Stories.
DisCO Governance, Syncretic Economies and Economic LARPs
What does DisCO governance accomplish? It encourages and rewards all types of work: care, love and livelihood. It values forms of power to act and highlights effective and movement building work, which is often hidden. It optimally balances the workload to avoid activist burnout. It creates community empowered platforms for sustainable activism.
Strategizing with Love, Intentionality, and Presence: DisCO Remastered 2023
In September of 2023 we gathered a diverse cohort of activists, technologists, researchers and musicians to explore this question. We asked ourselves:
1) What technologies do we want less of?
2) What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist technology look like?
3) What if tech was more like music?
Time to Learn Some Basic DisCO Moves!
"So, even if youâre a sassy quadruped like me, this comprehensive overview will help you follow the rhythm pretty easily. However, getting familiar with the moves does require practice. But donât despair, if you have some sardines to spare, Iâm more than happy to guide you."
All aboard! The New DisCO Website is Live
Welcome to the new DisCO Website! Here to accompany you through the Burning 20âs and beyond. Also features the DisCO Basics - our new interactive introduction to DisCO.
Dancing on Moss â DisCO Underground Regenerative Economix
A journey into solarpunk, lunarpunk, and twilight, reflecting on governance and self-organisation in times of dire social and economic need. Let's envision transformative resilience from the very decay of values in the current dominant system.
Carework: the heart of good governance
In many organizations, workers are in such a hurry to meet their individual goals, which are often tied to their income, that they don't see it as strategic to move the stone out of the way for the next person who walks by. Although a system of individual results promotes efficiency in operations, it often does not reserve time or energy to write down what has already been done to generate collective learning.
All Your DAOs Are Belong to Us - The DisCO CAT Speaks
This epic interview with myself, the DisCO CAT, was originally published in Radical Friends â Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts edited by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty. Go buy three copies now and enjoy this exclusive director's cut of my purr-tastic diatribes.
What a year, hoomans!
The New Orbit is just around the corner and we thought it would be thoughtful and nice to offer you faithful hooman readers a little recap on all things DisCO, especially those things that werenât included in previous issues of the newsletter. So, consider this a chance to get a glimpse behind the curtains⊠(cat-damn maze of curtains, once got lost there for half a dayâŠ!)
Love in the Middle of a Firefight: DisCO's most played tracks of 2022
In a world of vectorial succubi worse than capitalism, where a badly scripted Bond supervillain with a phallic rocket fixation welcomes fascists to networks which ought to be commons based and peer produced, where 80-hour work weeks and bunking in the office are the new normal⊠who wouldn't want to âquiet quitâ or just flat-out quit and move on? We have to rebel, we have to dance and, as much as we're able, also rest, gather and conserve strength.
Decentralised Governance: either a collective learning journey or no journey at all!
We want to build healthy cultures for regenerative organisations, alternative ownership models and equitable governance design, developing better tools, solutions & infrastructure for these models, ethical marketing and growth for good and regenerative practices for self-care.
Strategizing with Love, Intentionality, and Presence: DisCO Remastered 2023
In September of 2023 we gathered a diverse cohort of activists, technologists, researchers and musicians to explore this question. We asked ourselves:
1) What technologies do we want less of?
2) What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist technology look like?
3) What if tech was more like music?
All aboard! The New DisCO Website is Live
Welcome to the new DisCO Website! Here to accompany you through the Burning 20âs and beyond. Also features the DisCO Basics - our new interactive introduction to DisCO.
Dancing on Moss â DisCO Underground Regenerative Economix
A journey into solarpunk, lunarpunk, and twilight, reflecting on governance and self-organisation in times of dire social and economic need. Let's envision transformative resilience from the very decay of values in the current dominant system.
Carework: the heart of good governance
In many organizations, workers are in such a hurry to meet their individual goals, which are often tied to their income, that they don't see it as strategic to move the stone out of the way for the next person who walks by. Although a system of individual results promotes efficiency in operations, it often does not reserve time or energy to write down what has already been done to generate collective learning.
Love in the Middle of a Firefight: DisCO's most played tracks of 2022
In a world of vectorial succubi worse than capitalism, where a badly scripted Bond supervillain with a phallic rocket fixation welcomes fascists to networks which ought to be commons based and peer produced, where 80-hour work weeks and bunking in the office are the new normal⊠who wouldn't want to âquiet quitâ or just flat-out quit and move on? We have to rebel, we have to dance and, as much as we're able, also rest, gather and conserve strength.
Decentralised Governance: either a collective learning journey or no journey at all!
