I'd say yes!

Good idea about asking Solid Fund to help, also it might be worth clarifying the figures -- I assume these are per day / night and not the total for two days / three nights?

Hi All, Just flagging up that Co-operatives UK Practitioners forums is on the Thurs 16th Nov I know this affected attendance last year so if you could do it a week earlier I'd appreciate it and I;m sure your Secretaries, accounts and comms people would as well.

Hi @johnatherton thanks for sharing! The other dates offered in November were 27-29. I went for the earlier ones as it felt a bit too close to Christmas but I'm not even sure that matters! I'd be happy to ask for a date in October but that is usually a mental month (in our experience).
Perhaps 27-29 is fine?

27-29th November 2017 is fine for me since it is so far ahead, on the other hand if we are leaving Wortley Hall in the morning / lunch time on 15th November I'm not quite clear why that is an issue for an event on 16th November, the problem is having two events in a row? Or people need time to prepare for the other event? Sorry if these are daft questions...

thanks to everyone who has voted so far. A quick update: I've changed the date to 27-29 on the thread topic to make it easier for people to go to the Coop Practitioners Forum. We still have both dates til the end of the week.
We will also need to pay a 25% deposit by next week. Will have confirmation on the amount today, I suspect.

@aaronhirtenstein thanks for starting this thread. I have a clarifying question before I vote: do you have a team pencilled in to organise?

Hi @kayleighwalsh we don't as yet other than myself and @edrussell. The next steps would be to get a small team in place. I am willing to offer a couple of hours a week to keep things moving along and I'm hoping that if we keep chipping away at things often it won't feel like such a big job - but that is perhaps wishful thinking! I would also like to catch up with you to pick your brains about what we need to organise. Hope that helps!

Sounds good to me, thanks for your speedy reply.

Hi everyone,
Thanks for pushing this forward. I've heard back from Wortley Hall. The 25% deposit will be £4177.25 and the booking is being held until next Monday 6th March. What do we think is the best way to get this paid (if the proposal passes!)?
Would Cobudget be a good way to do this? Or perhaps the bigger coops can share the payment for the deposit?
Thanks,
Aaron

@aaronhirtenstein I think CoBudget would be a lovely way of doing this and cement the collaboration of the project as a whole.

Using Cobudget to raise the deposit sounds good to me.

RE: the cost, it does include three meals a day which are fully catered so that everyone can take part rather than cooking and washing up. I think the challenge to CoTech is to ensure that the network generates considerably more than £300 per person per year. If its not doing that we should probably focus our efforts elsewhere. Also, there's nothing to stop us having other types of meetup - regional ones for example.

@harryrobbins I agree that self catering would be best avoided if possible, @asimong's suggestion of Unstone Grange does have a a self-serve breakfast, lunch and evening meal option but I don't think it would be big enough, unless used when the weather was warm and dry so people could camp and have outdoor meetings, but that would be an event of a different nature.

I agree with you, @harryrobbins that for established partners the benefits of collaboration should easily outweigh the costs of such a venue, and the inconveniences of a lower cost venue might detract from the benefits.

The issue for me is the entry route. I would imagine that a really good way in for newcomers is to come along and participate, to find shared areas of income-generating work; but it might be hard to get their co-op to agree to such an expenditure of money and time until the income generation was established. And of course for some co-ops it might actually not lead to extra income.

indeed - there were about 50 of us last time and we will need at least as many spaces this time (I hope)

Last year, the brilliant Blake House paid for their tickets with the CoTech video that they produced. The skill range in our network is also very valuable, so could be added to the mix alongside CoBudget.

I like the idea of cobudgeting to help other people attend. Go Free Range would be happy to contribute to that.

I Have just started a funding proposal on Cobudget to raise money for the deposit for Wortley Hall: http://cobudget.co/#/groups/677
Ideally, we need to raise the money by Monday as we have the booking til then..

sorry, this is the correct link: http://cobudget.co/#/buckets/1143

@aaronhirtenstein I can't access either of those Cobudget groups - can you get me access pls?

sure @matthewparsons what is your email address?

Could you also send it to me, kayleigh@outlandish.com - I missed the link the first time round. Matt's is mp@outlandish.com

Quick question @aaronhirtenstein - what are the refund terms on the deposit we have to give to Wortley Hall? If we eventually have to cancel, would we get the deposit back?

