Antony McMullen and Sonja Schulze from 888 Co-operative Causeway organised this particular event for Basil’s Table just before 2023. Which is an interview series conducted by Basil Varghese, a well-known Melbourne- based community builder and advocate for social justice, who has long been committed to ‘bridging the gap between those that have and have not’. As a Patron of 888 Co-operative Causeway, Basil hosts these conversations with special guests online or at the Kelvin Club in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD on topics relevant to building a connected community across Victoria Australia.

The event called "sheet: Building co-operative futures in the tech bros era" was a panel where the the cooperative community took stock on the year of 22022 and what to expect for the future. The Designing Open Democracy community believe this will be of interest to the wider democracy community because of the need to encourage democratic structures in not just the governmental level but in the workplace as well.

In addition – there will be a very special announcement – regarding an opportunity to join the 888 co-operative as part of a broader exciting initiative with a major university.

Have the tech-bros got all the answers? With the passing of Deliveroo, and Twitter appearing to slowly die like the proverbial canary in the coal mine (or alternatively morphing into a bird of prey) many are looking for new ways of organising and owning the platforms we use – to build stronger local community relationships for social, economic, and environmental resilience.

Event Reference: https://www.888causeway.coop/event/the-feeling-is-mutual-the-future-of-cooperation-in-a-time-of-uncertainty/

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Austin was previously working in the Journalism space when he saw an issue of the loss of trust in media. When you read a newspaper or watch a documentary, how do you understand or trust how Journalist obtained and researched the subject at hand?  As a fellow democracy innovator he seeks to create tools and apps to provide Journalist and media companies with the ability to provide a transparent and public verifiable trail of the journalistic journey that helped to create media pieces. 

You can check out his project at https://www.writeinstone.com/ . 

This is a joint Designing Open Democracy and Innovation Trademarked interview of Austin and his Write In Stone PTY company. Which is of interest to us due to his apps potential contribution to the intersection between democracy and innovative technology startups tackling real cracks in the current social fabric of many nations around the world.  Listen to learn more about how his tool may one day come to power a media outlet near you.

Recorded on 2021-07-31

After a few years it is about time to catch up with Adam Jacoby, founder of MiVote. MiVote is a collaborative decision making and voting platform that aims to give the entire public a say in parliament. In this interview we aim to learn more about how MiVote has progressed after a few years and what success and stumbling blocks this project has encountered that can apply for other democracy innovation projects.  

Referenced Links:  https://mivote.tech/ 

Note that this was intended to be a one to one interview with Adam Jacoby, but on the day of the interview a lockdown was declared due to the ongoing worldwide pandemic hitting Melbourne Australia. Thus recording was done via video conferencing and was partially redubbed on my side to account for a live recording audio glitch.

Recorded on 2021-07-20