Multitude approach to develop the African continent from its roots up

Over the past few weeks a fascinating discussion has been taking place in the LinkedIn group, ‘Africa - All Things Business’. The discussion thread was started by Paul Kibuuka. It has focussed on ‘Africa’s Greatest Strengths’ and to date it has attracted 230+ contributions.

The group is made up largely of professional and business people with close links to Africa, and as the thread has illustrated ... a great deal of love and passion for the continent

The highly perceptive posts in the thread have effectively begun to develop into a SWOT analysis of Africa. It has provided participants with a glimpse of the magnitude of the problems faced by the continent and her people. At the same time it has revealed massive opportunities for those with the foresight to recognise them ... and the vision to realise them.

During the course of the discussion a number of suggestions were made as to how the situation could be turned around. It is critical that this time the ordinary people of Africa get to reap the benefits ... and not only the ruling-class elite who have to date largely continued the colonial tradition of leeching the continent dry.

It was agreed that for the continent to compete successfully on the global stage, it must not only explore new avenues of opportunity and new ways of doing things ... Africa in fact needs to completely reinvent and reposition itself.

Being a ‘business’ group, one issue that predictably surfaced was the difficulty that entrepreneurs (with bold, original ideas) experience when attempting to source funding for innovative new projects.

I proposed a solution to this problem to the group in the form of a DIASPORA BANK ... in essence a bank funded by the 60 million-odd displaced Africans around the globe with the express aim of financing disruptive new business ventures that would ordinarily struggle

Visit SICU INNOVATION

By Ian Bentley

This anouncement was first published on SICU HUB.

A multitude approach to our global problem

Don't wait for governments to save the planet, SWARM!

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

By AllOfUs

ReMade: The Rebirth of the Maker Movement

The multitude movement takes over innovation and production. 

The economy belongs to the MULTITUDE!

ReMade: The Rebirth of the Maker Movement (1st Trailer) from Electromagnate on Vimeo.

By AllOfUs

Wikileaks: Biggest leak in history

This is how the multitude movement ends wars and topples governments. 
Obama's government will definitely come out of this very weak. Tyrannical governments run on secrecy and lies. But how can you force thousands of individuals working for these governments to shut up. Sooner or later someone is going to speak out. In today's world secrets surface and lies are uncovered. Information wants to get out and spread fast.

Don't you guys get it? 

YOU CANNOT RULE ON LIES AND SMILES ANYMORE!

Where is the fingerprint of the multitude movement in all this? People use the new technology to easily gather information and to distribute it over the Internet, in this particular case on Wikileaks. Wikileaks itself is a multitude movement's creation.

"WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities."   

The information leaked on Wikileaks, which is fast becoming a reference of sensitive leaked information on the Internet, is accessed by millions throughout the world, who work in collaboration to analyse it, to make sense of it, to extract what's relevant from it... The leaked information is socially processed. In a very short amount of time the public opinion is formed around the issue. The classical channels of information, which are still controlled in large part by the centers of power, are forced to acknowledge the story, or risk to be entirely discredited. They cannot ignore something raging through the Internet. We got connected individuals and independent organizations controlling the process on one side, and the classical institutions forced to follow, to go with the flow on the other. The victim in all this is tyranny.

Visit the Balance of Power, get involved!

By AllOfUs

The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers charts this movement.

WHAT'S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Visit Economical Alternatives

By AllOfUs

Better Means, a multitude initiative to production

BetterMeans proposes a very similar model to the Discovery Network.

"The Open Enterprise is a new organizational design. Unlike organizations using traditional management structures, Open Enterprises replace the command and control hierarchy with a meritocracy based on collaboration and open participation.

Organizations that adopt this new organizational structure can make decisions faster and respond quicker to their markets. They look more like living dynamic networks, and less like pyramids. People working in these organizations will have (and feel) more ownership. They’re more engaged in their work, and have the freedom to work on what they want, when they want to. Most importantly this model enables people to once again bring their full humanity – values, beliefs and passions – to the workplace, removing disconnect between organizational and personal values."

Visit Economical Alternatives

Visit Multitude Innovation and the Discovery Network 

By AllOfUs

Hermann Scheer died...