@matthewparsons @kayleighwalsh I've sent you both an invite to Cobudget

Sorry @aaronhirtenstein could you invite me too please?

@chrislowis I'll find out and get back to you..

@shaunfensom check your inbox!

@chrislowis the deposit is non-refundable so we will need to be 100% on this. I've managed to get them to hold the booking for another week while we work out the deposit, and, in the meantime, I think @matthewparsons would like to propose an alternative to see if that swings people in a different direction.

@matthewparsons what is the expected/desired attendance numbers? Is there an indicative bracket?

@marcd - it says 49 rooms at the top of this thread, but I'm not sure if that's beds or rooms really.

@marc as I understand it, we have 49 rooms at Wortley, some of which have more than one bed - mine certainly did - and there is an option to share. I think we had about 50 last time round but @kayleighwalsh will know better

I think we could self-facilitate -- this would save some money.

Have the people who are opposed to Wortley Hall been there before? It's not like a posh corporate place, it's a Labour movement / Co-operative venue.

I wonder if @johnatherton might have a moment to briefly explain how much work / organising / funding is needed to put on the Worker Co-op Weekend 2017? Is the £60 a head for a camping place subsidised or is that what is needed to cover costs? This might be a model we could try to emulate in the future, even if we don't manage it this year?

Hi, Been keeping well away from discussions as none of my business really but as my name was called out of the ether I appear....

Worker co-op weekend is kinda subsidised because none of mine or Co-ops UK's input is factored in and people do tend to provide food/labour for free or at cost.

Personally as your day jobs aren't running events and you want everyone involved in the business at hand. I think it is best to go with a venue that can take 90% of the hassle away from you. So either provide bursary's to those that can't afford it or another suggestion could be two prices, a "supporter" price and a "hardship". Supporters pay more than would be needed to cover the cost, so the same amount can be knocked of the price for people who don't have as much money.

Hi @chriscroome - I think that your objection is based on an assumption that isn't specified in the text of the proposal: that one person/a group of people would be responsible for all the catering for example.
This isn't the proposal. The concept of a co-created event is that everyone does it together. People will sign up for kitchen and cleaning shifts, and these little crews will assemble periodically and collectively run the event as it progresses.

At Wortley, we're paying a group of people to make and serve the food, make the beds etc. The proposal is not to pay a different set of people to do this, or expect another set to do it for free, but to spread that work amongst the entire group.

@brianspurling - I don't think there was any 'logic' set forth in my proposal was there? It boils down to the question, "is this the type of event that the network really wants?", and I felt in order to gain a meaningful answer to that question, at least one alternative type of event had to be suggested ;-)

I just want to see a firm vote for 'the same as last time', rather than what I felt was a default 'yes'.

There's nothing to stop us doing multiple retreats. I'd be up for both but I'm primarily interested in the content and don't want to get involved with catering, etc. in this context

I'm sorry @matthewparsons, I meant to vote on this but was busy on things and then the deadline passed!
For the record, I would abstain because I'd be happy with either option and see merit in both so happy to go with the flow. Thanks for proposing this, as you mentioned, this partly came about because of an inherent flaw in the original proposal which made it seem like it was Wortley or nothing.

@harryrobbins has made a good move here in pointing away from 2 competitive alternatives. Wortley hall makes sense for those already fully engaged and busy (time at a premium) while some other more collaborative setting would make sense for more tentative exploration, building rapport and community, before the business case is proven and generating income.

So maybe we do need both? In which case, maybe i could get together with others interested in the communal/collective option, to explore possibilities? And of course Wortley would go ahead in any case...

@asimong @harryrobbins another type of event aimed at exploration and growing / building rapport within the network sounds great. Once I have the Wortley situation in hand I'd be happy to explore it with you.

Just to say that we are still looking for funders for the Wortley deposit: http://cobudget.co/#!/buckets/1144

We have just under 50% of our total (which I'm supposed to be sending to them tomorrow! If people/coops are able to contribute then let me know, ideally on cobudget. Thanks!

