On the 1st of December in the morning, about 30 people came together to hear and discuss about Cooperation at Scale.
I organized the event with the support of DigitYser (@rmdes @oliiive), community members (@soenke) and Edgeryders (@MariaEuler @nadia). And people registered to the event via Eventbrite.
The event was live-streamed and also recorded.
We also had the pleasure to have short video-interviews with the speakers: one interview was with Michel Bauwens and another one with Liliana Carrillo, Dick Van Gelder, and Anna Melenchuk
And I am personally happy to have a promotional video for coming events.
After the event, I have wanted to keep the conversation on going, and I have sent an eventbrite message to the participants and speakers to invite them to share their thoughts and feelings about the event.
Via this post, I want to become the example. By sharing my thoughts and feelings about the ‘Cooperation at Scale’ event in Brussels, I hope that others (participants and speakers) get inspired and find the courage and time to also share their thoughts and feelings and in this way augment our Collective Intelligence! 
Here we go, questions and answers:
Tell us about yourself. What are you working on, and why were you at the event ‘Cooperation at Scale’?
I organized this event and attended it because I am passionate about Collective Intelligence, and cooperation is one of the branches of it.
At the moment I work as a freelancer, a digital/social entrepreneur and a researcher focus on Collective Intelligence matters: coordination (adhoc communities, coordinating collective actions), cooperation (networks of trust, open source software, peer-to-peer business) and Cognition (market judgment, predictions of future events in politics/technology).
What was the key question you came to the event with?
My key question was/is: Are we aware of how competition is embedded in our systems (educational, social, financial,…)? What do we need to change to create a more collaborative world? Can we change our mindset from competition to collaboration?
What did you expect to learn from this event?
I wanted to hear about the commons, peer-to-peer cooperation, and technologies than can support this to scale, as Holochain. Also, I felt curious to hear about intellectual property that supports collaboration, and where people feel safe to share knowledge and ideas.
And, I was very motivated to learn from the participants and their projects, connect with others around the topic of Cooperation at Scale, and the next generation internet that supports this to happen.
Did you learn what you expected? Have you heard something new? Something that you liked? disliked?
I learned about a lot of new things but nothing really in deep. I need to do more self-study and attend more events, and also organize more events.
Interesting things I learned from some participants:
I heard about new projects and initiatives. For example, @friedger organizes meetups on the topic of Digital Human Rights and via his page, he also shares about other interesting events related to data ownership, digital rights, human rights, digital twins.
From Kris, I heard about the CommonsStack initiative, and I would like to hear more about it.
And, I wish to have heard more from other participants, and to connect in general more. For a next time, I will add some active moments to connect, for example at the beginning of the event we could have introduced ourselves, or during the event there could have been a moment for a fishbowl activity to exchange knowledge and learn from the participants.
But for now, I hope that I can hear more about the participants via email or via this platform as I wish to connect more with everyone who attended the event.
Interesting things I learned from the speakers:
From myself - I enjoyed sharing why I organized the event, and my main interest on collective intelligence, and also on democracy, and how technologies can allow us to cooperate in real time globally, something that is impossible to do in real life on one physical location, a question of scalability, viability.
From Michel Bauwens - His talk inspired me a lot as I heard of cities like Ghent with transition platforms ‘Gent en Garde’ around common management of food strategies and local policies.
His talk also triggered me to study new technologies, and compare them, and also to be more critical about them. I was intrigued to hear that blockchain technologies are based on competitive games, not on cooperative ones, and that they tend to create ecosystems based on extraction. I definitely want to learn more about it and do my own research on this.
From Anna Melenchuck - I liked to hear about governance initiatives that are connecting citizens and governments in an easier way. For example the EU lobby bot and E-Women platform developed at the Institute of Innovative Governance and European Digital Development Alliance.
From the Panel on Intellectual Property - I was surprised and also confused to hear that we all have the right to copy. It was curious to hear the different approaches to copying, for example copy-right, copy-left, copy-fare, creative commons and other kids of licences.
I heard that patents are very expensive and that they are somehow also ‘stopping/blocking’ innovation for about 20 years from the time of issuing.
I learned that basically if we don’t go for patents we have to compete and be very fast in the market to show that we are the first to innovate. I liked hearing about copy-fare and how we could feel safe to share our knowledge and even get financially compensated when someone uses the knowledge in a commercial way. For me, it was interesting to hear that CreaFree is working on this.
There are some aspects I did not like from the panel. I have to say that I found it a bit messy, and there is room for improvement. For a next time, I will support the panelists to have more regular calls before the panel, and get better connected with the moderator. At this event, the moderator had a preference for free sharing of knowledge and was fully against copyright, and I found his attitude towards some of the panelist a bit disrespectful, as some of the panelist were lawyers with knowledge about patents and copyright.
I am not sure if others experienced the panel like that, or if this was my own impression. It would be interesting to hear the experience of others related to the panel.
From Raphi See - I liked to hear a bit about Holochain and its ecosystem of projects and ventures, even though time was not enough to hear in deep about Holochain. I heard that this technology can support us to get organized in different and varied ways and I am curious to learn more about it. Raphi mentioned about some of the projects/ventures in the Holochain ecosystem: Holo, Junto, humm, sacred capital, AllianceBlock, orion. And, we got invited to join the Holochain forum and get over there to learn more about the project, as well as follow the tutorials prepared by the team.
What was the key takeaway from the day?
Cooperation is possible and there are many initiatives contributing to this, but… there is still a lot of work to do to create a global cooperative/collaborative system. Initiatives are too fragmented, and there is a need to build bridges among them, connect different actors.
What would you like to learn more in deep at the next event?
Wow! I love learning! and I would like to learn a lot more about all the initiatives working towards cooperation/collaboration at scale: social, digital, economics, infrastructure, policy,…
Step by step, I will personally contribute to this by organizing events to show several of the initiatives that I know, and I hope to contribute to build bridges, and connections among the initiatives.
Probably, the next event that I will organize will be focus on Holochain and its ecosystem. And then the next one will be about ‘Peer-to-Peer and the Commons’.
I wonder what others would like to hear next to start planning the events…
What do I see as the single largest challenge for cooperation at scale?
Fragmentation of initiatives. We need to build bridges.
What single thing would you want to see that supports you to cooperate/collaborate more with others?
Systemic change at economic level as the current system is based on competition.
What would be your message to others who did not attend this event?
If you have landed to this page, probably you are already interested on cooperation/collaboration at scale, and probably you know about initiatives that are contributing to this. Please leave your comment on this page, and share your knowledge. Let’s augment our collective intelligence!