In one of his last interviews to Democracy Now he talks about the passion of his life, solar energy, a democratic and popular source. Solar is the energy of the multitude. He also talks about the fossil energy monopoly and how to brake it.

 

By AllOfUs

Rethinking social movements

In THIS new article we are focusing on the management and stabilization of a massive social movement. We describe a powerful tool for self-awareness and self-management based on the new technology.  

By AllOfUs

Dialogue with Michel Bauwens

Interview by Yvette Dubel from Cultural Fusion

Yvette: Michel is best known as the founder of P2P Foundation, this is where I first encountered his work. Since then I have become increasingly interested in the implications of his work in the transformation of organizations in the face of the level of innovation needed to address our current challenges. 

Listen to internet radio with Yvette Dubel on Blog Talk Radio

By AllOfUs

Happy Birthday Multitude Project!

Multitude Project has 2 years

This post provides a short historical overview of the Multitude Project, a description of the current state of play and our plans for the future.

Multitude Project was founded in October 2008 by Tiberius Brastaviceanu. Initially, the scope of the project was narrower: to give employees alternative ways to fight employment injustice (see Improve employment conditions!), by bypassing the biased justice system. It was based on the realization that the new technology empowers the individual, by providing tools to access and to disseminate information. The Boomerang method was the result of this first effort of understanding how the new technology was changing the employee-employer balance of power. A broader method was also proposed, which is still awaiting implementation (contact us to get involved). This initial project only took into consideration the communication aspect of the new technology. Tiberius soon realized that the Internet platform also enables free collaboration and coordination, which offers still greater power to individuals who are open to sharing and who possess the skills to work in collaboration. Free communication, collaboration and coordination is the foundation of a new pattern of value creation and distribution; of a shift in the equilibrium of social forces; of new forms of property, of new laws and institutions, etc.


Through free one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many exchanges of all sorts, we are moving towards a broader redistribution of power; towards increased individual freedom, towards more self-determination and towards a more participative society. This is what we call the Multitude Social Movement … a constructive revolution.


Over the past 12 months the Multitude Project has broadened its scope, seeking to understand the Multitude Movement in its various manifestations, and to informing the movement by exposing the implicit philosophy on which it is built. This emerging philosophy and its associated culture are responsible for aligning people's attitudes and actions, for increasing the level of coherence within the multitude towards building, distributing and using new tools of empowerment. Our goals are to expose this philosophy, to foster the new culture, to create a new language, and to attract people's attention towards this movement by creating and offering key empowering alternatives. Multitude Project has created, tested and released the Viral Labeling technique and a method to fight predatory commercial practices. We also created the Discovery Network concept, an open collaborative network of innovation, production and distribution of goods and services, which is currently being tested. An example of a modular and dynamic infrastructure to support massive social movements and collaborative networks was released, which can be set up free of charge in only a few hours. Other concepts dealing with the organization of the masses against oppressive regimes are still under development, see The balance of power. Our infrastructure has improved progressively over these two years. Beginning with the Multitude homepage, we have subsequently created the Multitude Blog and have established a presence in major social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Digg, Idealist, New tactics in human rights, LinkedIn, NING, and many more.


Recently, Multitude Project branched into Multitude Innovation and Multitude Moon Project. Soon we will launch our open science initiative, Multitude Science. Multitude Project also actively supports Integration and Automation Community (IAC), and the Rosia Montana movement. Until now, we have only operated at a small scale. We are a collaborative network, but not yet entirely open. We believe that in the next year we will enter a fast exponential growth (see the graph bellow). Once the large scale effects begin to manifest themselves our collaborative platform will become completely open. Multitude Project will continue to branch into many sub-projects managed by independent but interconnected entities. In order to manage the global and decentralized multitude movement, we've proposed a new and revolutionary tool, revealed for the first time here.




What's on our agenda?

Our priority is to upscale the Multitude Project. We'll do this by becoming entirely open and by interfacing with existing like-minded organizations. We are also actively looking for sources of financing in order to support operations that are not easily adapted to volunteering.

Multitude needs a thriving cultural component. We encourage all our members, friends and observers to invite artists of every kind to seek inspiration in our work.  by AllOfUs