Status of the FKI, 2013-2018

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In the last few years the FKI has evolved a lot, and done a lot. This article give an overview of what we have done, and where we are going:

  • Marco joined the Board in 2013
  • Marco and Wouter have been working on the domain of Open Source Hardware, especially in the context of the Digital DIY project.
  • In 2016 David and Mònica joined to form with Wouter the FKI team in Catalonia. In 2017 they set up the association FKIcat based in BCN. We now have teams in AMS, Rome and BCN. David Jacovkis has limited time available to do some systems support. Hinde has limited time available to dedicate to financial reporting in EC projects and the general treasury of the foundation.
  • Teixidora, the project invented and coordinated by Mònica and David is growing in toolset and usage. It has very good potential to be replicated in other countries and become part of the default toolset of commoners everywhere.
  • We have developed a framework for analysis of business or sustainability models to take a practical approach of studying cases with “commons economy business models”, to widen our focus from the Knowledge sharing pillar to also cover Governance, Modes of Production, Revenue Strategies focused on User Centred Design. Our framework is being tested in workshops and particularly in La Comunificadora 2.
  • With dotCommons we have developed a vision, EU alliance and highly valued EC proposal – but unfortunately not yet funded – to network “transition programmes to commonify the economy”. It focuses on the Commons Collaborative Economy, Platform Cooperativism and the Open Source Circular Economy, all increasingly relevant strategic lines of work of their own.
  • Junto a Thais Lloret (socia fundadora de femProcomuns) hemos estado contactando con municipios del área metropolitana de Barcelona para desarrollar programas de impulso socioeconómico basados en la colaboración, el procomún y la autogestión de los participantes, a partir de la hibridación de la experienca de La Comunificadora y de La Colaboradora de Zaragoza, en la línea estratégica de dotCommons y con la idea des ser replicable y formar una red.
  • La Comunificadora la hemos producido con LabCoop y nos han hecho una propuesta de intercooperación para 2018.
  • Tenemos contactos con gente interesada en al línea Comunificadora/dotCommons en Canarias (Tenerifa y Gran Canaria), Valencia, Patagonia Argentina.
  • In BCN we are founding members of the integral platform coop femProcomuns, both individually (Monica, David, Wouter) as institutionally, as FKIcat. This coop can become an important legal-economic layer for many of the projects that we could help promote and a social base to expand our ecosystem, first in Barcelona, but then also on an international scale.
  • The FTA continues to receive requests for collaboration or participation by learners, but we lack a clear vision and strategy for it. > Strategy To Be Defined.
  • FKIcat has won 2 public procurement rounds in the end of 2017:
    • La Comunificadora 2 (30.900€): which we co-produce with LabCoop and in collaboration with the Dimmons research group of the Open University of Catalunya (UOC) and the Goteo Foundation.
    • A series of workshops on Platform Cooperativism (1950€)
  • FKIcat has been awarded 2 subsidies from the municipality of Barcelona (Nov 2017-2018) that cover up to 80% of the costs of each project:
    • Set up of an economic self-management platform based on Odoo for femProcomuns and run co-creation workshops with other cooperatives to identify how they could benefit from such platform (6.000€).

Pilot of The Things Network Barcelona (50.000€) that includes the 1) deployment of 20 gateways with 20 makerspaces and social org’s who cofund their local network; 2) community training workshops; 3) social empowerment workshops (to identify the needs of social org’s that could be addressed with community IoT); 4) 2 social hackatons where we’ll bring together all engaged participants from the previous activities to work together on solving a social challenge from the social org’s.