Take control of your tech. Go open!

Chattanooga.Digital is a new initiative to empower members of our community with digital technology. We will enable members to get the most from tech, to grow our local economy from the grassroots up, reduce our dependence on Big Tech, and strengthen our local tech ecosystem as well as give members a competitive edge. For this purpose, we are developing a non-profit cooperative that will make it easy and economical for anyone in our area to access, own, and use open source solutions.

Our goals are to:

1. Deploy, maintain, and support open source applications and online services that align with community needs,
2. Educate community members about open source solutions and related topics,
3. Facilitate open source development in our area,
4. Grow our local tech sector, creating more business and work opportunities by keeping tech spending local, and ultimately
5. Provide benefits and competitive advantage beyond what is possible with proprietary solutions.

The utility model is a well-established way to deploy and maintain infrastructure. Under this model, the costs of all infrastructure components and the work required to deploy, integrate, maintain, and manage them comprise the utility's rate base. Customers pay a rate based on their portion of the total use of the infrastructure; costs are divided among users based on relative usage. The more you use, the more you pay.

The key characteristic of a utility is that some infrastructure is required to serve any number of users so many can be served for about the same cost as a few. Costs increase marginally to increases in users and uses, which means the cost per user decreases as the number of users grow. The more users there are, the less each user has to pay.

Digital assets tend to have network effects: the benefits of having and using digital assets increase exponentially with the number of users. They also have learning effects: the more you learn about how to use them, the more beneficial they become. These two effects complement each other. Learning together decreases the costs for each person involved and increases the benefits.

Chattanooga.Digital is a cooperative because effective use of digital assets requires ownership: data about you can be used against your interests if you do not fully control it. Users tend to get locked into applications as they create data, learn how to use the software, and come to rely on it. It is common for prices to increase arbitrarily and rapidly as usage and switching costs increase, especially when digital assets are bought up by others. Owners can suddenly decide to change or terminate services without any notice or recourse for users. The co-op's purpose is to avoid all of those issues — to make learning and switching easy, along with access and use.

Join Chattanooga.Digital by applying and paying the annual membership fee. Establish a digital identity. Access community services via the web or client applications. Request member services. Add users to your member services. Pay your monthly utilization fee — which covers what you and your users use, community services, and other operational expenses. Only you pay for your member services. Everyone pays an equal share of expenses from community services and other functions of the co-op.

Hack sessions are collaborative learning events during which business and civic leaders — "problem owners" — engage with technology leaders — "problem solvers" — and other stakeholders to evaluate potential solutions to a particular challenge, goal, or problem. These are convened on an as-needed basis with sponsorship.

See upcoming hack sessions or check the events calendar.