[iDC] Introduction

[Fuster, Mayo]

Hello! Hola!

Here my short introduction to the e-list. Looking forward a fruitful discussion on the e-list. 

I am Mayo Fuster Morell from Barcelona living in Florence. But this week at Boston.

I am doing a doctoral research on the “Governance of online creation communities for the building of digital commons” (at the European University Institute – Florence). I analyzed the role of providers of platforms of participation and extracted several governance models according the type of provider and the relationship established between the providers and the community of participants/users (in terms of distribution of functions, ownership and authority). Finally, I try to explain how the model of providers affect the community growth and the type of cooperation generated. I did a large-N statistical analysis and case study comparison. My case studies comparison were based on a comercial service-oriented case (Yahoo for Flickr), a self-provision case (Social forums memory project) and an hybrid (partly open party close) case (Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia). More info on the research at www.onlinecreation.info

Then I am part of Networked-Politics.info a collaborative research on new forms of political organizing and I am organizer of the First international forum on free culture and knowledge which will take place at Barcelona at the end of this month (Oct 29 to Niv 1 2009 http://www.fcforum.net). The Forum congregates active organizations and individuals to discuss and action organize. The transversal working lines of the Forum program are: Organizational logic and political implications of free culture; Legal perspectives and users's access; Education and knwoledge management; Economies, New p2p models and sustainable distribution; and Free solfware and technical infrastructure.

On the Playground and Factory conference issue, I tend to think that the appropriation of value generated collectively at participative platforms and the obtainance of profit benefits from by private companies is an important question that is not present at the “mainstream” discourse although it is a very important part of the picture. In this regard, further analyse on how this happen and how to reverse it (as the conference on Playground and Factory propose to do) is an important question. But to build a discourse that reduced the phenomenon of participative platforms to the exploitation (0.1) point as a response is not useful. I think we need to integrate the analysis with other aspects (such as, the reduce of the role of intermediators, the major empowerment of users/participants due to an increase of dependency on them in their role of producers, etc) and to direct the discussion towards what forms would be an appropriate one. In other words: What governance forms of collaboration online (in terms of legal bodies, ownership solutions, organizational principles etc) would not favor private appropriation of value? Or what would be a (sustainable and trustable outside our networks) social economy alternative to Facebook?