Michel Bauwens on P2P, the commons and the imagination

Last week, close to my home, was the Transition Design Symposium. It brought together people from around the world interested in what design can bring to the need for an urgent societal Transition, and for 2 days its attendees basked in glorious sunshine and fascinating interactions. I managed to catch up with Michel Bauwens who was attending and speaking at the conference, and we took some time for a short chat sitting under a tree in sunshine. Michel spends half his time in Belgium and half in Thailand, and is the founder of the P2P Foundation, a global organisation of researchers working in collaboration to explore peer production, governance and property. He is a writer, researcher and speaker on the subjects of technology, culture and business innovation. “It’s about Open Source communities”, he told me. “A lot of it is like what you are doing with Transition, perhaps a bit of a difference would be that I try to look more at the trans-local, trans-national levels, and how we can build counter-power to trans-national capital”.