The Loomio Blog

Platform cooperativism is the radical idea that the internet would do more good if its major properties were democratically owned and governed.

Guardian journalist Max Opray got in touch with us last week, while researching his article Could Online Democracy Lead To Governance By Trumps and Trolls? Online interactions are notorious for being hijacked by trolls, so he wanted to hear how we handle trolls at Loomio.

# We got a shout out at the White House! Loomio has been picked as part of a suite of tools promoted by Together We Work, a campaign to empower young workers to take collective action.

Rory Ridley-Duff is a reader in cooperatives and social enterprise at Sheffield Business School, director of Social Enterprise Europe, and founder of the FairShares Association. They use Loomio to model their governance structure online, for effective, equitable stakeholding.

We open source not only our software code, but our organisation too. Our impact mission is about democratic engagement, inclusive participation, and equitable collaboration, so that's how we work as a company internally.

MJ from Loomio caught up with DJ Johnson, professor of game development at the New England Institute of Technology, about how they're bringing out the best in their faculty through more online collaboration, and fewer meetings.

Brendan Tronconi of Trusty Amigos, a Dog Walking and Pet Care co-op in New York with 9 members, shares his experience starting a worker-owned business, collaborating with people who speak different languages, and working together effectively online and offline.

SolidFund is a grassroots commonwealth fund for worker co-op members. John Atherton talks about their aspirations and operations, and how using Loomio is helping them build the worker cooperative econoomy in the UK.

The latest news from Loomio… Join us at conferences in New Zealand and Indonesia, celebrating our upgraded navigation in the app, and a range of useful how-to's.

We’re super excited about contributing to the upcoming OS//OS open source, open society conference.

There have been some exciting new UX developments at Loomio HQ! We’ve listened to our user feedback, and added a Loomio sidebar to make the most important parts of the app easier to find. You’ll notice some changes to the user interface:

Organisations that adopt Holacracy often find it’s a big upgrade to their decision-making processes. But implementing Governance meetings is only the beginning of your self-management evolution.

New Zealand recently tightened up health and safety laws. Now businesses must have practices that give their workers opportunities to participate, on an ongoing basis, in improving health and safety.

## Our New Website is Live! We brought together everything we’ve learned about communicating the value of Loomio in a simple compelling way, and combined it with visually engaging illustrations. We’ve highlighted amazing stories of people using Loomio around the world, and made help content and other resources way easier to find.

The Welsh Government’s mission is to “help improve the lives of people in Wales and make our nation a better place in which to live and work”. One of the ways the National Assembly for Wales looks at how effectively the Welsh Government is doing its job is through committees.

Nati from Loomio had the chance to interview Stacco Troncoso, strategic director of the P2P Foundation and co-founder of Guerrilla Translation, a commons-oriented translation collective who is currently crowdfunding an innovative initiative called Think Global / Print Local.

Paul Stone, Programme Leader for Open Government Data at Land Information NZ, tells the story of how a consultation to develop a framework for consistent licensing of New Zealand Government open source software has been carried out successfully in an open and transparent manner.

The last few years have been quite a journey for Loomio. This is a story about navigating the world of startup financing to find ethical investment that works for a truly mission-driven tech company with big ambitions.

So, your group is actively using Loomio for discussions and decisions. Great! Now you’re ready to optimise your collaboration experience. There are some simple things you can do to make important information clear and accessible. Here are some useful tips and tricks we’ve learned from different Loomio groups.

Did you know? It's easy to create an icon for Loomio, or any other website you use often, on your phone’s home screen. It works a lot like all your other apps – even if the service doesn't offer a native mobile app.

We’ve reached the final step in the process of switching everyone over the the new and improved Loomio interface.

Since Loomio first launched, the team has been fielding requests from clients to help make the tool and collaborative processes work for them. In response, Loomio has offered consulting Services that discover needs, identify changes to work processes, and coach key team members to understand the magic and the practicality of Loomio’s mission: “Enabling everyone to have a say in decisions that affect them”.

It’s been devastating to watch as the conflict in Syria has escalated into the biggest humanitarian crisis of our generation. For those of us far away from the area, it’s frustrating not knowing how we can help. So when Rich from Loomio stumbled across an U.S. American activist working with Syrian refugees in Turkey, he reached out.

Alanna from Loomio met Vica Rogers in London, to learn more about her world of citizen education and activism. Vica was involved in the Occupy movement in the UK, and has continued working on related issues ever since. We took some time in Vica's back garden to hear about how group collaboration is helping citizens in her community organise around the issue of debt.

2016 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Loomio. Here are some highlights from the first few months.

Alanna from Loomio met Simon Sarazin in Berlin at “Capital for the Commons”, where Simon was presenting his work on uCoin, a project seeking to implement universal basic income through cryptocurrency. He took a break from hacking on economics to tell us how collaborative governance has transformed his co-working space in Lille, France.

Alanna from Loomio met Till Wolfer at POC21, a 6 week innovation camp in France focused on open source hardware for sustainability. Till was lending his expertise as an architect and designer. He stepped out for a moment to share how he collaborates back home with a 200-person artist collective occupying 12 buildings in Hamburg, Germany.

Alanna from Loomio met up with Michel Bauwens in Berlin, while both were participating in a conference about Capital for the Commons. They managed to slip out for a few minutes so Michel could tell Alanna about his experience using Loomio with the P2P Foundation, which he founded.