IT for Change and Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC), along with Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council (K-DISC) co-organized the conference, ‘Roots of Resilience - Building Platform Cooperatives for Sustainable and Feminist Local Economies,’ which was conducted at the Kerala Arts and Crafts Village, Trivandrum, Kerala between 30 November - 2 December 2023.
The “Roots of Resilience” conference explores the potential of platform co-ops in promoting feminist futures, climate justice, and sustainable agriculture. Platform co-ops are democratically owned and governed digital platforms that provide a means for individuals and communities to cooperatively own and manage digital services. The conference aims to examine how these models can be leveraged to empower local collectives, self-help groups, producer organizations, worker collectives, etc.
Roots of Resilience was an inclusive and vibrant dialogic space where scholars, practitioners, and fellow travelers of the platform cooperativism movement reflect on new visions for a just and sustainable digital future, exploring new ways of working together, learning and unlearning, and contemplating cutting-edge institutional change. Participants used the space to peek into the exciting intersections between traditional community and cooperative institutions and new-age data cooperativism, focused on an alternative grammar of practice for the global South.
The Conference made space for innovative ideas (such as fair and sustainable design principles for alternative platform models). A blend of practitioner and theoretical perspectives, the Conference made space for women’s associations, farmer organizations, co-ops, self-help groups, students – to share and learn.
These discussions were grounded in themes such as food justice, regenerative agriculture, financing, public support, etc., – analyzing how community-embedded platform models can pave the way for a new economic future.
The conference showcased scholarly work on platform design and technical protocols, distributed cooperative organizations and emerging endeavors in the South that comprise public-community collaborations.
We aspire to build tech for a people and planet-centric future based on values of collaboration, cooperation, and solidarity.
Get the full details of the program here.
Watch the interviews of the different speakers here.
Watch the recording of the sessions from the conference here.
Read 'The Thiruvananthapuram Declaration on A New Innovation Ecosystem for Our Collective Digital Futures' here.