The Loomio Blog

Richard Telford heard about Loomio from a friend at a local food swap in Seymor, Australia. His friend happened to be Carl Scarse, who several weeks ago posted this on our Facebook page: Carl and Richard know each other through the Intentional Community, Commonground, where Richard lived for about five years. The community began in the 80s in response to a need for support, resources and networks for social change activists. Today, Commonground is a co-operatively living community of activists and people concerned with living lightly on the earth, sharing resources, and supporting social change groups. Rather cool.

Rich has been described as “an engineer turned artist turned activist” and is one of the original forces behind Loomio. He recently gave a talk on Internet and Identity at Victoria University, so with that juicy bit of content we thought he was the perfect and timely opener for our spotlight on our people. Name: Richard D. Bartlett Age: 28, which is like a granddad in internet time Title: Director of Autonomy (Richard assures us this is true and not just made up for the interview) Team: Richard jumps between the code and community team ## Why did you get involved with Loomio? I have a background in open source hardware (as Rich Decibels) and creative community organising (with Concerned Citizens Collective). I got swept up in the Occupy movement when it arrived in Wellington in 2011. I’ve always been pretty concerned about the so-called ‘wicked problems’ facing society: runaway climate change, resource depletion, ecosystem collapse, and the pervading sense of alienation throughout society… This Occupy experience totally transformed my view on all that – it was the first time I’ve ever really had any hope for the future. My participation in that movement lead me to believe that there’s no problem that can’t be solved by an engaged community of empathetic equals. Occupy totally changed my life, and my hope is that Loomio can make that transformative experience much more sustainable, and accessible to millions of other people.

Thanks to everyone for making our launch party totally magical! Here's a video of Rich and Vivien presenting some of the Loomio story, supported by an international cast of contributors: Loomio launch party - timeline presentation from Enspiral on Vimeo. Click through for some magnificent party photos from Mark Russell (mark@adventureartists.co.nz):

We are excited to announce that after 15 months of hard work, we’re finally launching publicly! The team has put a huge amount of time, passion and effort into this moment. But more importantly, we have been supported by an incredible community of courageous early-adopting users – all kinds of inspiring groups doing amazing things all over the world.

Our campaign on PledgeMe has reached its goal, and more! We can't thank our generous supporters enough for throwing their inspiring energy and hard-won cash behind this project.