On growing a cooperative like you’d grow a garden

Rather, this is about creating ecosystems in which people are encouraged and supported, where they have access to tools and techniques, helpful organizational “recipes,” and examples of positive living so that they might move slowly but surely into themselves. It’s not magical and it doesn’t happen overnight, but in the right space and at the right... See more

I understand digital gardens as online spaces where many people are coming together to tend to seeds, which can be understood as content. The container that digital gardens are held in is a commitment to sustainability, pluralism, and cyclical growth. It entails adaptation and a culture of learning.

Having one foot in the platform cooperativism movement and another in the DAO space has been illuminating, and I have come to believe that both spheres are giving rise to valuable new tools when it comes to human organization, collective ownership, and cultural production. While it can sometimes seem like these innovations are happening in parallel... See more

Cooperative culture was largely formed as a way to help oppressed or financially disadvantaged people meet each other's basic needs. This is worth noting because there’s a disconnect between the historical roots of the cooperative movement and the way it’s showing up in the tech world at the moment, with whimsical projects like Constitution DAO get... See more

I know what makes people grow more reliably than anything else. It is: taking on a difficult project with some amount of public accountability. This can be large or small: a lecture series, a business, a blog, a house, a child, etc.