@stevenflower Yep, @abigailmurphy sorted the booking and has paid deposit. Mark your calendar in bold red pen. We'll sort a way to co-design agenda/activities soon!

Ace

@bevangelist @abigailmurphy double check - for Nov 14th - 16th ?

Arrive in time for evening meal on Mon 14th, two full days of co-operation, depart after breakfast on Thu 17th.

Really exciting to see this moving along. This is just a reflection, and given I am not around it should not really count for much.

But £5000 for venue is extraordinarily expensive...

If this is a case of Outlandish needing to use funds or else they get absorbed by the State - then fair enough :)

That being said I can imagine some other ways to invoice those funds to keep in circulation for other projects.

BUT... it's Outlandish's excess to do with as it pleases :)

Warmly,

D

Hey Dan,

The £5000 comes from £100 24hr delegate rate X 50 delegates. Outlandish have paid approx. £5000 as a deposit to secure the dates. Included in the rate is room, full breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus conference facilities, tea/coffee/biscuits etc. more detail in the attached brochure.

Price per delegate joining for the whole event will be ~£300. Local delegates who don't need a room can join for £25 per day.

If you think they're onto a good thing... http://www.wortleyhall.org.uk/shareholders/ :wink:

I gracefully bow backwards... thanks for the clarification @bevangelist :)

Any updates on the planning for this? With the Open Data Services team we've been planning an OGM for November/December and would love to work out best options for whether we could host this as part of the Digital Co-ops Retreat - and so bring the whole team, or whether we would need to do that separate.

It would be great to start thinking about agenda also...

Worth a quick call, or starting a few threads here?

I could've sworn I saw an eventbrite link flash past to pay/reserve rooms but can't find now.
@harryrobbins was that a thing or am I mistaken?
Keen to try and get our members signed up/thinking about sessions etc.

Hi - and thanks Sion for letting me know about this thread. This sounds like it could be a good event. What's the story in terms of shaping an agenda?

@graham2 currently the plan is to use an Open Spaces (unconferency-style) model so there isn't an agenda as such. There have been a couple of discussions about beginning to survey people and work out common themes, issues, opportunities for collaboration, etc.

It's all completely open though - no one's really leading it (by design) so get stuck in and make it happen :)

@graham2 which co-op are you with? Are you on the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cOmHX-BamapIcu43mXzNz2xHEgA3hUpkOSR0yzkF4uc/edit#gid=0 ?

Hi @harryrobbins - I am on the list - row 76. I'm involved in MC3 (http://mc3.coop, a very small outfit primarily doing work with CiviCRM these days, which is also a corporate member of Webarchitects), and I'm with Cooperative Networks (http://networks.coop) which was created by myself and Shaun Fensom (co-founder of possibly the first ever tech co-op Poptel way back in pre-internet) as a bit of a think tank some while back precisely to focus around the digital/cooperative nexus. So this thread and the event is right up my street. Other tech/co-op involvement includes involvement with fair.coop and their FairCoin initiative, where I've just started running a node on the new FairCoin2 blockchain testnet. All very exciting.

My main interest here is how, as a collaborative grouping of digitally aware cooperatively minded people, we might facilitate the development of what has become known in recent months as "platform cooperatives". I'd be interested in facilitating a session/thread at Wortley Hall about this, if there is sufficient interest.

I'll also give thought to the shape of the event and the sort of stuff that might be worthwhile talking about - or at least how best to survey and build some consensus on that.

@ievapadagaite @graham2 it is your money (assuming your coming) - this is something we're all doing together rather than one or other of us paying for.

The proposal is to share the costs across everyone so it will add the best part of £100 to each ticket since there will probably be just over 30 people paying for rooms (bringing the total to somewhere near £450).

I think it would be good to reword the proposal to make that clear. Also, I guess people should only vote if they're actually coming as it's a bit unfair to increase the price of everyone elses ticket.

Thanks for the clarification - that's important. Speaking for myself, as someone who lives locally to Wortley, and with family responsibilities whilst I am planning to get along to the event I'm not intending to stay overnight so my financial contribution will not be vast. I saw a mention somewhere about £25 for a day delegate as it were, and that's affordable for me. I'd be willing and able to chip in say another £50 overall towards facilitation costs, but I'm not really able to invest more given that I'll also lose at least one earning day by getting along to this event. I'd love to be in a position to support the event more significantly financially speaking, but that's not possible right now. And I certainly don't want Outlandish or anyone else to get stung, so it's important for me to be clear about where I am on this.

Hey Graham
All prices have been updated in the thread description, sorry that you were misquoted £25. I'll update across all the docs that we have access to now.

Thanks @harryrobbins for people and expenses estimate. Me and @simonball from Blake House will be attending either way. Although an event facilitated by Enspiral sound very exciting, added £100 for each delegate might make the event more inaccessible, so I'm changing my vote.

