2026-07-11 –, Birch Salon
Help architect the seed of a vibrant general social movement to co-create a decent world.
In this collaborative sensemaking, strategy and design session, we will jam on the initial elements that might catalyze a coherent -- but not centrally controlled -- vibrant general social movement anchored around a core concept of co-creating a decent world.
Why "decent"?
We're playing on at least three meanings at once:
Decency — the basic moral fabric (fairness, dignity, care) that feels under threat across so many parts of life right now, and that we want to actively cultivate rather than just defend.
Decentralisation — the technical and organisational shift away from monopolised, extractive infrastructure towards mutual sovereignty -- supporting both individual agency in tension/interaction with the evolving integrity of communities rather that a dominance of one frame (individual/collective/meta-collective) over the other.
Good enough — Let's not let perfection be the enemy of the good. Decent includes permission to act imperfectly: you don't need a fully decentralised life or a finished movement to start. "Good enough to try" unblocks action; perfectionism can yield paralysis. Good enough includes grace for others and for ourselves even though we may not currently meet some ideal standard.
A joyous and generative decent
We believe that decent infrastructure is a core part of this movement, but that it is not the whole. Decent tools, processes, and practices have a part to play; but so do decent food, music, art, policy, parties, and more.
Creating, not responding
Can we cultivate a decent movement filled with movement? Rather than orchestrating activity anchored in opposition to (and thus definition by) the current destructive patterns and practices of our politics and economy, can we inspire a participatory and active creation of a more richly relational, vibrant, and decent world?
Co-creation AND Coherence
Can we emphasize generation and creativity, while integrating elements that weave coherence from disparate perspectives?
Broad Roots of Inspiration
Can we share lessons from festival culture as much as from cooperatives and grassroots organizing efforts, as well as corporate and governmental experiences? Can these be decent jams or decent parties?
Creation > Consumption
Can we design experiences (including our own strategy sessions) in ways that support a weaving of relationship (where a "you" and a "me" might shift to include at least an element of "we" in the mix.)
Weaving of relationship
Can we create clear pathways for new people to participate, including clarity on how to start their own independent (or interdependent) jams/parties?
Can we support the internal variety required to meet the challenges we face, while simultaneously providing the rest of the world with easy ways to interact with us? How might decent documentation play a role? How about decent finance?
Decentralized affiliation architecture
Can we find ways of enabling affiliation or even elements of authority without pulling in all of the centralized baggage that accompanies traditional membership or role structures?
We want your creativity and perspective to inform this movement from the start. Please join us for this closing session of the Sustaining Infrastructure track to help design a decent movement.
Elizabeth "Liz" Barry is the Executive Director of Metagov, a nonprofit research-to-infrastructure laboratory advancing collective self-governance in a digital age. By providing the scaffolding (tools, protocols, semantics, norms) necessary for emergent institutional design, Metagov aims to reduce the friction of upgrading or creating new organizations that are “alive” — i.e. that can adapt, incorporate feedback, and manage power. She co-founded the Computational Democracy Project with the creators of Polis. She witnessed Taiwan’s Sunflower Revolution in person, then introduced Audrey Tang to the international community in the 2016 piece "vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy." Her many initiatives have tuned human-environment-technology relationships by applying design to community organizing, science to environmental justice, and math to democracy. More at lizbarry.net.
This year at DWeb I'm helping lead the Demo Night Market. If you are thinking about showing something off, please submit an application (the demo question is late on page 2 of the proposals page) or simply connect with me and we can discuss:
https://linkedin.com/in/matthewschutte
matthew.schutte@holo.host
In past years I've helped steward the lightning talks, and bear at least partial responsibility for a nearly disastrous first unconference style day a few years ago.
I'm a former big wave surfer, a current hack musician, and an experienced entrepreneur with strengths in high level architecture, strategy, communications and partnership / business development.
More recently, I've been deepening my tech skills by building software myself now that getting unstuck has gotten a little easier thanks to some of the new AI tools.
I have lived and traveled all over the world both for work and for surf, but now call Puerto Rico home where I live in a small condo in a small town with my wife Tatiana and our two cats, Tiger and Shy.
On the professional front: I'm a co-founder of Holochain, a peer-to-peer application framework that has taken far longer to get to production ready than any of us anticipated, as well as Unyt accounting, a peer-to-peer payments and accounting system built on top of holochain. In addition, I'm an advisor to a couple of foundational AI lab startups and have volunteered and served on the board of directors of Toward Warm Data with Nora Bateson. I am open to aligned board or advisory roles and would love to hear what you are currently feeling most excited about. Let's jam!
Wouter Tebbens is an industrial engineer born and raised in The Netherlands working from Barcelona. He works for a knowledge society based in human freedom, solidarity, care and regeneration through commons-cooperative networks. He has co-founded and participates in various cooperatives and collectives. Co-founder of the Democratic Tech Fund and director at the Free Knowledge Institute.
In the 2000s he set up the Free/Libre and Open Source working group of the Internet Society Netherlands, co-founded the Free Knowledge Institute and coordinated two European Commission funded projects: the SELF project and the Free Technology Academy and participated in various others.
In the last decade he participated in Som Energia, the Spanish renewable energy cooperative; the School of the Commons Barcelona; was part of the p2p value research team studying >300 cases of commons-based p2p internet platforms; participated in the Digital DIY project on legal, ethical and economic aspects related to digital fabrication and DIY; co-founded The Things Network Catalonia and ran various pilots and projects with various municipalities around sensor data through the community network.
In order to seek sustainability for commons-oriented initiatives he conceived the Five Pillar model. In the context especially of la Comunificadora, a programme from Barcelona City to help teams create their commons-collaborative economy project, this model was developed further as the core organising model with specific canvases and workshop methodologies.
Wouter was one of the artifices behind the creation of the cooperative femProcomuns and helped create the initial projects and move them from under the wings of the FKI to the cooperative, including CommonsCloud, the open community network for the Internet of Things and the commons transition group.
Since the pandemic he has been an operational member of The Online Meeting Cooperative (meet.coop), he has worked as the first director of the PublicSpaces Foundation in The Netherlands, is a collaborator at Commons Network and works in various projects to advance a commons-cooperative-regenerative vision.