Cooperation Commons

“More people pooling more resources in new ways is the history of civilisation” – or so says Howard Rheingold who spoke at ‘Mass Collaboration’ last night at NESTA together with Mark Earls, author of Herd.

It was thoroughly enjoyable and informative evening – we covered a lot of ground from cooperation between hunter gathers to the global shift towards collaboration due to the increasing influence of non-western economies. And yet the whole evening felt light-hearted and fun, with a diverse and engaged crowd. It was my favourite event I’ve been involved with in my 10 months at NESTA and hopefully the start of an interesting new dimension to our work in developing NESTA Connect.

We could have filled the room several times over despite only minimal word of mouth promotion which is a tribute to the reputation of our speakers. Several people said to me beforehand that in meeting Howard, they were meeting a ‘hero’, and the same goes for me. Cooperation Commons is an amazing resource and has been a big influence on us in developing our work. There are lot’s of blog posts appearing today on the subject which is gratifying. Webcasts of the whole event (including a Mexican wave involving the entire audience) are on the NESTA website here.  Audio of both Mark and Howard's presentations are also available from here.