The bHive team: Bee-vering away!
It seems like forever since our wonderful pitch night at the Handle Bar last November.
The bHive team have been busy as bees creating the co-op model, building the tech, setting up our internal project management systems, writing a storytelling plan and hunting for big funding.
We're excited about our progress towards a peer-to-peer economic model for Bendigo that looks after people, creates local work, keeps spending flowing in our community and enhances our local place.
In a world that has lost half of all wildlife since 1970, has eight men with the same wealth as the half the worlds population, and with global centralised businesses taking work, investment and control away from local places, we think bHive is a big idea whose time has come.
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Developing the tech
Marcus and Ian have designed the first iteration of the bHive application, with mock-ups of screen designs for the first phase. Check it out below! We're excited.
Marcus will contact those who offered technical skills to the project. If any other developers would like to be involved, please let us know.
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The great funding search
Claire and Linda are working on some promising grants. The first is due at the end of March and we will keep our sights on others that have open submission dates in the coming months. We welcome anyone to join us who has mad grant writing skills.
Our modelling suggests that we'll need around the $1 million mark over the first three years of operation to get us going; after that we're financially sustainable. Feel free to get in touch if you have $1million :-)
Our list of Founding Patrons continues to grow, providing initial funding to get is going. Haven; Home Safe have just become the first organisation to be a Founding Patron. If we have any say in it, they'll have their name in bHive lights forever. Starting now with their logo. Huge thanks to Haven; Home, Safe.
We'd love to hear from other interested Bendigo organisations.
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bHive University
There is brilliant thinking going on around the world on the 'platform co-operative' space. Here's the top links if you're keen to dive deep:
A Podcast: Trebor Schultz on moving from Uber to Platform Co-operatives
A Book: Ours to Hack and Own, by Trebor Schultz & Nathan Schneider.
A Short Film: The circular economy.
A Conference: All the talks from the 2016 Platform Cooperatives Conference in NY are online. Check out Nick Green and Darren Sharp for an Australian perspective.
An article: 11 platform cooperatives creating a real sharing economy.
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The Co-op Model
Julie and Ian have been working through the best model to set up for our co-operative entity. We think we've nailed the model that works for the bHive team, for community members, for sharing service providers and for the giving arm of bHive. We'll let you know how it works soon. We've had some great advice from co-operatives guru Antony McMullen.
It's worth listing the international co-operative principles that we'll be signing up to deliver on:
- voluntary & open membership
- democratic member control
- member economic participation
- autonomy and independence
- education, training and information
- co-operation among co-ops
- concern for community
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Storytelling
Bryley and Ian are creating a storytelling plan, including blog posts (we've written 20), social media, an explainer animation, the website, dinner parties, shared lunches, presentations and more.
We've even had an animated bee donated by a local international animation guru; more on that later! Stay tuned for some great content as the bHive story develops.
Here's a teaser, a short piece on what the bHive user experience might be like.
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Fleet Car Sharing Study
The bHive team are putting together a proposal for a feasibility study into organisational fleet car sharing in Bendigo. We think there is great scope for both economic and environmental savings.
Let us know if your organisation would like to be involved.
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Get involved!
Contact us about anything bHive.
We'd love to hear your questions, ideas, or that you'd love to be involved:
- If you have skills to share, let us know.
- We'll be in touch with our Ambassadors soon. If you'd like to be one and help spread the word, let us know.
- Our Founding Patrons will have their name in lights forever and will pay a much reduced membership fee once we get the platform up and running. They are the awesome folks who helped fund our baby steps. If you'd like to join this list of legends, contact us.
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