here is what to expect for the next
50 min.
After having presented Michel Bauwens we would like to hear his take on the overall
framework on platform economics.
Then I will take 12 min to kick in a few European and mainly German figures and projects
engaged with tech and experimenting with ownership and governance.
Against these or other examples we would like Michel to further elaborate on his overall
framework focusing on the aspects he considers most relevant and interesting for the topic
of the conference
Leaving enough time to open the discussion and take questions and imput from the crowd.

1. Presentation of
Michel Bauwens

I guess many of you know him already. For more than 10 years he is producing and
disseminating so much content around Commons based Peer Production and beyond to
keep everybody - trying to read and devour it all - busy 24/7.
He seems to be constantly travelling and must have attended conference/events/meeting in
the thousands by now. I can image Michel you are a bit weary of the standard presentation
most people here will know already anyhow. May I therefore introduce you and your work
with the answer you gave in the video interview we did during the OuiShareFest last May in
Paris? Having asked where you see your main focus you interestingly said: Well, the P2P
Foundation is like a collective intellectual, like Gramsci‘s organic intelectuals. May I ask you
to explain what you mean by that and present you and your work from that angle?
Meeting Michel at the UnCommon Conference in Berlin on the 22nd of Octobre he
presented there - for the first time - his 10 commandments of peer-production & commons
economics. On your blog Michel you wrote that you consider them to be the synthesis of
ten years of research at the P2P Foundation, on the emerging practices of the new
productive communities and the ethical entrepreneurial coalitions that create livelihoods for
shared resources. Michel, can you present us the stone tablets (you brought back from the
mountain)?
(The idea is to use them as an entry point for this lunch session)

I. OPEN AND FREE
• 1. Thou shall practice open business models based on shared knowledge
II. FAIR
• 2. Thou shall practice open cooperativism
• 3. Thou shall practice open value or contributory accounting
• 4. Thou shall insure fair distribution and benefit-sharing through Copyfair licensing
• 5. Thou shall practice solidarity and mitigate the risks of work and life through Commonfare
practices
III. SUSTAINABLE
• 6. Thou shall use open and sustainable designs for an open source circular economy
• 7. Thou shall move beyond an exclusive reliance on imperfect market price signals towards
mutual coordination of production through open supply chains and open book accounting
• 8. Thou shall practice cosmo-localization
• 9. Thou shall mutualize physical infrastructures
• 10. Thou shall mutualize generative capital
10 Commandments of peer-
production & commons economics