We want to build healthy cultures for regenerative organisations, alternative ownership models and equitable governance design, developing better tools, solutions & infrastructure for these models, ethical marketing and growth for good and regenerative practices for self-care.
The Open Source Conspiracy
DisCOs are educational forms in interstitial spaces. They are syncretic in that theyâre compatible with structures which can embed into the current world economy, but are also ready to abandon it at a momentâs notice to strengthen an emerging one. In the time of monsters where new worlds struggle to be born, DisCOs are an Open Source Conspiracy for functioning, collapse-ready, and future-proof economies.
Not about me; all about âweâ
I was shocked, thrilled, but also scared to death in Brussels when we - around 65 people - were asked to engage in games that, little by little, revealed ourselves as humans, activists, thinkers. Little by little we peeled away our fears, allowed ourselves to be vulnerable and make real connections with people we may never have otherwise met.
Meet the New Bros - Same as the Old Bros?
This essay unpacks the oft-touted liberatory potential of decentralized and Web 3.0 technologies. We decode the ways in which these technologies and their underlying philosophy are being co-opted into speculative vehicles for financial gain by exploiting anti-institutional sentiment and a powerful and pervasive literacy deficit that is structural in nature.
Inevitable Decay: Feeding the Soul of DisCOs and the Emerging Economy
As the individualistic paradigm slowly decomposes, the chance occurs for a very organic and holistic paradigm to emerge from the decay, designed to fulfill needs that cannot be met under the current economic structure which does not consider said needs within its system, but instead as external to it.
Time to Learn Some Basic DisCO Moves!
"So, even if youâre a sassy quadruped like me, this comprehensive overview will help you follow the rhythm pretty easily. However, getting familiar with the moves does require practice. But donât despair, if you have some sardines to spare, Iâm more than happy to guide you."
What a year, hoomans!
The New Orbit is just around the corner and we thought it would be thoughtful and nice to offer you faithful hooman readers a little recap on all things DisCO, especially those things that werenât included in previous issues of the newsletter. So, consider this a chance to get a glimpse behind the curtains⊠(cat-damn maze of curtains, once got lost there for half a dayâŠ!)
We've received a transmission from a better future, but we need your help to decode it!
The DisCO CAT is honored to inform you that our Mothership will land on Amsterdam on November 26th for the 6th Envisioning Free Space 2022 Conference. Along with the amazing crews from SODAA, Guerrilla Media Collective and Space of Urgency that have already embarked upon our DisCO Journey.
DisCO news! Event in London & Radical Friends book launch!
Join DisCOnauts Sofia Bustamante, Irene López de Vallejo and Stacco Troncoso at Newspeak House on Friday, July 8th to get the DisCO basics, get the lowdown on where the DisCO project is at, and dance! We'll co-create scenarios on how to apply DisCOs and what a DisCO-fied future looks like.
DisCO CAT PRIDE đ
We started the year with a healthy blend of good intentions and reality checks, mostly landing on our feet and with a fair bit of hard road now behind us. Weâve also spent a few of our lives trying to get past some considerable obstacles. But as you know, not even a closed door can shut out a capable CAT.
Stuck at home? Want to start a revolution? đ„
Whatever holidays youâre celebrating, letâs please all gather âround the virtual fire and watch 2020 burn itself out, not with a bang but a whimper. In the spirit of dreaming of more convivial times to come, we offer the following texts to read, reflect on and get inspired for what's next.
Where's my future? Where's yours?
The DisCO Team*, along with our sisters at Geeks Without Bounds, (GWOB) are happy to announce that weâve received support from the US-based Grant For The Web, led by a council including Coil, Creative Commons, and Mozilla.
DisCO Governance, Syncretic Economies and Economic LARPs
What does DisCO governance accomplish? It encourages and rewards all types of work: care, love and livelihood. It values forms of power to act and highlights effective and movement building work, which is often hidden. It optimally balances the workload to avoid activist burnout. It creates community empowered platforms for sustainable activism.
All Your DAOs Are Belong to Us - The DisCO CAT Speaks
This epic interview with myself, the DisCO CAT, was originally published in Radical Friends â Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts edited by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty. Go buy three copies now and enjoy this exclusive director's cut of my purr-tastic diatribes.
Movement is the message: a conversation with DisCO
"Our view of economics is that itâs a field that has been abstracted, given away to technocrats. But I think thereâs an art to it, thereâs a magic to it. What is this thing called money that can mobilise billions of people to do certain things, and not do other things, and rewards certain things and doesnât reward others? In DisCO we wanted to go just beyond what was logically feasible to what was emotionally feasible, and thatâs one of the great potencies of music."
