The CooperativeLife project will serve as a seed project for the inclusion of other organizations in diverse sectors seeking to improve there collaborative efforts.

CooperativeLife, in their own words is:

"Cooperative Life is the federation of cooperatives and like-minded organizations in New England and New York dedicated to building a thriving cooperative economy. Together we are building online community tools that empower participants and members. In addition, we offer services that help you take advantage of both our software and our expertise in group facilitation."

Deximer and CooperativeLife held a workshop demonstrating the existing online tool set. We also revealed the road map for the project in the context of a lively conversation regarding the needs of the participating organizations.

The workshop was attended by Fair Trade and Chroma Technologies , among others. All were particularly interested in Deximer's collaborative process for software development with it's focus on shared vision, shared costs and shared use of products.

The keynote speech was delivered by William Greider, author of "The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy", "One World, Ready or Not" on the Global Economy, "Who Will Tell the People?" on American politics, and "Secrets of the Temple". He spoke on many topics including the value of employee owned businesses and their ability to "root" capital in the local economy.

More information on the conference can be found at the ECWD website .

Thank you to all who attended. It was my first experience with the world of cooperatives, employee owned businesses and workplace democracy. I found all of it insightful and will be carrying many of the concepts I was exposed to forward into my work in promoting a collaborative model of software development.