I. OPEN AND FREE
1. Thou shall practice open business models based on shared knowledge
Closed business models are based on artificial scarcity. Though knowledge is a non- or anti-rival good that gains in use value the more it is shared, and though it can be shared easily and
at very low marginal cost when it is in digital form, many extractive firms still use artificial scarcity to extract rents from the creation or use of digitized knowledge. Through legal repression
or technological sabotage, naturally shareable goods are made artificially scarce, so that extra profits can be generated. This is particularly galling in the context of life-saving or planet-
regenerating technological knowledge. The first commandment is therefore the ethical commandment of sharing what can be shared, and of only creating market value from resources that
are scarce and create added value on top or along these commons. Open business models are market strategies that are based on the recognition of natural abundance and the refusal to
generate income and profits by making them artificially scarce.
Thou shall find more information on this here at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Business_Models
II. FAIR
2. Thou shall practice open cooperativism
Many new more ethical and generative forms are being created, that have a higher level of harmony with the contributory commons. The key here is to choose post-corporate forms that are
able to generate livelihoods for the contributing commoners.
Open cooperatives in particular would be cooperatives that share the following characteristics:
1) they are mission-oriented and have a social goal that is related to the creation of shared resources
2) they are multi-stakeholder governed, and include all those that are affected by or contributing to the particular activity
3) they constitutionally, in their own rules, commit to co-create commons with the productive communities
I often add the fourth condition that they should be global in organisational scope in order to create counter-power to extractive multinational corporations.
Cooperatives are one of the potential forms that commons-friendly market entitities could take. We see the emergence of more open forms such as neo-tribes (think of the workings of the
Ouishare community), or more tightly organized neo-builds, such as Enspiral.org, Las Indias or the Ethos Foundation. Yet more open is the network form chose by the Sensorica open
scientific hardware community, which wants to more tightly couple contributions with generated income, by allowing all microtasked contributions in the reward system, through open value
or contributory accounting (more below).
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Open_Company_Formats
3. Thou shall practice open value or contributory accounting
Peer production is based on distributed tasks, freely contributed by a open community-driven collaborative infrastructure. The tradition of salaries based on fixed job description may not be
the most appropriate way to reward those that contribute to such processes. Hence the emergence of open value accounting or contributory accounting. As practiced already by Sensorica,
this means that any contributor may add contributions, log them according to project number, and after peer evaluation is assigned ‘karma points’. When income is generated, it flows into
these weighted contributions, so that every contributor is fairly rewarded. Contributory accounting, or other similar solutions, are important to avoid that only a few contributors more closely
related to the market, capture the value that has been co-created by a much larger community. Open book accounting insure that the (re)distribution of value is transparent for all
contributors.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Accounting
4. Thou shall insure fair distribution and benefit-sharing through Copyfair licensing
The copyleft licenses allow anyone to re-use the necessary knowledge commons on the condition that changes and improvements are added to that same commons. This is a great
advance, but should not be abstracted from the need for fairness. When moving to physical production which involves findng resources for buildings, raw materials and payments to
contributors, the unfettered commercial exploitation of such commons favours extractive models. Thus the need to maintain the knowledge sharing, but to ask reciprocity for the commercial
exploitation of the commons, so that there is a level playing field for the ethical economic entities that do internalize social and environmental costs. This is achieved through copyfair
licenses which while allow full sharing of the knowledge, ask for reciprocity in exchange for the right of commercialization.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Licensing
5. Thou shall practice solidarity and mitigate the risks of work and life through Commonfare practices
As one of the strong results of financial and neoliberal globalization, the power of nation-states has gradually weakened, and there is now a strong and integrated effort to unwind the
solidarity mechanisms that were embedded in the welfare state models. As long as we do not have the power to reverse this slide, it is imperative that we reconstruct solidarity mechanisms
of distributed scope, a practicde which we could call ‘commonfare’. Examples such as the Broodfonds (NL), Friendsurance (Germany) and the health sharing ministriesj (U.S.), or
cooperative entities such Coopaname in France, show us the new forms of distributed solidarity that can be developed to deal with the risks of life and work.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Solidarity

III. SUSTAINABLE
6. Thou shall use open and sustainable designs for an open source circular economy
Open productive communities insure maximum particiation through modularity and granularity. Because they operate in a context of shared and
abundant resources, the practice of planned obsolesence, which is not a bug but a feature for profit-maximizing corporations, is alien to them.
Ethical enterpreneurial entities will therefore use these open and sustainable designs and produce sustainable good and services.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design
7. Thou shall move beyond an exclusive reliance on imperfect market price signals towards mutual coordination of production through open
supply chains and open book accounting
What decision-making is for planning, and pricing is for the market, mutual coordination is for the commons!
We will never achieve a sustainable ‘circular economy’, in which the output of one production processes is used as an input for another, with
closed value chains and which every cooperation has to be painfully negotiated in the conditions of lack of transparency. But enterpreneurial
coalitions who are already co-dependent on a collaborative commons can create eco-systems of collaboration through open supply chains, in
which the production processes become transparent, in through which every participant can adapt his behaviour based on the knowledge
available in the network. There is no need for over-production when the production realities of the network become common knowledge.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Mutual_Coordination
8. Thou shall practice cosmo-localization
“What is light is global, and what is heavy is local”: this is the new principle animating commons-based peer production in which knowledge is
globally shared, but production can take place on demand and based on real needs , through a network of distributed coworking and
microfactories. Certain studies have shown that up to two-thirds of matter and energy goes not to production, but to transport, which is clearly
unsustainable. A return to relocalized production is a since qua non for the transition towards sustainable production.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Sustainable_Manufacturing
9. Thou shall mutualize physical infrastructures
Platform cooperatives, data cooperatives and fairshares forms of distributed ownership can be used to co-own our infrastructures of production.
The misnamed sharing economy from AirBnB and Uber shows the potential of matching idle resources. Co-working, skillsharing, ridesharing are
examples of the many ways in which we can re-use and share resources to dramatically augment the thermo-dynamic efficiencies of our
consumption.
In the right context of co-ownership and co-governance, a real sharing economy can achieve dramatic advances in reduced resource use. Our
means of production, inclusive machines, can be mutualized and self-owned by all those that create value.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Sharing
10. Thou shall mutualize generative capital
Generative forms of capital cannot rely on a extractive money supply that is based on compound interest that is due to extractive banks. We have
to abolish the 38% financial tax that is owed on all goods and services and transform our monetary system, and substantively augment the use of
mutual credit systems.
Thou shall find more information on this at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Peerfunding

