1. What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?

Two new websites; tours/events/outreach; new DisCO merch

2. What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow?

Fundraising is a challenge that we continue to face and will have a new approach in 2024. We learned how to extend our collaborative invitation to new and various communities, and we learned how to reorganize ourselves when it became necessary, all of which are changing and growing activities.

3. What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?

The DisCO Pink Paper and the larger conversation about tech built for and by communities, asking the question “What would anticapitalist, decolonial, intersectional feminist technology look like?”; two new SuperDisCO prototypes (meant as a first proof of concept for DisCO federation); and an added “home base” for DisCO in Berlin.

 
The following is the text of our latest newsletter (December 2023), written by "The DisCO Cat", for more details.


Can’t believe it’s been so long since the last time I meowed to you! We sure have been busy (well, I certainly have, although beauty naps also take up a lot of my time). Just realized that this is our seventh issue. Seven is a magical number. It would be the total number of lives I have left if I hadn’t been such a handsome and reckless rebel, fighting the patriarchy and economic inequality with every twitch of my dreaming whiskers.

But enough about me, let’s talk about us. I’ll stop beating around the cardboard box and tell you the huge news. 

Right now, we've launched our first-ever DisCO shirt campaign with our dope partners at DNA Merch. You can buy a fabulous garmant and then, read all about our swagger-lee master plan here. 

Websites, we've got 'em: We’ve just released a snazzy new website  that looks absolutely stunning and, as if that wasn’t enough, we’ve created an entire new site called the  DisCO Basics  for all of you that find the DisCO dancing a bit difficult or confusing. So, even if you’re a sassy quadruped like me, this comprehensive overview will help you follow the rhythm pretty easily. However, getting familiar with the moves does require practice. But don’t despair, if you have some sardines to spare, I’m more than happy to guide you.

So as I was saying - what’s better than a new DisCO website? Two brand new DisCO Websites!

To provide a good understanding of DisCO in lieu of reading the Manifesto or attending an event, we’ve developed the  DisCO Basics, an online primer that takes you on a tour of the DisCOverse.

This lightning-fast and beautifully designed website has 9 entries on the  main menu. Within each there are pop-up glossary definitions for specialized terms and special links that instantly bring you to relevant sections within the site. Each entry also features a TLDR with the highlights, and a “More Resources” section. 
The 9 entries are:

 

We’re happy to say that Basics is ideal if you’re reading on hand-held devices. We hope it provides the best balance between user ease and content depth. The beautiful designs were provided by Rory-Robertson Shaw of Autonomous Design Group  and the Solidarity Economy Association, who also crafted the designs for the main site.

OK, I know I should have sent a postcard - I haven’t written to you earlier because I’ve been traveling around presenting DisCO, participating in conferences and running workshops. It really is tough to be a celebrity touring the DisCOverse, but, at the end of the afternoon, nothing makes me happier than laying on my tattered cushion and reading the stories about how fiddling with the DisCO model is such a game changer for many of you. Definitely makes everything worth it. Here’s a fine assortment of this year’s events and their respective reports:

Workshop: DisCO’s Underground Regenerative Economix

We’ve led several DisCO workshops in Berlin this year, Dancing on Moss: DisCO Underground Economix at MOOS Space in January and DisCOmposting: from rotten systems to regenerative imagination at IMAGO Space.  DisCO co-founders Ann Marie Utratel and Stacco Troncoso also presented DisCO at the Edgefunders Conference in November, asking the question, “What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist Tech look like” (more on that below, where I describe the DWeb conference).

This is the story of the first workshop and the collective experience shared by a number of self-organised groups based around Berlin during the workshop Dancing on Moss: DisCO underground regenerative economix, celebrated at Moos Space in January 2023. The DisCO team,  Sari Escribano, Ela Kagel and Irene Lopez de Vallejo, took the audience on a solarpunk, lunarpunk, twilight reflection on the meaning of governance and self-organisation in times of dire social and economic need. We envisioned how, together, we can co-build transformative resilience from the very decay of values in the current dominant system.

A report of the second workshop will be published soon.

DisCO REMASTERED AND PINK PAPER

In September 2023, we held an event called DisCO Remastered, to work on the forthcoming DisCO Pink Paper. The final piece of our DisCO Trilogy, the Pink Paper explicitly calls for Anticapitalist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Feminist technology, and promotes a “DisCOtech” that will always be user-friendly, modular, fully configurable, consensual, surveillance resistant, and conducive to safe online spaces. Our meeting was held at a quiet farm lodging, moderated by the undisputed champion of seamless and nuanced facilitation (and honorary cat) - Lucas Tello of ZEMOS98. In this cozy container, we allowed ourselves to dream up two amazing Super-DisCO prototypes along with an outline of the Pink Paper. Together, these results will be expanded into fully-fledged work streams in 2024, sharpening our vision of an accessible, sufficient technology by and for the cooperative commons, and making it possible for others to share and co-create in an open source, open-hearted way.

We also gave an musically electronic, yet personally “unplugged”, presentation with DisCO Pink Board member brandon king at DWeb Camp entitled This Is a Journey Into Sound: A Proposal for Beats, Tech and Future Economies. Here we asked the question, What does Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist Tech look like? This was the start of a contemplative, deep, ongoing conversational inquiry, a journey which, along the way, brings new color, new dimension, new value to our awareness. Pump up the volume! Pump up the values! Pump that bass. (I couldn’t be there but I think it went a little like this). The following week, brandon and Stacco presented the latest on DisCO and Resonate.coop at Embassy House in San Francisco.

Throughout the year we've been listening to communities on the technologies we need to ensure a livable planet and future. This has resulted in a number of video interviews filmed during the Beyond Growth Conference in Brussels, the aforementioned events and other visits to Berlin and London. Stay tuned to hear more about our adventures! 

In April, our intrepid reporter Sari attended the "We want our world back! Challenging Capitalist Modernity" conference in Hamburg, organized by Kurdish, Zapatistas and other anticapitalist movements.

One of the most intense and powerful things we've ever experienced: we stayed with a Kurdish family, hearing their stories of survival, of struggle, wrapped in warm hospitality and solidarity. There were lots of people we've worked with there, like our friends from the Solidarity Economy Association, and authors we've translated at Guerrilla Media Collective like John Holloway, who gave a super inspiring speech shaming the University of Hamburg (which cancelled the event on a very short notice for being "too extremist"). Dear friends of ours like Silke Helfrich and David Graeber were also speakers at previous editions of this conference. In spite of having been so dispossessed and having suffered such emotional, social, cultural and material destruction, Kurdish people keep on fighting for their freedom, celebrating life and art with passion.

Check the amazing programme and stay tuned for an upcoming article and report about the conference!


Support DisCO!

You know what I want to see on the labels of stuff I spend my hard earned Kittycoins on? It's Anticapitalist, Decolonial and Intersectional Feminist Futures, of course! If you want to support DisCO's Open Source Conspiracy to take over the world — and I know you do — pad on over to our Support Page, where you can help us as a commoner, funder, project partner or cat groomer (one of these categories may be made up). 

SO, that was cool, right? And this is only the beginning! Stay tuned because there are YET MORE things coming. Buckle up, kids, because this cat is not afraid of space! (I mean, maybe I am a bit, yes, but if I can sleep next to the engine, we’re good).

Scratch you later,
The DisCO CAT