Making a Case for Peer Production: Interviews with Peter Bloom, Mariam Mecky, Ory Okolloh, Abraham Taherivand, and Stefano Zacchiroli

This chapter includes interviews with leading practitioners discussing the future of peer production. The practitioners interviewed are Peter Bloom, Founder of Rhizomatica; Mariam Mecky, Communications Unit Head at HarassMap; Ory Okolloh, Co-founder of Ushahidi; Abraham Taherivand, Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland; and Stefano Zacchiroli, former Debian Project Leader. Voluntary engagement is an important part of peer production. The peer production model is based on a series of assumptions about there being a neutral platform on which to do that. This description does not encompass the whole of peer production, but it is an important dimension. The idea behind HarassMap is directly linked to peer production; where the four founders were self-organized, collaborated, and coordinated on the project with a shared outcome relying on voluntary engagement.