Shit gets real -- first confirmed case in my daughter's school

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JFKS Elementary in Berlin is closed for a week, as of 15 minutes ago. One of the teachers in the entrance class (pre-school in the US) is confirmed with corona.

I’ve been toying with posting something in the forums for a week now… asking the question of what (if anything) the Resonate community could do.

Start organizing artist fundraising support pods to brainstorm alternatives to counter lost tour income? Host live-streaming living room concerts?

Could be lots of ideas, but all depends on what the community wants and has capacity for…

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Posted this to twitter a few hours ago:

And then my wife just read this to me:

He talks a lot about systemic risk and exponential thinking. As someone who can’t help but think systemically, I’m lead to think about shifting this question of “should the Resonate do something to help artists affected by corona cancellations?” to a bigger one, such as… “should the Resonate community use this as a moment to activate co-operative movement building?”

The reason is thus… we’re going to be facing some MASSIVE follow-on affects from this virus, most of which are economic and political in nature. It is already revealing a broad range of fragility/resiliency across different societies, in terms of how they respond.

Put another way, this crisis may present an opportunity to go for the larger issues Resonate was always meant to inspire… co-operative governance, engagement, organizing and perhaps above all… ownership.

Thoughts? Reactions? “STFU Peter?”

CC @zetto.plus @richjensen @nati

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Short answer is, ‘Yes.’
But… I went a bit longer. :slight_smile:

A key component of Resonate’s mission every day is cooperative movement building, specifically at the intersection of Music / Technology / Governance. Another component is expanding and securing the resiliency of ‘music habitat’ which means using digital and online tools to connect human beings to the resources they need to produce, discover and actively engage music in their lives offline.

In this period of global systemic transition, at minimum the next ten years, where the offline world is being swept by biohazards and political upheaval, online ‘tools for living’ and the social conditions determining how these tools are accessed and used will become ever more crucial. Leaving these choices open to private exploitation by data monopolists and surveillance capitalists is not a governance option that bodes well for the life and dignity of the earth’s inhabitants.

I’m here for a Resonate that stands as a cooperative community committed to the significance of musical culture, fair governance, personal self-sovereignty, and a social future grounded in solidarity, reparation, decolonization, indigenous self-determination and biospheric restoration at global scale.

My frame of thinking about the discontinuities that appeared this week is that they have been brewing for decades (if not centuries) and they will not be relieved soon. The radical shift in social space, the sense of hazard in public gatherings, gives the coop’s position as an online service a new significance and capacity to benefit its members.

Now Resonate just has to do what it has been built to do.*

I balance the urgency with the observation that we are still recovering from the disruptions of 2018. I am very excited by the recent additions of @Nick_M and Z to the (presently unfunded) core team. Team members are starting to groove as a unit. Augustin’s testing and delivery of the new uploader, server migration and last week’s return of the ‘Buy Now’ feature have finally equipped us to drive revenue to artists.

It is time to get the message out, a coordinated message, actually a very broad range of communications that matches these times to the breadth of the coop’s social vision along with the practical details new users need to engage the platform and participate in the community. I have enormous confidence in @zetto.plus 's strategic vision and capacity and look forward to building in tune with his vibe and intuition regarding the coop’s organic priorities and voice.

With you in peace @Peter. Yes, the shit is real.**

  • Thanks for this comment @auggod.
    **Josie’s high school announced an unplanned two week closure last night. [Update: now extended through April 24]
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Related: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/09/li-edelkoort-coronavirus-reset/?fbclid=IwAR2NBGqt3hXJRpA6cbHAX-6GYau66pXn-5q68jwMC5mU_bdxB_2KOP7Wxdg

The impact of the outbreak will force us into slowing down the pace, refusing to take planes, working from our homes, entertaining only amongst close friends or family, learning to become self-sufficient and mindful. Suddenly the fashion shows look bizarre and out of place, the travel ads that enter our computer space seem invasive and ridiculous, the thought of future projects is vague and inconclusive: will it even matter? Every new day we question each system we have known since birth, and are obliged to consider their possible demise.

For several years we have understood that in order to survive as a species and to keep the planet going we need to make draconian changes to the way we live, travel, consume and entertain. There is no way we can continue to produce as many goods and the many choices we have grown accustomed to. The debilitating mass of information about nothing at all has numbed our culture. There is a growing awareness amongst younger generations that ownership and the hoarding of clothes and cars is no longer even attractive.

But somehow the human psyche is resistant and wants to test if things will just dissipate by themselves, waiting and biding our time while we are doing business as usual. Therefore the sudden stop on all of this by the virus takes decisionmaking out of our hands and will just slow things down to another, frightful pace in the beginning. We are no longer used to doing things without rushing, waiting for answers, searching for solutions nor producing in our backyards. Improvisation skills and creativity will become the highest assets.

Not many people understand what is happening to our world and economy right now. Often in companies, up to 90 per cent of all goods are made in China from oil-derived substances such as plastic and polyester. We will soon see shelves empty of shoes, phones, clothes and even toothpaste. We will have a shortage of medical supplies and will see a stop in the endless production of ugly souvenirs and useless goody bags.

We already know that the design processes for fall/winter products are not happening as they should be. Skype and DHL help but we will have a lot of mediocre goods coming our way, just relying on former success formulas. That is if people actually will still have the desire to buy something like a cashmere scarf or an object for the home.

The endless Chinese exports of synthetic saris to India and plastic household objects to Africa, which have severely disrupted local economies there and created a lot of joblessness (and pollution) over the years might also come to a halt, possibly bringing new opportunities for making locally.

We will be in a position of having a blank page for a new beginning because lots of companies and money will be wiped out in the process of slowing down. Redirecting and restarting will require a lot of insight and audacity to build a new economy with other values and ways of handling production, transport, distribution and retail.

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Thanks @peter Peter and @richjensen for those thoughts… I feel some hope that this global reset with lead to a re-evaluation of what we value, building a culture of ‘sufficiency’ rather than ‘accumulation’. Perhaps humans could have another try at substituting community and sustainability for growth and greed. In gloomier moments I feel sad that many, especially the powerful, see this as an ugly trade-off game between covid-19 deaths and market / economic damage, in which there will be a race to get back in the game when this is over. That race among the western economies will probably leave the weakest, those in Syrian refugee camps, for example, to bear even more misery, with little help. Our international collaboration and governance seems to be at an all time low… when all agencies can do is to observe and report on misery, denied the resources to act.

Could music once again move to the apex of a movement to change all that? I don’t know… but I DID enjoy DJ EZ’s 24hr set and shout outs in support of UK NHS workers and others. The social media feeds around it were lit up! For us, as @auggod/@Rich comment above, “Resonate just has to do what it has been built to do”. And we need active listeners and members on-board to do that. It feels like there is an opportunity to reach out, without exploiting the crisis, building on a collective discovery of digital community. So many people have moved to online collaboration and have (re) discovered communal listening and multiplayer gaming. I’d like to see more of that on our platform. This forum feels a little static … could we boost the community feel on here by hosting a p2p privacy-respecting “let’s chat / play” service? I’m a fan of jit.si for example (even my 92 year old mother in law can use it) https://jitsi.org/jitsi-videobridge/

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Love this.

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Thinking to try it for next week’s operations and community calls.

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