Governing & Sustaining Democratic Tech: From Autonomy to Collective Design
Wouter Tebbens, Olivier Schulbaum (platoniq), Sophie Bloemen, Martijn de Waal
Public-interest technology does not survive through code alone. Digital commons require continuous coordination between communities, institutions, maintainers, contributors, and funders — structures capable not only of building tools, but of caring for them over time: setting priorities, distributing responsibilities, managing conflicts, and protecting the values embedded within the infrastructure itself. This session moves from strategic principles to institutional architecture, using role play and co-design to collectively work out what governance for democratic technology actually looks like in practice — and what it means for the Democratic Tech Fund right now.
Sustaining Infrastructure
Birch Salon