Las DisCO ya estĂĄn aquĂ y quieren cambiar el futuro del trabajo.
Esta es la transcripciĂłn de una entrevista de radio realizada a las DisCOnautas Irene LĂłpez de Vallejo y Sara Escribano por Pamela Carmona para el programa Defensa Personal, el programa de resistencias y movimientos sociales de Radio Nopal.
Guerrilla Translation, DisCOs & the marketplace
Stacco Troncoso talks with Owen Kelly about the work of the group, and the ways in which they see the structure of their group as a vital part of its practice. They have developed a model of governance that guides their practice while acting as an example that others might build upon.
If I Only Had a Heart: Accounting for Care Work in Organizations
In this conversation with Nathan Schneider, Stacco Troncoso explains how the model works and how it challenges norms, both in familiar workplaces and in techno-utopian visions.
DisCOs Dancing Together: Value Flows and Future Economies
Lisha Sterling is the executive director at Geeks Without Bounds, a USA, non-profit, humanitarian organization of technologists, first responders, policymakers, and volunteers who work toward improving access to communication and technology.
On Return to the Commons & Digital Distributed Carework. Interview with Stacco Troncoso
In this interview with Stacco Troncoso, co-author of the DisCO Manifesto, we talk about the role of decommodification, return to the commons and radical workplace democracy, in practice.
Deliberate Dancing: A Critical Investigation of DisCOsâ Potential to Re-Politicize the Economy
We are honored to present Deliberate Dancing: A Critical Investigation of DisCOsâ Potential to Re-Politicize the Economy. The thesis analyses DisCO's from a political economy perspective and a Polanyian framing.
DisCO Governance, Syncretic Economies and Economic LARPs
What does DisCO governance accomplish? It encourages and rewards all types of work: care, love and livelihood. It values forms of power to act and highlights effective and movement building work, which is often hidden. It optimally balances the workload to avoid activist burnout. It creates community empowered platforms for sustainable activism.
Strategizing with Love, Intentionality, and Presence: DisCO Remastered 2023
In September of 2023 we gathered a diverse cohort of activists, technologists, researchers and musicians to explore this question. We asked ourselves:
1) What technologies do we want less of?
2) What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist technology look like?
3) What if tech was more like music?
Love in the Middle of a Firefight: DisCO's most played tracks of 2022
In a world of vectorial succubi worse than capitalism, where a badly scripted Bond supervillain with a phallic rocket fixation welcomes fascists to networks which ought to be commons based and peer produced, where 80-hour work weeks and bunking in the office are the new normal⊠who wouldn't want to âquiet quitâ or just flat-out quit and move on? We have to rebel, we have to dance and, as much as we're able, also rest, gather and conserve strength.
Decentralised Governance: either a collective learning journey or no journey at all!
We want to build healthy cultures for regenerative organisations, alternative ownership models and equitable governance design, developing better tools, solutions & infrastructure for these models, ethical marketing and growth for good and regenerative practices for self-care.
Get DisCO! Ann Marie Utratel and Stacco Troncoso at the Metagov Seminar
This edition of the Metagovernance Seminar features Ann Marie Utratel and Stacco Troncoso giving an overview of DisCO, highlighting the need for person to person relationality as the baseline for designing coded, algorithmic, governance tools and practices.
DisCO at Platform Coops NOW!
Silvia LĂłpez from the DisCO.coop gives a rocking presentation on the origins of DisCO, its main features and roadmap for the near future.
Stacco Troncoso | Who Owns the World? Platform Cooperativism, The New School University Center
2019's Who Owns the World? The State of Platform Cooperativism was the most international gathering of its kind. The event summoned scholars and founders of platform cooperatives â businesses that use a website, mobile app, or protocol to sell goods or services while relying on democratic decision-making and shared ownership of the platform by workers and users.
DisCO.coop - Ann Marie Utratel, The Future of Distributed Work | Radical Practice Conference 2020/21
In the midst of building ârecovery plansâ, we argue we need to design âlong emergencyâ development models to achieve this different future.
Uninspired by bullshit jobs? Make your own DisCO
Uninspired by bullshit jobs? Tired of working for absentee shareholders and investors? While many of us are leaving our workplaces to create better models and methods of governance and value distribution, the devil is in the details.
DisCOs Dancing Together: Value Flows and Future Economies
Lisha Sterling is the executive director at Geeks Without Bounds, a USA, non-profit, humanitarian organization of technologists, first responders, policymakers, and volunteers who work toward improving access to communication and technology.