Ripples from the Occupy movement

It's been nearly three years since the Occupy movement burst onto the stage and made it's splash. It highlighted global inequities and the failures of big power and money to ensure we attend to the well-being of all members of society.

One of the ripples has come from of a small group of people in Wellington, who have focussed on building tools to facilitate the discussion and consensus decision making process across groups, without them having to be in the same place at the same time.

From a foundation of several successes under its belt, that include the tool being translated into multiple languages, www.loomio.org launched a crowd-funding campaign a month ago, with a goal of $100,000. It has just closed and the total given is over 123,000 so they will now go on to make the next version of the software, which includes a mobile app. Loomio is commited to keeping the tool open-source and free, while inviting support from users who can afford to give and support its ongoing development.

I was reminded of a short 2 minute video I edited a few years ago, when I learnt about the extraordinarily successful consensus decision making processes that large groups of Occupiers were using to make collective decisions.