Public Services Lab Blog

A geeky unconference

Francesca Cignola - 13.06.2011

Picture alternative economists and complementary currency advocates talking about reinventing money, issues of governance and intertrading of alternative currencies.

Now picture software developers talking about open standards, APIs and using urls to define currencies and currency derivatives. Put the two together and you have a snapshot of the participants in Wednesday's unconference "Software Solutions for Society".

As the interest in timebanks and complementary currencies grows, the market for software platforms that support exchanges in timebanks, lets and local currencies is developing fast. Though these schemes are not just about technology - timebanks, lets, local money and collaborative consumption schemes sit in a continuum between "high touch" and "high tech" and the transactions they engender would not take place were it not for the sense of community and the fine alchemy of human interactions that underpin them - we believe that technology has an important role to play in supporting these schemes to scale.

With multiple software platforms developing in relative isolation, we felt it would be useful to bring together a group of people who run complementary currency schemes and design their software platforms to:

• Map existing solutions and offer a space for people to network and connect with each other
• Discuss how to avoid duplication of efforts and promote interoperability to support the growth and spread of complementary currency schemes

The outcomes of the day exceeded our most optimistic expectations: a group of software developers (working on CC Lite, Drupal, Cuprium and Open Transact) have agreed to develop a shared standard based on the Open Transact standard protocol, modify their software platforms to be compliant with the standard and work on developing software that will allow intertrading for complementary currencies.

Some serious networking was going on among delegates - with the unconference continuing spontaneously for a good hour after its "formal" close and spilling out into the pub. A number of platforms and initiatives were represented on the day including: People Who Share, Pebbles, LetsLINK, SPICE, Timebanking UK, Transition Network, Drupal, Open Transact, Slivers of Time, CCLite and Cuprium.

For more information and materials from the day visit the CCUnconference Wiki page.