Any associated department or project concerned with issues related to the platform and collaborative economy at Barcelona City Council or other local government institutions can take part.
Inclusion criteria in BarCola for (non-governmental) organizations
- Organizations (with a certain level of consolidation and recognition in the field): Foundations, associations, cooperatives and companies – “responsible” start-ups, support networks or centres, research centres and projects.
- Based in Barcelona
- Commitment to participate actively on an ongoing basis
- Commons focus. A commons-focused organization in one of the following qualities:
- Collaborative production: (open to participation) supported by new technologies
- Shared governance: Preferably cooperatives, foundations and/or companies that have participative decision-making mechanisms to enable users and communities to take part in defining the rules governing their interactions and management of the resource and the value generated
- Open-source technology: Preferably based on FLOSS or open-source, decentralized technology
- Open knowledge: Preferably open/free content or resource licences (CC, etc) and open data
- Circular: Preferably proactive to improve the environmental impact
- Social purpose or focused on the common interest: Preferably linked to some social challenge and aimed at contributing to commons
Using commons digital platform qualities as guidelines, there is the commons quality star framework.
Participation is by groups, not individuals. Each group will decide which people take part in BarCola as their representatives. However, if there are people who can contribute value and have a commons approach and want to take part in the activities, they can do so in specific instances.
Inclusion mechanisms
- Current members of BarCola submit a proposal to include a given organization, with a brief description and/or link to the website. And the proposed organization must fill in this form. If no BarCola member has objected after one week, the new organization is accepted into BarCola.
- The aim is to maintain a gender balance among the people who join. And in the different action areas too. The intention is to increase the number of members that offer services as cooperatives or responsible start-ups.