@asimong @matthewparsons @aaronhirtenstein We have an enquiry from Luke Murphy who's trying to set up a tech worker co-op in Ireland (Republic of) and who would like to come to a cheaper event aimed at people who are not yet running successful co-ops. I'm happy to be involved with organising, and will attend as long as it's not camping and is more about tech co-ops than the experience of co-creating.

Thank you @harryrobbins, and @matthewparsons @aaronhirtenstein . How are we going to start off the conversation on this?

Another one I'm wildly late in on. Would have agreed, provided we could find a ace with good wifi - Worker Coop Weekend is really the template for this.

Hi everyone,
We reached our deposit target of £4,177.25 and I paid Wortley Hall today so the 2017 CoTech Retreat is now on!
Thanks to everyone for commenting, voting, proposing and contributing. Next steps to follow soon but I am away next week and have signed up for too many courses (and thus snowed under with course work, idiot) so will be a couple of weeks.
@asimong how about a joint call first/second week of April?
Aaron

Woot! Thanks for making it happen Aaron.

Yay! Thanks, Aaron.

Very late to this. For the record

1. I would've voted for the alternative proposal.
2. The number of people who voted against it demonstrates to me just how important and needed an alternative style retreat is for this network!

Let me try to explain with an anecdote.

Back in 2009 or something I went of a 9-week full-time (Mon-Thurs) residential course on Sustainable Land Use at Ragmans Lane Farm. One of the best things I've ever done. Despite the fact it was really great value, overall it was still quite expensive (although I was one of the exceedingly lucky people who got a subsidised place). Hence why, at first, when they told us we'd have to cook for ourselves, I, much like nearly everyone here, was like "WTF - I was expecting to be fed!"

However, in the end, the cooking together ourselves thing was actually by far one of the best bits of the whole course. And it was actually really easy and didn't take loads of time and effort at all. There were about 20 people on the course. Each day a random team of 3-5 people cooked and washed up for everyone else. Which meant apart from one fun day a week when you were part of the cooking/ washing up team it basically was exactly the same as being catered for. These teams were very quickly and easily chosen by raising of hands every Monday morning "who want to do Monday?...you, you, you, you, Tuesday?...you, you, you, you etc". It was fun, absolutely delicious and amazingly cheap (the total cost for ALL our all organic and local food worked out at about £3 per person per day).

This and other similar experiences since have even led me to think that:

Doing together + Cooking and Eating together = Community

It's a damn powerful equation. And any network would be silly and shooting itself in the foot to ignore it.

Thank you @josefdaviescoates for putting into words, based on your direct relevant experience, what was in my mind, based on less direct experience.

I guess we have to live with this not being part of the general experience yet. And the option of another model as an extra meeting, as long as a good number attended, would give us some basis for spreading the cultural / social awareness.

FYI Luke from https://riseup.net/ would like to come (but can't vote because he's starting a co-op and we voted not to let him in :)

Not for 2017 (it's in two weeks if you haven't booked yet.. www.uk.coop/wcw2017) , but for the worker co-op weekend in 2018 we could look at bigger more wifi/tech friendly venue with camping so you could do a tech fringe at that event. To get the best of both worlds (we organise the cooking you organised the tech).

@johnatherton sounds like an awesome idea - I think there should be a good contingent of CoTechers at WCW this year - Kayleigh, Mateus, Jason and Nick will be joining from Outlandish.

Ditto @harryrobbins . Will be there m.self & was a 'sortof/informal' tech sig there last year too

Thanks to Jim from Agile the notes from the CoTech meeting at the Workers Co-op Camp are on the wiki, there was discussion on:

• Wortley Hall 2017 -- things like a online booking form were discussed
• CoTech Camp 2017 -- what we know so far
• Community discussion board
• Inclusivity and Language
• contact@coops.tech emails
• Skill sharing
• Future plans for CoTech identity and marketing

Great stuff @chriscroome

I've set up a thread for discussing the summer camp over on the Discourse server: https://community.coops.tech/t/cotech-summer-camp/52

Hi @everyone - don't forget if you're in London tomorrow Outlandish and Agile are hosting a planning session/workshop/social at the new CoTech space in Finsbury Park - 149 Fonthill Road, N4 3HF from 1pm

@louisescott is organising a similar event in Scotland in October.

Any volunteers to host one in the north? @edrussell @asimong @shaunfensom ?