From Users to Creators

How communities can build technology that serves the people who depend on it

We carry powerful computers in our pockets. Yet we often have little say over the platforms that shape our work, conversations, businesses and access to information.

Communities can change that relationship.

In Mexico, Indigenous communities organize their own telecommunications. In New York, neighbors help build internet infrastructure. Across a federation of delivery cooperatives, workers help determine how their software develops.

The opportunity: Bring residents into the design, ownership and care of the technology they use.

The big idea

Becoming a technology creator does not require everyone to become a programmer. It requires communities to develop the ability to:

• Define the need: Decide which problems deserve attention.
• Shape the tools: Build, adapt or commission technology around those needs.
• Share control: Establish who makes decisions, manages information and receives the benefits.

A community becomes more capable when it can understand its tools, improve them and hold their operators accountable.

Why this matters

A platform’s priorities influence what it delivers. Advertising revenue, investor returns, public service and community well-being can lead to very different design decisions.

Community participation creates room for other priorities: affordable access, local languages, fair working conditions, accessibility and knowledge that stays available to the people who helped create it.

The following projects offer living examples. Each addresses a different part of the challenge.

1. Mexico: Communities build the connections they need

Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias, or TIC A.C., brings together Indigenous and rural communities providing their own telephone and internet services.

Its process begins with community needs and local resources. Participants choose suitable technologies, form a technology committee, map the network and receive installation training. Organizational principles, administration and a plan for financial sustainability are part of the work.

What communities can learn: Build the organization alongside the infrastructure. Equipment becomes more useful when residents have the knowledge and authority to manage it.

2. New York City: Neighbors help build the internet

NYC Mesh demonstrates that residents can participate in building the infrastructure behind their internet connection.

At The Olmsted, an apartment building in New York, volunteers completed a connection to NYC Mesh in 2024. Its resident guide explains how volunteers arrange installations, connect equipment and provide ongoing support. This is an operating service with practical responsibilities attached.

What communities can learn: Technical capability grows through shared work. Installation, documentation, resident communication and troubleshooting all contribute to a functioning network.

3. Barcelona and beyond: People help shape the tools of democracy

Decidim is free, open-source software for public participation. Its development grew from Barcelona’s experiments with digital democracy into a project supported by an association and an international community.

Organizations can use it for proposals, discussions, meetings, voting and following the implementation of decisions. Through the Metadecidim community, people can contribute to the project’s design without being developers; formal governance and roadmap participation also have association membership routes.

What communities can learn: Participation can extend to the design of the platform itself. Residents can help decide how their collective decisions are made.

4. Delivery cooperatives: Workers help direct their software

CoopCycle supplies delivery software and shared support to cooperatives and social economy organizations. Its tools handle tasks such as orders, routes, invoicing and courier coordination.

Member organizations collectively define development priorities, and each federation member has one vote. Shared developers work on the resulting roadmap. Its Coopyleft license restricts commercial use to qualifying organizations, so communities should check eligibility rather than assume unrestricted use.

What communities can learn: Several local enterprises can pool the cost of technology while retaining a voice in its development. Every town does not need to finance a separate software team.

5. Japan and worldwide: Citizens create environmental knowledge

Founded after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Safecast combines volunteer participation, measurement hardware and openly shared environmental data. Participants help gather information about their surroundings, contributing to a resource others can examine and reuse.

The work continues to evolve. In a project reported in June 2026, Minerva University students contributed user research, data analysis and improvements to Safecast’s software infrastructure. Their research identified a practical barrier: people valued the measurements but needed clearer explanations to understand them.

What communities can learn: Creating technology includes making information understandable. Researchers, educators, designers and residents all have useful work to do.

The connecting thread

Mobilized’s reading of these examples is straightforward: community capability grows when tools, skills, decision-making and ongoing support develop together.

The models differ. A nonprofit network, a software association and a worker cooperative have different structures. Communities can learn from those differences and choose an approach that fits their circumstances.

How to begin where you live

1. Choose one problem people already experience.

Listen before selecting software.

Perhaps growers need an easier way to coordinate orders. Residents need dependable internet. A neighborhood needs a reliable directory of services.

Describe the problem in one sentence and identify who experiences it.

2. Bring those people into the first meeting.

Include future users, people who are often excluded and someone who understands the existing service.

Ask what works, what fails and what a useful improvement would look like. Make participation possible through accessible meeting spaces, language support and ways to contribute offline.

3. Investigate tools you can adapt.

Look for existing projects, shared infrastructure and potential partners.

Open-source software allows people to inspect and modify code under its license. It still requires hosting, maintenance and technical knowledge. Compare the full responsibilities before choosing.

4. Agree on control before collecting information.

Write down:

• Who can make decisions and how residents can challenge them.
• What information the project needs and who can access it.
• How people can retrieve or remove their information.
• Who controls the accounts, equipment and essential documentation.

These agreements should be understandable to the people using the service.

5. Fund the everyday work.

Budget for support, security updates, accessibility, training and replacement equipment.

Memberships, service income, public funding and grants may each play a role. The plan needs to cover what happens after launch.

6. Test something small and share what you learn.

Begin with a manageable group. Measure whether the service works, whom it excludes, what it costs and whether people can get help.

Document mistakes and improvements so another community can build on the work.

Keep the promise realistic

Community ownership creates an opportunity for accountability. It takes continuing effort to deliver it.

A project can still struggle with unreliable service, volunteer exhaustion, unequal participation or decisions dominated by a small group. Clear responsibilities, paid support where possible and regular public review help turn good intentions into dependable service.

Your contribution can begin before you learn to code

You can organize a listening session. Translate instructions. Test a service with an older neighbor. Help prepare a budget. Teach a skill. Explain a technical decision in everyday language.

For Mobilized, connected media can help make these efforts visible: showing who is building, how the work operates and what others can learn.

Start with one shared need. Bring together the people it affects. Build the skills and agreements to address it.

That is how a community begins creating more of its technological future.