- Born and raised in The Netherlands; after the first year in the centre-south between the rivers, I grew up in the north, studied in the east and ended in Amsterdam. Before moving abroad.
- At the Technical University of Twente I studied Mechanical Engineering and obtained a Master of Science in Production and Operations Management.
- My engineering training prepared me to work in multinationals, to streamline production and transportation processes, but that wasn’t my goal in life. However between 1997 and 2000 I did work in Germany, in Buenos Aires and in an international role from the Amsterdam head office of the TNT Post Group.
- In 2002 it was time to start my own company («xlocal»), in Barcelona, offering multilanguage web content management solutions. That brought me in the world of open source communities, discovering how wonderful people work together sharing code and experience, while offering cost effective solutions to small and medium sized customers. I worked on xlocal until 2009.
- In parallel we moved to Amsterdam and I set up the Free/Libre/Open Source working group at the Internet Society Netherlands; brought the Open Source petition to the Dutch Parliament (https://opensource.petities.nl/) and helped mobilise civil society for an open source, open standards and free technology oriented society.
- In 2005 during the Holland Open Conference I had a good chat with Jesus Villasante, Head of Unit of the EC’s Software & Services programme. He encouraged me to submit a grant proposal, which we developed that summer. We submitted it in the name of the ISOC.nl and it got selected. Between 2006-2008 I coordinated the SELF project (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom), funded with 1 million Euro under the 6th Framework Programme. With a consortium of five civil society organisations and two universities we worked on the education of free software and open standards, collected, developed and translated learning materials, developed a beta platform and oganised several conferences. The concluding conference was the Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference, with a international audience brought together in Barcelona.
- 2007-present, co-founding the Free Knowledge Institute(FKI), a non-profit organisation that fosters equal access to tools for production and exchange of knowledge in all areas of society. Inspired by the Free Software movement, the FKI promotes freedom of use, modification, copying and distribution of knowledge in several different but closely related fields. Accordingly, it promotes the commons economy. Through FKI I have participated in and coordinated several EC projects, done research and advocacy, designed strategies for transition, supported the creation of several communities and open source, cooperative business initiatives, worked together with municipalities such as Amsterdam and Barcelona.
- Under the wings of the FKI:
- the Free Technology Academy (FTA), funded by the EC between 2009-2011, by partners and learners in the years after.
- organised the Free Culture Forum in 2009, together with Simona Levi (Xnet) and Mayo Fuster (Dimmons), bringing together some 200 civil society representatives advocating for digital rights. We produced the Charter for Free Culture.
- in a research team of p2p value project, studing over 300 cases of online peer production platforms, on governance, production, community and economic value.
- in Digital Do It Yourself (DiDIY.eu) project, funded by the EC, to research the meaning and impact of Digital DIY technologies on legal, economic and social perspectives.
- the Five Pillar Framework for Commons Sustainability and used that in Platform Cooperative workshop series and Commons Collaborative Economy courses and programmes.
- and advise for the Municipality of Barcelona for a Commons oriented Smart City.
- and developed the La Comunificadora start-up support programme for the Commons Collaborative Economy. We ran four annual editions with more than 60 teams going through the course and support programme.
- CommonsCloud.coop, a cooperative cloud that enables individuals and organisations to make use of privacy-friendly and free software based web applications to move away from Google and other BigTech oligopolis. Co-creation workshops, crowdfunding campaign at Goteo, alliance building with partners, for development and usage of the new platform.
- Things Network Catalonia; co-founding of the community network for Internet of Things in Catalonia, based on open standards, free software and shared antennas and community meetups. With support of the municipality of Barcelona we extend the network to over 30 antennas and organise courses, co-creation workshops and hackatons.
- founder of multistakeholder cooperative femProcomuns (femProcomuns.coop), together with FKI and 12 people. A cooperative consisting of workers, collaborators and user members, with a shared mission to produce commons-oriented services. We incorporate the former three projects as business units in the cooperative. I work here as worker member for the first years to set up these businesses together with a small team.
- 2020 we initiate the Online Meeting Cooperative together with a few other cooperatives in Northern Europe and North America, and I stay on as operational member the first three years.
- Cities for Change Conference by the municipality of Amsterdam (2021). I coordinate the online platforms, based in Decidim and BigBlueButton.
- Director of PublicSpaces, a non-profit foundation in The Netherlands that runs a network of public sector and civil society organisations working together on the transition towards a public values based internet. As first director of the organisation I helped mature the organisation hiring a small team, converting the organisation in a charity, with public and private grants, donations and income from projects both national and international (2022-2024). We designed a strategy to help partners eXit from X and other BigTech networks and move to public values networks like the Fediverse.
Summarised curriculum
Wouter Tebbens
wtebbens@commoni.fi