The big parties, government, and capital spend gazillions of dollars (euros, pounds, yens, etc) to receive illumination about where things are heading and what course of action to devise in rapidly changing conditions. Doing so they expropriate our common learning and knowledge resources for private interest. It is time we reclaimed the role of the researcher for the enrichment of all of us – not solely the few.

What is the road to that? Let’s find out by paving it.

Initially FoO researchers will get involved in:

1. Identifying key ‘hot’ topics - that call out for deeper research and collaborative strategy forming. What topics are hot? What areas of research have the potential to move the edge of the movement right now? Our FoO researchers will need to possess a good knowledge of the movement, wider trends, and an intuitive sense of the whole.
2. Locating the very best resources - for furthering research in the areas of  identified hot topics. The resources must meet our editorial inclusion criteria.
3. Initially FoO researchers would use or learn how to use two complementary approaches:

• Participatory Action Research (PAR). As two Occupy London supporters wrote, “A movement is made up of questions.” Our “action research is not research, which is hoped that will be followed by action.” It is action reflected on, improved, and re-researched by the participants. FoO researchers will collect and help articulate the driving questions of each PAR. Doing PAR, we can catalyze collective self-reflection capable to support collective action at an increasing scale.
• Event “Collective Intelligence” Catalyst (or “Event CI” for short). The CI potential of participants in gatherings, workshops, and conferences is never fully actualized, simply, because either it’s not seen or their is a lack of tools and methods for harvesting it. Event CI will be evoking, mirroring, and augmenting the collective intelligence of the participants in gatherings, where we are asked to provide that service.