Festive greetings from Digital Commons
Hi everyone
We’re wrapping up a busy year at DCC. Before we all head off for a rest, we wanted to share some of what we’ve learned this year!
Data for housing justice
Thanks to everyone who came to the launch of our data for housing justice report (which you can read here!). Check out the recording of the launch here. This was our first substantial research project, led by the brilliant Samanthi, and we’ve learned loads. Some of the highlights are:
We were able to pay people for their time in being part of the research, and while this isn’t ground breaking news, it really helped galvanise interest and bring people along. We will definitely integrate the principle of paying for people’s time into future research projects.
People on the ground are already working in a super-systemic way. Housing struggles are interlinked, and while we held themed workshops for this work, most organisers are working across multiple challenges.
Explicitly describing ourselves as a community tech organisation but being very clear that we knew that “tech” might not be the answer was helpful. There is scope for both digital and non digital solutions, and demand for both. This “tech sceptical” approach has been part of DCC since the beginning, but this was the first time we had made it so explicit.
Framing “data” as “information” was useful, in that it helped us get more ideas and contributions. It did mean that there was some repetition in the workshops, but it still felt that we got more than if we had solely focussed on data and digital solutions.
There was a key area of learning about the hand off between research outputs and the development of sufficiently detailed technical briefs. This intersection between research and the development of tech tools is something we are keen to explore further.
We’re hoping to continue this work in the new year - and would love to hear from people who’d like to work with us to take forward any of this (particularly the briefs set out in the report) - drop us a line by replying to this email.
Land Explorer and making it easy to find out who owns what
The difficulty of understanding who owns what is a common challenge across various land-based movements. We’ve been evaluating how to make the land ownership search on landexplorer.coop work better, and have come up with a nifty way of “backwards searching” so you can explore what other property a landowner owns.
You can set up and account and explore the land around you at landexplorer.coop, and find out more about how the tech works here. To demonstrate the public benefit of making this data accessible we aim to collect as many stories as we can of ways that this data has had community benefit. To share your story of how you are using LandExplorer, please fill in this quick form.
MykoMaps and mapping connections
Things have been busy behind the scenes, working with our partners DotCooperation, running pilots of our Coops Connect project, to create better maps and directories of the global cooperative movement. We’ve also been using our MykoMaps technology for more local applications, integrating MykoMaps with different CRM systems for workers.coop and the good folks of Owned by Oxford. The results of all this work will be rolled out in 2024, so watch this space!
We’re also excited to welcome back Rohit into the team working on LandExplorer, and bid a fond and grateful farewell to John as he moves onto new projects.
With all best wishes for a restful winter break!
Colm, Kate, Lynne, Samanthi, Marcel, John, Rohit and the rest of the team