§ Contribution in your perspective
5 min read
Where do you recognise yourself in this work?
Federation work touches every layer of the ecosystem differently. What becomes visible from an administrator's perspective is not what a researcher reads, or what a Lab resident does daily. Pick where you stand, or read on at your own pace.
§ Choose a perspective
From which role are you looking at this work?
Several roles can fit. Choosing none is also legitimate, the broader story remains available on /contribution.
§ Before you choose
A short note before you pick.
Federation work happens because this kind of work needs to be done. That it touches what administrators, Labs, entrepreneurs, citizens and researchers care about in different ways is consequence, not goal.
Anyone who comes here to get something usually does not find what they look for. Anyone who comes to see whether something resonates with what they themselves carry sees, on its own, where the work meets their own work.
With that caveat: pick above the perspective closest to where you stand.
§ From a Lab perspective
What federation means for a Lab.
For groups considering becoming a , for residents of existing Labs, for people working on cooperative community formation who are wondering whether federation work fits.
How it works
Federation as what arises between Labs
Federation is not an organisation above Labs. It is what arises between Labs that sign the and follow the . The whole articulates the form in which the Labs move together; the Labs co-shape what the federation becomes. Cell principle: each Lab is autonomous, part of the whole, and co-shaper of it.
The Charter is short: five principles. The Practice is workable: eight disciplines. The operates on consent with one vote per Lab; no majority decisions across Lab boundaries. infrastructure carries the shared knowledge layer.
What a Lab gets out of it
Peer Labs, shared infrastructure, backing
Inside federation, a Lab has access to peer Labs for exchange, shared technical infrastructure via SYFERS, legal support where relevant, and a place in institutional frameworks that are harder to reach for one Lab alone: ENoLL, Cooperatives Europe, EU funding instruments, academic partners.
When a Lab goes through a hard period, federation is present as a network that can carry. Solidarity-in-work, not a rescue operation. Much of the work happens on the phone between Lab members, not through formal channels.
Honest limit
What it is not
Federation overlaps with ecovillage networks, Transition Towns, ENoLL Living Labs in EU research sense, but it is none of these. Anyone looking for a specific existing form may find more fitting networks elsewhere.
Charter and Practice provide framing. Within that framing each Lab is autonomous in its own work. Federation does not resolve internal Lab conflicts, local legal puzzles, or personal questions between Lab members. That remains work the Lab carries itself.
Federation work happens on its own. What is readable here per role describes how that work relates to different perspectives, not what federation promises anyone.
For the broader story about what federation work contributes to the whole ecosystem, see /contribution. For the legal context: /implementation-gap. For what federation as a whole is: /about and /alignment.