In Dialogue with Loomio & Enspiral
Moving Platform Cooperativism from Theory to Practice
Loomio is a platform for cooperative decision-making, built by a worker-owned co-op based in New Zealand. It’s part of the Enspiral network: a cooperative of entrepreneurs with a deep commitment to decentralising money, information and power in pursuit of radical social change. Join some of the worker-owners of the Loomio co-op for an inside look at some of the more mature experiments under the “Platform Cooperativism” umbrella. Together we’ll examine the lived experiences from Enspiral and Loomio, discovering lessons, challenges and opportunities for the Platform Cooperativism movement.
More about featured guests below
Richard D. Bartlett is one of the cofounders of Loomio, an open source software tool for collective decision-making. He's also a Catalyst at Enspiral: a decentralised network of freelancers that have been evolving their practice of commons-oriented peer-production since 2010. His background is in creative activism and DIY open source hardware. He's passionate about co-ownership, self-management, collaborative governance, and other ways of sneaking anarchism into respectable places. He writes at richdecibels.com
MJ Kaplan is a social entrepreneur and consultant who weaves across sectors to enable groups to align purpose and operationalize innovative collaborative practices. She splits her time working with Loomio, Kaplan Consulting, teaching/coaching at Brown University and serving on Social Enterprise Greenhouse and Commerce RI boards. She founded Kaplan Consulting in 2000, a networked consulting group that works globally with groups to gain clarity about shared purpose and to design innovative approaches to work that are deeply human-centered, agile and adaptive.
In 2013 MJ was Ian Axford Fulbright Fellow in New Zealand. MJ was awarded the Cordes Innovation Fellowship by Asoka U and honored as The Outstanding Mentor for RI Business Women Awards. MJ earned her M.Ed. from Harvard University and B.A. Brown University.
Natalia Lombardo is a co-owner of Loomio, a co-operative social enterprise building tools for collective decision-making. She helps groups to cultivate collaborative culture through values-driven behaviours. Her background is in community development through local action, permaculture, and creative activism. Born in Argentina, living in New Zealand: she’s a bilingual translator that loves to bridge cultures.