As / our earlier on 'aims', we'd advocate if investing £100/person in preliminary planning & facilitating, this is done on the basis of 'some' general agreement beforehand on what these are.

(Frame for the above; Our experience of coop retreats/workshops to date has been that much time & energy goes into discussing 'cooperation' and so less on identifying the business benefits working with coops brings to clients and planning how best to communicate them.)

Gildedsplinter's current understanding is that one of the (key?) aims is to investigate creating a scalable commercial resource.

Having read @graham2 from yesterday, addendum to last;

' Gildedsplinter's current understanding is that one of the (key?) aims is to investigate creating a scalable commercial resource... that is big enough and innovative enough to be able to challenge the dominant exploitative model'

@graham2 I think the venue said £85 per day delegate for the three days - would it be reasonable to share the cost of facilitation amongst day delegates too? That would make it up to £185 for day delegates if we go with the current proposal (including breakfast, lunch and dinner) - still waiting on the venue to confirm exact amounts.

Personally I'd rather that the larger co-ops shared the bill for facilitation and put up some sponsored bursaries. Outlandish are considering sponsoring ~10 bursaries for experienced women who work in digital and want to work for co-ops (we'd put it on Loomio before inviting them as they don't satisfy the current criteria).

Basically my point is that Outlandish is happy to make a fairly large contribution to the event to get things started but we're already in for something approaching £20k and need others to contribute too - not least so this is something we're all in together.

By the way, would anyone be up for being on an organising group or similar? Currently being led by @kayleighwalsh from Outlandish, @maria33 from Agile Collective and @edrussell from Web Co-op?

I don't know if it is worth considering using potentially cheaper facilitation? Seeds for Change might be worth asking?

RE: Seeds for Change/ facilitation, started the convo yesterday, Rebecca from the Lancaster branch is due to get in touch after conferring with a few of her colleagues. Also sent an email to Cath Muller.

Not entirely sure what we're voting on here.

@kayleighwalsh What's the follow up proposal on external facilitators that you refer to?

John, I was going to do a proposal about external facilitation but Chris got in there before me and mentioned Seeds for Change. Also, it wasn't really necessary for me to do a proposal, so I didn't.

The proposal is to increase the price of each room by £100 to £450 to allow £3000 for paying Enspiral to facilitate. The proposal doc is linked to in the Loomio proposal above.

There is a counter proposal of sorts from @chriscroome to find someone cheaper. It might, for example, be possible to find facilitators who'd do it in solidarity and three nights full board in a stately home.

The major contributions from Outlandish - both in terms of kicking off the whole thing with ideas and impetus, and in terms of the financial commitment, are well noted and gratefully acknowledged. And of course it is appreciated that if this thing is going to happen, and happen well, then others need to step up to the plate and get involved, both with energy and ideas and by making a contribution towards costs.

I guess my concern here is that by pushing up the price of entry this may create a barrier that would impact negatively on the success of the event. In the broader scheme of things £450 for a two day conference is not particularly expensive, unless you can't afford it. And smaller co-ops and less well-funded people and organisations may find themselves under some pressure to spend more than they can sensibly afford because they want to support and be involved in the event and because they don't want Outlandish to be out of pocket to a greater degree than it is anticipating.

I would therefore be strongly supportive of the two ideas mentioned by @harryrobbins yesterday: that the larger/better funded orgs/people pay a bigger share of costs, perhaps by picking up the tab for facilitation, and that people consider putting a bit more into the kitty in order to subsidise the participation of some people that otherwise would struggle to afford to get along (bursary). Of course under this type of arrangement the same argument applies - that this approach could potentially place those larger/better funded orgs under some pressure to put their hand in their pocket when they might not feel inclined to do so.

As for my own perspective - I'm keen to get along to at least one and hopefully both of the full days of this event as other demands on my time might allow, and I'm willing to make a financial contribution that is affordable to me. I'm also willing to put in some time and effort between then and now to help to ensure that the event is successful.

In many ways i see the organisation of this event as a microcosm of the Megazord itself. How can we best collaborate to make this event successful? Maybe we should be using Cobudget (http://cobudget.co/#/) or something similar to help us plan the thing?

Hello. Just to say we (wave.coop) are able to commit 1 person with a budget of up to £500.

Webarchitects agreed today to send one person (me, staying overnight), I have updated the spreadsheet.

Another, simple, online tool for splitting costs is kittysplit.

Thanks Chris, I intend to send out invoices by the end of this week with a 30 day payment period.

Thanks @kayleighwalsh, I was wondering what the plan was for payment, best send the invoice to finance@webarchitects.coop.

