For the past few years Shadowcat have been proud members of the Lancaster Ethical Small Traders Association (ESTA)[1] and the broader community. For a lot of that time we have also been involved with the Small Green Consultancy, and later Pear Trading as they delved into how the local economy works.
Michael Hallam, creator of Small Green. ESTA and Pear Trading, has for many years studied the local and broader economy and stipulated that there are many fundamental flaws in the system. Michael has devised an extension to the LM3 economic theory to account for a more targeted and specific understanding of local economies.
Over the last five years Mark Keating, and now the rest of the Shadowcat team, have been working with Michael to devise ways to track and understand this new understanding of local economies. For this we have created an application, website, models and algorithms to analyse and pursue the data.
At this point we have just moved to some Alpha testing of the mobile application and website applications. We are collecting some preliminary data to help implement the models and algorithms and also get necessary feedback on function and interaction with the applications.
You can learn a little more about the project on the dedicated Shadowcat site and on the Facebook page. We will be posting more to these locations as we learn and grow this important project further.
Notes
[1] Not to be confused with the US authority scheme.
