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“Talente” Currencies in Vorarlberg, Austria

Founded in 1996 as a timebank for the whole of the westernmost austrian province/state of Vorarlberg, the Talente System (www.talentiert.at) is now one of the most successful and innovative grass-root currency systems in operation.

allmenda_sitelogo(Update 2014: The efforts are now carried forward by the social enterprise Allmenda: http://allmenda.com)

Always rooted in practice rather then theory, all developments had been orientated on the needs of the predominantly rural population. It took its original inspiration from the LETS systems of the 1980s and 90s but extended their concepts with the aim of serving a whole state and not just one local community and strongly incorporating businesses and other stakeholders.

Continue reading ““Talente” Currencies in Vorarlberg, Austria”

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The Ven – From Karma to Carbon

Sporting a plethora of brilliant attributes and a track record of several world firsts in the sphere of new currencies, the Ven has been an issue of inspiration and discussion far afield. As with most currencies, user stories often illuminate as much of the currency design and mechanisms as driving a car illuminates about engineering. With the Ven, much of the language shared with many other community currency solutions has produced some level of identification and, by the same token, confusion, particularly for those interested in what´s under the hood of currency design mechanisms. Iconically, this even extends to the name and identity of its issuing company “Hub Culture Ltd.” and their local event-pavilions called (pop-up-)”Hubs” which are often mistaken for the league of co-working spaces also called Hubs under the umbrella of www.the-Hub.net for which I was working in 2010/11. (The two being ever more convoluted, since a Hub Culture Pavilion is now based at “the-hub” in Westminster, London.)

Last year, Matthew Slater and I met with Stan Stalnaker, Founding Director of Hub Culture and the Ven, to clarify some recurrent questions we had encountered about this currency.*

Here is a brief harvest of the what´s available about the Ven online and some additions from the interview. Continue reading “The Ven – From Karma to Carbon”