I also added a dietary requirements column to the [invitees page of the spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cOmHX-BamapIcu43mXzNz2xHEgA3hUpkOSR0yzkF4uc/edit#gid=0] (I'm a veggie).

thanks @graham2 - I agree that affordability is the key.

Outlandish isn't short of cash at the moment so we'd rather pay than land people with financial hardship. In fact, one of our aims in kicking this off is to share our business model and try to convince some other co-ops to start generating significant surpluses that can be invested in growing our movement.

Our key concern (as well as affordability) is that everyone is engaged and sees this as something that will be a success if they make it a success, rather than something that Outlandish will organise and bankroll.

Enspiral were keen to know by close of play yesterday if we want to go with the facilitation, and I think it's fair to say there are some fairly significant concerns.

I suggest we get in touch with Seeds for Change (thanks for suggestion @chriscroome) and any other facilitators we know to see if they'd be up for doing it cheaper (throwing in full board in a stately home might help :)

I also really like @graham2 suggestion to use Co-budget which we use internally, but if Kittysplit is better I'm up for that.

@harryrobbins I agree totally - this should not be seen as something that Outlandish is responsible for (except in a good way :-)). I do believe that we can all make a strong contribution to the success of this initiative, and I see this event - as someone else has already mentioned - as an important early step in what I hope will be an ongoing process of co-operation.

As part of that activity I'm inviting people into this discussion space as their names come into my head as being relevant and interested, and who meet the remit. Should I add them to the invite list Gdoc also?

I just had a nice chat with Rebecca from Seeds for Change about potentially facilitating the session. I'm going to send over some more details and will publish the quotes when I get them (I asked for a few to cover different scenarios).

@graham2 yes - please invite away. I think we've allocated about half the rooms and are going to do a bit of a ring round the listed co-ops to make sure they've reserved rooms if they want to.

Once that's done I think it's open to 'co-operator tech/digital workers' or similar, and I guess on a first come, first serve basis. I dare say people can be persuaded to bunk up and split room costs if more than 50 people want to come.

Hi all, we're going to invite some Enspiral peeps to this Loomio group and to at least attend the event - hope that's ok with everyone. We've agreed to pay them directly for two days support in the run up to the event (as outlined in their proposal) - just them sharing their experience, etc. I believe some of you might be going to their event tomorrow.

Would it make sense to open a thread here to enable people to propose/discuss ideas for topics to focus on at the event?

Would second that @graham2. (There has to be something for facilitators to facilitate after all...)

From the discussions - paraphrasing for focus - so far :

@harryrobbins:
1) (Create) a UK-based coalition of tech-focused co-operatives that pool their resources to achieve their shared aims – making the world better and fairer with technology
2) (Get) 3,000 people profitably employed in tech co-ops by 2020 and 100,000 by 2030
3) make it almost impossible for private companies to compete against us

@graham2
1) enable "coalition of UK-based tech-focussed cooperatives"
2) create something that is big enough and innovative enough to be able to challenge the dominant exploitative model

@roybrooks
1) How can worker co-ops collaborate better with other types of co-op and/or 'tech for good' businesses?
2) What benefits would a common/unified body offer members, other co-operators and 'clients'?

@shaunfensom
1) 'line our ducks' re 'Co-op Digital, and their ambitions to intervene in the digital-tech sector and promote growth.... & (have) a special role for co-ops on the Internet

@kayleighwalsh
(How to create) an engaged and united community

Good move @roybroks @graham2 - suggest:

add to @harryrobins 1): collaborate on infrastructure

add to @roybrooks 1): draw non co-op but sympathetic/compatible tech companies into co-operative ventures eg collaborative tendering

My partner has just got a job, which is great news. The downside is that it means I've got more to do in the way of ferrying children, etc., so my participation in this event is going to be more tightly constrained than previously thought. I still hope to get along for some time, and I'll also do my best to stick my oar in via this channel in advance.

We'd like to ask if anyone is able to sponsor/part sponsor any attendees? Lots of people that we have spoken to/invited would like to come but have no £. Outlandish is very happy to sponsor rooms but we'd really appreciate help from other members of this network. Please and thanks.

Hey Kayleigh, just got back to you on Twitter, sorry for being a slow coach! I'd really like to come to Megazord :) Fairmondo is an ethical online marketplace platform being built in the UK by Worth Cooperating (workers coop). As we don't yet have any sources of finance or revenue, Worth Cooperating only has one full time worker (myself). This is only possible because I've moved back in to my parents house. I can suffer my parents (just about) but it all means that I don't have any source of disposable income. Unfortunately I could only make it to Wortley hall with the help of some sponsorship.

We'd love you to be there so are happy to be the sponsor of last resort but, as Kayleigh says, it would be great if other co-ops would help out a bit with sponsorship too.