The Platform Coops NOW! course, now on its second edition, is a hands on program mixing theory and practice to introduce people to Platform Cooperativism. DisCOs are a very specific and future-minded iteration of Platform Coops so, for the second year running, we were invited to present our work to the community.
This time around it was DisCONaut Silvia López doing the honors through a rollicking and engaging introduction to the DisCOverse, its main features and our roadmap for the near future. Silvia’s talk followed by a Q&A with the full DisCO Crew.
From the original event description:
DisCO stands for Distributed Cooperative Organizations. It is a form of governance that advocates for radical workplace democracy, and is based on the Commons/P2P practices, feminist economics and, of course, the classic cooperative principles. DisCOs can also be seen as an alternative to DAOs, putting humans and human relationships in the center. After all, tech is never neutral!
We are currently developing the cultural resources to make DisCOs accessible to anyone — documenting our governance model, decision-making and communication best practices for distributed teams, convivial tools, community rhythms, mutual support practices and economic tools. However, the structure is also important to us at DisCO, and this is why we are also in the process of developing the DisCO Stack, starting with our value-tracking platform, the DisCO Deck. We measure our contributions using three streams of value, so as to dignify the creation of Commons and carework in the collective, while providing a livelihood for its members.
The DisCO governance model is the cristallisation of our lived experiences in Guerrilla Media Collective (best known for the Guerrilla Translation pages, which you can also visit in English and Spanish). Our international, distributed team was and is still a testing ground for DisCO governance. I have been a member and fellow Guerrilla translator since late 2018, and now I am also a part of the DisCO team as the project continues to grow and we are able to share what we have learnt with others.
If you want to find out more about DisCO before the 18th, here is a longer overview: Last Night A Distributed Cooperative Organization Saved My Life: A brief introduction to DisCOs. The best thing about DisCO is that anyone can do it!
We have also released the first two parts of the DisCO Trilogy: the Manifesto and the Elements. The last one, our DisCO PinkPaper, will get more into the nitty-gritty of the tech and will be released soon. Stay tuned!
We’re really happy to make this presentation in the Platform Co-ops Now! Course and will be looking forward to seeing you in a week.