2. European figures and examples
• Figures from Germany
• 12 quickies
• 4 more detailed examples

Talking about cooperativism in Germany:
1/4 of the 80 Mio., e.g. 20 Mio. Germans are at least in one of 8800 registered cooperatives employing around
800.000 people.
To give three examples for certain sectors: almost 100% of all farmers are member of one or more of the 2300+
agricultural cooperatives. 90% of all bakers and butchers and 65% of all self-employed tax advisors are members of a
cooperative.
Almost 10% of the rented apartments in Germany are owned and administered by about 2000 housing cooperatives
providing 2.2 Mio housing units for more than 5 Mio. people of which are 2.8 million members.
Close to 1900 (1889) are labled consumer cooperatives, another 1250+ (1262) product & service cooperatives and
almost 1050 (1047) are cooperative banks and bank associations.
In the years previous to 2006 the number of cooperatives (not their members) was decreasing, however after 2006
the amount of cooperatives rose again due to a new cooperative law. The law still requires a hand-signed
application to be send by postal mail if one wants to enter or leave a cooperative, but everything else including
virtual general assemblies can be done online. These features allow to go beyond the traditional church tower of
cooperatives and enable more possibilities for participation. But according to the board of director of one of the
cooperative association I talked to, it was above all the public awareness that was created by the debate that caused
the following increase in new cooperatives. (So hopefully this conference will already have had its positive effect for
bringing up the topic of platform cooperativism)
Since 2006 new cooperatives in ever more diverse sectors have been founded: More than 1300 in the last eight
years, more than 500 in the last three. Starting from doctors and other medical background to more than 800
mostly citizen-owned energy cooperatives.
Now I will present some of these unconventional examples based on a platform or at least tech/Internet
engagement. Examples will be mainly from Germany and partially from other European countries

German Cooperativism
25%
of Germans are members of co-ops

8800
registered co-ops

800 000
people employed
(1% of the whole population)

• 2300+ agricultural
• 2000+ housing
• 1850+ consumer
• 1250+ product & service
• 1050 bank coops

1300 new co-ops in the last 8 years
2006 increase due to
new law AND debate

Examples (overview)
Fairmondo is one great example from Berlin. You might have heard its founder Felix Werth
yesterday evening presenting this cooperative approach to ebay with its more than >2000 coop
members. He is also offering a workshop today about his cooperative 2.0 model.
Goteo is another great example from Spain. Goteo is the cooperative approach to crowdfunding
platforms. Special also due to its open source approach and a high funding success of more than
70%.
Ulule is another crowdfunding platform I wanted to present as it is not a cooperative, but a BCorp,
the first European crowdplatform having done so - thus joining the almost 1500 BCorps existing
worldwide like Patagonia or Etsy.com.
(During 5 years more than 10.300 cultural, solidarity, educative and environmental projects have
been financed over the platform.)
Sharetribe: Another example of a non-cooperative is Sharetribe, a not-just-for-profit organization
from Helsinki. In their shareholder agreements it says that the purpose of the company is to benefit
the society instead of just bringing profits for shareholders. I wanted to name it here also as coops
or cities can use its open source tool to create their own sharing economy platforms. (Sharetribe
founder Juho Makkonen is also attending the conference. See him if you want to know more.)

