Arthur Brock builds targeted currencies that are at the core of the emerging post-industrial economy. He has created more than a hundred designs for multi-currency systems and his software company has built and deployed dozens of those systems.
Initially, Arthur put his degree in Artificial Intelligence to use at GM, Chrysler & Hughes, but he soon realized he was committed to bringing intelligence to social architectures rather than to computers. He started student-run schools and award-winning, employee-run businesses and discovered that the self-managing feedback loops needed to operate these types of organizations were built on particular patterns of incentives and measurement. He began to unlock the social DNA by which groups operate and uncover the critical role of currencies as carriers of that social DNA.
Arthur’s designs include currency systems for: collaborative scientific research, sustainable fishery management, corporate compensation plans, employee stock options, community-based economic development, business barter and exchange, triple-bottom-line trade credits, open source software development, customer loyalty programs, water rights, recirculating gift certificates, community service, employee performance management, arts & culture development, efficient resource sharing & management, and community & environmental impact assessment.
Based in Denver, Colorado, Arthur Brock consults worldwide with organizations which are actively restructuring themselves for the new economy. He speak at events about the future of money and value and the emergence of the next economy. He has consulted with Citibank and SWIFT about pre-empting disruptions in the financial transaction space and preparing currencies and transaction systems for the evolving future of value and how we relate to it.
Eric Harris-Braun designs and builds software infrastructure for the post monetary economy. He is a co-founder of the MetaCurrency project. He works closely with TheTransitioner, a research and development group dedicated to understanding and developing new forms of collective intelligence, where he is the lead developer of the Flowplace.
Eric serves on the board of the New Economics Institute. He is the co-founder of Glass Bead Software, a provider of peer-to-peer networking applications, and of Harris-Braun Enterprises, a free-lance software development shop, which has created, among other things, complex data-collection web-sites for the health-care industry, an Android application for catch-monitoring for the fishing industry, and which built and operates the Online Writers Workshop. In 1994, he published the Internet Directory, with Fawcett Columbine which sold over 100,000 copies, and which went on to a second edition in 1996 before thankfully being made obsolete by Google. Eric received a B.A. in Computer Science from Yale University.
Currently he lives in a straw-bale house in rural New York where he is part of a Quaker Intentional community, plays with his two kids, tends a garden and occasionally feeds the sheep and chickens.
Ferananda’s highest purpose is the evolution of social organisms. She is an international speaker, process artist and social architect totally committed to the fields of collective intelligence and post monetary economics where she finds her joy and passion. Following the evolutionary impulse, she works for the leap from the individual to higher collectives.
Ferananda co-founded ‘The Collective Intelligence Research Institute (CIRI) and TheTransitioner where she provides her inspiring vision and actions around Web 2.0, socialmedia, collaborative technologies and process arts. She plays with the metacurrency project in multiple forms as it seems fit for its evolution and her personal challenges. She co-creates community projects in Mexico and United States which support the next economy wave and create new social DNA.
She is a pioneer who insists on joy, love, generosity, will and mastery as instruments to accomplish her highest purpose in life.
More about Ferananda
My passion has been in watching what is happening at the intersection of technology, communication and culture – how people are using the web and peer-to-peer technology to more effectively self-organize, collaborate, build community, and accelerate social innovation.
I feel that we are a global society in transition. Many of our traditional institutions are failing or just broken. The narrative is broken. The idea of ‘us verse them’ doesn’t work when the realization is made that we are all co-existing in an interdependent set of systems. We are now in the process of telling a new story about how civilization can function in a way that incorporates sustainable practices and leads to resilient and thrivable societies.
New models are being created for open collaboration and open enterprise, for complementary and alternative currencies, for governance, and for spirituality and empowerment. These experiments are inspirational and give me hope that we are reaching the tipping point where a critical mass of people on this planet (much less than I would have thought was necessary) are waking up to our true potential as a globally networked consciousness.
I am scouting the edges of technology and innovation, right where the magic happens.
Seb Paquet is a scientist by training, an artist by vocation, and a social process expert by necessity.
He published one of the first Ph.D. theses on the social web, in 2003. As a researcher, professor and entrepreneur, he has spent the last decade experimenting with social tools that boost individual and collective intelligence.
Thus far, he has variously played roles of evangelist, explainer/popularizer, user advocate, connector, and catalyst in the applications of the social web to knowledge sharing and collaboration.
He is currently undertaking a 100-day Journey into the Creative Economy. He aims to help generate awareness of the potential of social web technologies, and create and spread a literacy of collaboration far and wide, in workplaces as well as in civil society.
He writes the Emergent Cities blog and tweets under the handle @sebpaquet.
Jean Russell is a catalyst, culture hacker, and social ecosystem designer. As your guide to a thrivable world, Jean takes entrepreneurs, social innovators, and business builders on tours of the network economy. She navigates clients through the crucial questions of creating and nurturing teams and networks to develop healthy and productive collaborations.
“Jean Russell is a visionary poet and master of network dynamics. She’s been a great teacher to me. I now have a next generation blueprint and operating principles for the growth of my tribe. ” Michael Margolis, Dean, Story University, Founder, Get Storied
As a founder of the thrivability movement in 2007 and a premier expert on collective thriving, Jean speaks to and with innovators, builders, and edge-riders from Malmo to Melbourne, and London to San Francisco. Demonstrating rapid implementation of collective action, she curated, “Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch” in 2010 with 65 inspiring people.
Laura Conley has had her own coaching practice since 2007. Laura has extensive training in communication processes, learning styles, decision-making, creativity and group dynamics. She has been involved with start-ups, mid-size companies, and large corporations throughout her career. Her business background is broad with experience in research & development, legal, finance, engineering, operations, marketing, special projects and human resources. Specialized training in shifting internal barriers and roadblocks, a keen awareness of interpersonal interactions, and practical business wisdom, together allow Laura to lead clients through the outside and inside moves necessary to manifest what they really want.
Laura holds a Master’s Degree from Caltech and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a Patent Agent in good standing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In addition, Laura has done extensive personal growth work, including training and/or certification in ThriveTypes, Alignment Technologies, Intuitive Integrative Psychotherapy and Advanced Bodywork with Robert and Diane Masters, Applied Existential Psychotherapy with Betty Cannon, Holacracy and Conscious Loving and Living with Katie and Gay Hendricks.
Laura lives in Morrison, Colorado, and enjoys cooking, creating conscious community, and hiking in the mountains. She loves connecting people to each other for a myriad of reasons and has been called a "connectress" and a "social chemist."