Wouter Tebbens

Wouter Tebbens is an industrial engineer born and raised in The Netherlands working from Barcelona. He works for a knowledge society based in human freedom, solidarity, care and regeneration through commons-cooperative networks. Hes co-founded and participates in various cooperatives and social organisations.

In the 2000s he set up the Free/Libre and Open Source working group of the Internet Society Netherlands, co-founded the Free Knowledge Institute and coordinated two European Commission funded projects: the SELF project and the Free Technology Academy and participated in various others.

In the last decade he participated in Som Energia, the Spanish renewable energy cooperative; the School of the Commons Barcelona; was part of the p2p value research team studying >300 cases of commons-based p2p internet platforms; participated in the Digital DIY project on legal, ethical and economic aspects related to digital fabrication and DIY; co-founded The Things Network Catalonia and ran various pilots and projects with various municipalities around sensor data through the community network.

In order to seek sustainability for commons-oriented initiatives he conceived the Five Pillar model. In the context especially of la Comunificadora, a programme from Barcelona City to help teams create their commons-collaborative economy project, this model was developed further as the core organising model with specific canvases and workshop methodologies.

Wouter was one of the artifices behind the creation of the cooperative femProcomuns and helped create the initial projects and move them from under the wings of the FKI to the cooperative, including CommonsCloud, the open community network for the Internet of Things and the commons transition group.

More recently he is an operational member of The Online Meeting Cooperative (meet.coop) and works in various projects to advance a commons-cooperative-regenerative vision.