Coop – Fairmondo
Berlin/Germany

B-Corp. – Ulule
Paris – Barcelona - Montreal

Not-just-for-profit - Sharetribe
Helsinki

Bank Kitzingen: Banks have diverged from cooperativism. Currently most Coop banks have
members AND non-member customers and are usually not too keen on member partizipation.
Nevertheless – according to an interviewed expert – they are increasingly realizing they should
develop towards it again.
Therefore I want to present here the Coop bank of Kitzingen who's aim it is to exclusively work with
members again by 2017 and make providing best possible support to its members - and not
achieving the hightest ROI - its main target.
Good Data from London, is the World's first data cooperative which allows user to control data flow
at a browser level. Users who apply for membership own 100% of shares of TheGoodData which
claims that acting as the true owner of data makes companies treat one as a real customer, not
merely as a user or as the product.
BioBoden - Bio Soil is a citizen cooperative from Germany. Shares buy land that get provided to bio
farmers in oder to protect the soil, diversify agricultre, enable small scale farming livelihoods and
avoid land speculation.
Vive Berlin is a Berlin-based cooperative of autonomous guides from many countries working on a
common platform. No boss, working as equals, but supported by a structure that helps to organize
and develope new projects.

Coop - VR Bank Kitzingen
Kitzingen/Germany

Coop – The Good Data
London/UK

Coop – Vive Berlin
Berlin/Germany

Landwege - land path - from North Germany is one example for a prosumer coop. It combines
consumer, producer and Landwege employees - and consists of 100 employees, 500 members and
30 ecological member farms.
Bürger-Energie-Berlin - Citizen-Energy-Berlin is a citizen cooperative currently supported by almost
900 (895) cooperative members (capital 776.000 €) and more than 1700 (1720) trustees (capital
10.9 Mio €) having raised > 11 Mio € so far with the intention to buy the concession for the
electricity grid of Berlin in order to take it away from Vattenfall, one of the four big corporate
energy providers in Germany and place it again into the hand of the community and foster a
sustainable and democratic energy policy.
GLS Bank was the first social and ecological bank in Germany (1974) and is supported by more than
32.000 cooperative members. The bank has now branches in 7 cities and is currently financing
around 23,000 cultural, social and ecological projects and businesses
(with loans a low as 2,5% pa. The balance sheet total was 3,2 billion € at the end of 2013 (31
December 2013) an increase of 19 % compared to the previous year (2012.)
Taz was founded in 1979 as a critical newspaper. When it ran into financial problems in 1991 it was
decided that instead of selling out to a corporate competitor to sell out to their readers and
transform into a cooperative. It started with 2000 members collecting 3 Mio. DM, the equivalent of
about 1,5 Mio €. Over the years it developped into a media cooperative of 15.000+ members and
capital resources of 12,7 Mio €

Coop Prosumer - Landwege
North Germany

Coop – BürgerEnergieBerlin
Berlin/Germany

Coop – GLS Bank
Bochum + 7 cities in Germany

Due to a delayed session start
due to technical problems of Skype connection with Michel Bauwens
the following four examples where dropped
in favour of leaving enough time for discussion and audience participation.
Nevertheless this slideshare context allows for its incorporation.

Coop - WeChange
Berlin,Kiel/Germany

WeChange
is an online platform and wants to become a kind of Facebook for activists supporting
readers to become leaders for good causes. The current structure is: User (currently 3000)
create profiles and can move beyond login within all portals.
Each portal has a forum where all users of a certain entity (e.g. Viva con agua) are
members and can interact.
Within each portal there are various groups (currently in average 20 per portal)
Within each groups there are various projects (1 to max. 10)
Portals are interconnected via the activity channel, e.g. if a user is moving around various
portals all information from the various portals and groups and projects he/she has chosen
to be a member will come together there. Thus promoting collaboration and cross-
pollination. All Portals, groups and projects can create an ouside view (microsite) for non-
registered users.
WeChange has applied for becoming a cooperative. As coop members, representatives of
portals should decide about future development of the open source platform turning it into a
need-based approach.
WeChange has secured some funds and support for further R&D

