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Media Economies Design Lab
2025︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
BOULDER
The Media Economies Design Lab is a research lab within the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information at the University of Colorado.
The lab experiments with democratic ownership and governance in the online economy.
Within the lab, my focus is on community technology, cooperative economics, and democratic praxis. As a research fellow, I have contributed to a publication (the Open Social Network Cookbook), hosted events (the Cookbook Launch event and Protocol Ecologies Symposium), and produced episodes of our monthly radio show, Looks Like New.
The lab experiments with democratic ownership and governance in the online economy.
Within the lab, my focus is on community technology, cooperative economics, and democratic praxis. As a research fellow, I have contributed to a publication (the Open Social Network Cookbook), hosted events (the Cookbook Launch event and Protocol Ecologies Symposium), and produced episodes of our monthly radio show, Looks Like New.
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Open Social Incubator
2024-2025
INTERNATIONAL
Over the course of six months, the Open Social Incubator became a vibrant container for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. We learned about the varying affordances of open social tools like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Matrix, and, as each member’s project developed, delved into the site-specific challenges of constituting new online communities.
As a part of the the Incubator, each participant crafted a “recipe” for building a community on alternative social media to contribute to a cookbook. I contributed the “Mazigizaga Origin Myth,” a parable about Anansi the trickster spider hosting a cookout through practices of consensus decision making, collective budgeting, and self-hosting technologies.
Following the end of the program, I hosted an online event in Gather in which the participants in the program from all over the world returned to share their stories and insights with other attendees.
As a part of the the Incubator, each participant crafted a “recipe” for building a community on alternative social media to contribute to a cookbook. I contributed the “Mazigizaga Origin Myth,” a parable about Anansi the trickster spider hosting a cookout through practices of consensus decision making, collective budgeting, and self-hosting technologies.
Following the end of the program, I hosted an online event in Gather in which the participants in the program from all over the world returned to share their stories and insights with other attendees.
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Better Housing Colorado
2025︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
BOULDER
I currently live in a housing cooperative that is a part of a wider housing coalition known as Better Housing Colorado (f.ka. Boulder Housing Coalition). While living here, I have served as the house’s Labor steward, a role in which I keep track of our labor and accountability system. I have also served as the house’s representative on the Committee on Cooperation, an inter-house committee that helps mediate disputes within the various coops.
Since joining, I have been an active participant in the house and the wider coalition community. I conceptualized and implemented a new internal structure for the Committee on Cooperation fit to our extra large home, which now helps mediate disputes internally, actively monitors the social health of the house, and facilitates connection activities. I have also set up and onboarded the house on to self-hosted server infrastructure running on Yunohost to ensure that help provide our house with an autonomous stack. In that same vein, I have hosted workshops and presentations on both the house and coalition level explaining the need and implementation of cooperative computing principles.
Since joining, I have been an active participant in the house and the wider coalition community. I conceptualized and implemented a new internal structure for the Committee on Cooperation fit to our extra large home, which now helps mediate disputes internally, actively monitors the social health of the house, and facilitates connection activities. I have also set up and onboarded the house on to self-hosted server infrastructure running on Yunohost to ensure that help provide our house with an autonomous stack. In that same vein, I have hosted workshops and presentations on both the house and coalition level explaining the need and implementation of cooperative computing principles.
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ANANSI Revolutionary Collective
2022︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
INTERNATIONAL
The ANANSI Revolutionary Collective (ARC000) is a pan-African arts collective that stewards a commons of material resources, infrastructure, people-power, and knowledge. The collective is developing the ANANSI philosophy, which is one of Black holistic distribution, seeking to disrupt mass centralization across various disciplines. The collective continually experiments with an emergent collection of collaborative praxis, including collective budgeting, consensus-based decision making, rotational responsibility, reparational funding, and collective mythmaking. We are building a governance model structured around a participatory protocol, which will include guidelines around membership, voting, praxis and project management, and altering the protocol.
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ANANZINE
2025︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
INTERNATIONAL
The ANANZINE is an electronic zine exploring the shift from capitalism to vectoralism, where data has become a new form of super-capital controlled by tech elites. It examines how information technologies have transformed our economic and political systems, creating a new era of protocological control where data invisibly determines material conditions. The project critiques the harmful uses of data by our ruling class while advocating for reclaiming agency through decentralized technology and social praxis.
Distributed via physical USB cards in a "sneakernet" format, the ANANZINE contains essays, music, video games, and zines that analyze this vectoralist dystopia and envision liberatory alternatives. The physical distribution method emphasizes human connection and serves as an act of "anansi calisthenics," challenging centralized control by becoming vectors of data ourselves. The collection includes works like "Nor Neutral" (exploring vectoralism and decentralized alternatives), "Virtual Violence" (examining underlying violences of this transition), and "ghosts" (a mixtape inspired by the work of Mark Fisher).
Distributed via physical USB cards in a "sneakernet" format, the ANANZINE contains essays, music, video games, and zines that analyze this vectoralist dystopia and envision liberatory alternatives. The physical distribution method emphasizes human connection and serves as an act of "anansi calisthenics," challenging centralized control by becoming vectors of data ourselves. The collection includes works like "Nor Neutral" (exploring vectoralism and decentralized alternatives), "Virtual Violence" (examining underlying violences of this transition), and "ghosts" (a mixtape inspired by the work of Mark Fisher).
