Micky Metts (Michele D. Metts) is a noted speaker, author, and emissary for the Platform Cooperativism movement that developed at The New School in New York City, Micky is also a board member and acts as a liaison between the Solidarity Econoher Network (SEN) and the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives, to bring the movements closer together. She is also a board member of the Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives and a member of The Free Software Foundation and MayFirst/PeopleLink. Micky is known in the open source world as FreeScholar
Ms Metts is currently an active member of Agaric, an international worker-owned cooperative that builds online applications using free software. As a member of Agaric, Micky hosts monthly meetings of the Boston/Cambridge Worker Cooperative Meetup, a regular show-and-tell for freedom-seeking employees, creatives, freelancers, business owners, jobless individuals, and entrepreneurs. Participants learn about, and share, work experiences applicable to working in a shared-ownership model, and members of worker cooperatives and collectives share experiences, challenges, and ways to make their businesses and their lives better.
Micky's speaking engagement topics range from community building, industry organizing, security, privacy, and cooperative development, to innovative web development techniques anyone can do without programming, using Drupal as a content management system. At events around the US and internationally, she advocates free software for community building – networking, privacy, encryption, and building worker-owned cooperatives. Micky has created several successful outreach campaigns to bring communities together, such as the "Developer of the Minute" campaign and the #freesoftwarestory campaign on the Free Software Foundation website.
Early Career
editAs an executive and board member of iCast in 2000, a corporation capitalized with $200 million, Micky led the team that built the website to support a desktop application to stream live events with user interaction. Since then she has led teams of programmers to create custom applications using free software (as defined by the Free Software Foundation, fsf.org). She supports and facilitates people in the cooperative movement to develop a vital connection with the free software movement. Micky is a long-standing member of the community based around the free and open source software project, Drupal. As a pioneer, working with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Drupal technology, she has created and presented VoipDrupal webinars in conjunction with the MIT Media Lab.
Micky has been involved in web development since the late 1990's creating CustomChat Corporation as an internet software company focused on the development of easy to use, yet highly customizable, live conferencing software with embedded video for use on the web. In 1996 she built Chathouse.com, a website that achieved 2.2 million hits a day and gained a membership of 300,000 in 1997.
Her ongoing work contributes to online platforms for community use and her web development career includes the creation of diverse online communities including Cyber Weddings and Friend Finder starting as early as 1996. Micky's passion for web development is driven by: Drupal, FREE SOFTWARE, GNU/Linux, VOIP, and building communities.
Early Life
editMicky was raised in Weston Connecticut, as the youngest child of John and Kathlena Metts. Her father was an executive and owner of news radio stations in Connecticut. He built WJZZ, as a modern jazz station, with Dave Brubeck as music director, in New York City in the 1960's. Micky's mother was a fashion designer and importer with a high profile boutique on Main Street in Westport, Connecticut, the African Room was popular in the late 1960's.
Little known facts: Formerly a punk rock bassist and guitarist, a welder and a silversmith, a formula racing pit crew member, and a creator of some radically modified late 1960's VW beetles.
Micky now lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her partner, John M. Crisman.