Coop – Healthbank
Genève/Switzerland

healthbank
is the world’s first citizen-owned health data exchange platform. Only individuals can
become members of this Swiss cooperative. Health data from any source and any format
can be collected. Only the user determines with who to share or stop sharing data. Whether
it be family members, doctors or researchers willing to pay for having access to one's data.
Everyone interested in accessing ones data can apply, but it rests with the user to review
the details of the offer and decide if willing to allow access to data or participate in a
research. Payment of third parties are done to the healthbanks which pays then the
participating users.
So is it a good idea? According to Annemarie Naylor from Common Futures “Data
cooperatives may help rebalance the relationship between those that create data and those
that seek to exploit it whilst also creating the environment for fair and consensual
exchange.” So the answer might be yes.
But how much would an insurance company pay for a little leak in the database caused by a
frustrasted or underpayed programmer? The German doctor association is trying to prevent
exactly the collection of these kind of data. And who is collecting his medical data anyway or
would want to deal with technical API's trying to upload them?

Coop – Büchertisch
Berlin/Germany

Büchertisch - book table -
is a cooperative since 2013. It collets books from inheritance or donations and sells them on
the one hand online and in three bookstores offline and on the other hand donates literature
to more than 100 school libraries, kindergarten and 80 other institutions including prisons.
This created 40 jobs and kept books from being wasted. I picked Büchertisch as I consider it
a nice example how the convergence of gift-, share-, circular economy and cooperative
structures are forming cooperative platforms and ecosystems that can create values in
multiple ways that go far beyond job creation and financial activity. As initiative the Berlin
book table has generated many positive social effects in the neighbourhood like bringing
together academics and homeless people and spinning off new projects.

Coop – VR Bank – Crowdfunding
Brühl + 70 in Germany

Bank Bühl:
As mentioned earlier Coop banks seem to realize they have to reconnect to their roots
which is people coming together to mutually fund/enable something. Crowdfunding and
cooperativism principles are actually very similiar if not identical. In this context it is no
surprise, but still good to see that the Coop Bank Bühl in Germany started on their
homepage a crowdfunding platform named “many achieve more". It is a white label solution
bought from startnext, Germany’s largest crowdfunding platform. To date it is running on 35
local bank platforms, contracts are signed with an additional 35 banks. So far about 400 -
mainly small local non-profit projects and initiatives like sport clubs or local red cross have
collected from around 34.000 supporters more than 1.3 Mio €.

Platform Cooperativism
What has to be done?
Quo Vadis?

And as coop banks can also become crowdfunding platforms, crowdfunding platforms could
and should also become cooperatives.
And this doesn't stop here: the digital world is predestinated for cooperative forms given that
the users and stakeholder could or should also be the shareholders as they are the ones
creating the value.
This is not (yet) the case. We currently transfer concepts/models/system from the analog to
the digital world and in environments like Facebook and Google the user is not the
shareholder but the product.
Currently we have hybrid systems:
On the front end - in the ideal case - a platform on which peers can meet, contribute,
connect, self-organise and fulfil each others needs directly, becoming producer and
consumer at the same time and thus getting the chance to play multiple roles and enjoy
opportunities evolving out of it. That's 21 century.
But what is happening on the back end? Usually VC sponsored startups are looking for fast
and high exit and ROI. So you still have the guys and thinking of the 20th century's
extractive and explotive economy sitting in the machine room. Personal data end up for
exclusive mining in silos, profits and power get concentrated in the hands of the few.
But this doesn't have to stay this way. What do we have to do to change this?

Thank you !
Thomas Dönnebrink
OuiShare Connector Germany
Freelancer Collaborative Economy
www.about.me/thomasdoennebrink
thomas@ouishare.net
@tdoennebrink
+49 176 32335744

Platform Cooperativism: Special Lunch Session with Michel Bauwens - Response: Thomas Dönnebrink European Experiments With Worker Ownership And Self-Governance

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