OuiShare Fest 14

Ludovica Rogers, Occupy London

2011 saw an unexpected wave of social movements sweeping the globe. With them new practices and ways of relating to each other spread and sowed seeds for alternative ways of organising and working together. Even if not as visible as before they continue to operate in the cracks of the current system as networked cells, some more dormant, some more active. Through concrete examples, I will give an overview of the emerging dynamics within the European context.

Tomas de Lara, O Sujeito

The Web 2.0 that's been around for 15 years only, allowed us to connect, organise, share and co-create with everybody around the world, instantly, with practically no cost. This recent phenomenon got us into an age of empowered people, who are increasingly understanding the power they now have to change the whole system.  
2011's Arab Spring was a great example of that new era, and more recently, emerging huge manifestations with over 1 million people in the streets of Brazil have been telling us that now it's the time for us to use this new collaborative technologies to build together "a new thing". 

David de Ugarte, Grupo Cooperativo de las Indias : Are old, even premodern communities becoming phyles?

While we use to focus on how cooperativism and democratic enterprise movements are being impacted by a P2P globalized world and inspired by new horizontal, open-soursed transnational models as free software; out there big old networks are changing almost invisibly.

Murides -a sufi movement originated in Senegal with 12 million members worldwide-, fetulajies in Turkey and Central Asia or catholic Focolare in Italy and Latin America, among other examples we will discuss, are suffering deep changes in the way the organize since 1989. This changes points towards redefining their organizations as globals networks of economically autonomous and productive communities according to principles not very different of those of economic democracy... As a consequence they are evolving to a new «thing» not so far from the canonical definition of phyle.

Mattias Jagerskög, Skjutsgruppen

We just had an idea. Nothing more. Not a company. Not a state initiative. Not a non-profit organization. Just an idea. An beautiful idea about good communication, active dialogue and sharing. The idea was that by talking to each other we could find people to share vehicles with, and on the way also share costs and parts of life. From day one "Skjutsgruppen" (the ridesharing group) was a movement. It had to be. Everyone participated since that was the very idea. You can't just talk about ridesharing, you need to act it out - to actually share. And you can't rideshare alone. We call it "direct action" and it comes with consequences that I will elaborate more about in my talk. To be truly participatory, to let everybody be a part of and have a voice in the movement. Not as customers, but as active participants. As a movement.