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September open tech / coops joint event?

Sion Whellens (Principle Six) PublicSeen by 476

Quoting in full an email from Mark Simmonds (coop developer):
"I recently attended this event http://ossg.bcs.org/ofb2016/ - organised by British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group, which was called "Open for Business". I went along and spoke about Co-ops to the great and the good from the open source community and was very well received. The organisers of the week long event of which this was one day - Wuthering Bytes http://wutheringbytes.com/ suggested to me that in 2017 we might have a whole day with an open source co-op focus, especially as the BCS, on further discussion would like to focus on other events the coming year (although they may still support if someone else steps up).

I have been trying broker Co-operatives UK's involvement in the event to organise that day, but that has fallen through due to lack of commitment and capacity from them.

Monday 4th September would likely be the best date and they have a pencil booking for the Waterfront Hall at Hebden Bridge Town Hall that week. This can accommodate ~100 people. There are smaller rooms available upstairs also.

So I was wondering whether the emerging network of Tech Co-ops who recently met in Barnsley might be interested in taking this on. It would be a great opportunity, especially if we can attract a similar audience to 2016 and mix them up with the platform co-operativists.
The Wuthering Bytes festival organisers would list the event, assist with finding speakers and help to co-promote it, but the day would need it's own organisation, funding/sponsorship, and doing its own promotion would also be advisable.
I can put you in touch with Andrew Back the main Wuthering Bytes organiser who is keen for something to happen. I'd also happily get involved.

Mark Simmonds
mark@culture.coop"

@josefdaviescoates is looking to perhaps tie in with the Feb open coops event, what do others think?

John Atherton

Hi Sion, I'll email mark direct... Co-operatives UK is definately interested. Probably just the person he spoke to didn't want to commit anyone. Please stick us down to attend/speak, even if its just Giles or me doing a more general co-op session. If we can get someone from our tech team nearer the time to get involved we will. They are just very busy doing actual tech stuff!

Also the usual, very happy to market or in any other way.

Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative)

This sounds good, I'd support getting in touch with them to see if and how we can be involved, I guess we would need to have some suggestions regarding who could offer to do some talks and what subjects they would cover?

Deleted account

I/We the Creative Coop are interested in getting involved and contributing time into planning and coordinating this event.

One question I have is when it says 'open source co-op focus' does that mean that there is only interest in Openess (eg. Open Source, Business Models and Innovation) in a Cooperative context or is this about looking at the benefits of Openness in general?

What would next steps be?

Simon Grant

echoing @marcd I would also be interested to know a little more about the focus. Perhaps a short list of possible example topics -- which could be imagined as session titles -- would be helpful, just to get a flavour.

Thanks

Simon

Graham

Sounds really interesting. For my money there would be value in a discussion looking at the governance models that the open source community have conventionally adopted (often some sort of non-profit charitable foundation) and assessing whether those models are best fit, or whether a more democratic (i.e. cooperative) governance model would suit better and provide for a more sustainable open source economy.

In my experience the open source software mindset is characterised as meritocratic rather than democratic, which is fine as far as it goes. But - my issue with this is that it doesn't actually go far enough because it does not take into account the needs of the users of the software and therefore does not foster the creation of a sustainable community of developers and users.

This discussion sits well alongside a second topic which covers licensing and the development of the commons. Michel Bauwens and others argue the point well that many copyleft licensing schemes don't do enough to protect and build the commons, as they make it too easy for private interests to exploit the commons for profit, leveraging the freely given work of thousands of volunteer developers. More on that here: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Commons-Based_Reciprocity_Licenses

Doug Belshaw

We'll discuss this at next week's meeting, but I'm pretty sure We Are Open will be up for this - in terms of facilitation, speaking and chairing panel sessions rather than financial sponsorship.