Recently I decided to fly halfway across the world to attend Open2017, a two-day conference on the emerging "Platform Cooperativism" movement. For those unfamiliar with the term, simply think 'online platforms + cooperatives'— or to put it another way, "what if Facebook was owned and goverened by the people who used it?".

My interest in platform co-ops came by way of my interest in crypto-economics, piqued specifically by Ethereum. Prior to that I had no real interest in economics or finance, but when confronted with a system which allowed value to be codified I was suddenly all ears. It seemed humanity had developed a system whereby values (as in real values; individual, social & community values rather than financial ones) could be encoded into economic systems. This could easily be a game-changer, I thought. The future seemed bright and interesting. (more)