Co-operative Technologists

Nice one @chriscroome look forward to hearing more of the outcomes soon. BTW, I just went to try and edit "calender" to "calendar" on the wiki but needed to login and couldn't see anywhere to create an account...

I then spotted it says on the wiki homepage "To create an account on this wiki ask an existing admin to create an account for you by using the create account page" but if you click the "using the create account page" link it just gives a permission error.

I have just created accounts for you and Graham and set you both to be wiki admins so you can create accounts for others.

You get an error on the "create account link" if you visit the page when you don't have permissions, this is expected behavior, thanks for fixing typos and free free to add your co-op(s) :-)

Thanks Chris. Cooperative Technologists is a good working name - cooperation is a key technology. Looking forward to sharing outcomes and minutes with some keenly interested folk who couldn't participate in the retreat, when archived on the Wiki. And good to meet you.

Re follow up events, Worker Cooperative Weekend will be early May and planning is afoot, if possible I think we should run the two events next to each other. I will invite all from the mailing list into the Worker Cooperatives group on Loomio, where we are working on this and other things (including Worker Coop Solidarity Fund aka SolidFund, a subscribers-only subgroup - see also solidfund.coop).

Indeed, good, straightforward working title (tho am already mentally shortening it to 'CoTech')

Great to see all that has emerged - and sorry no-one from Open Data Services Coop was able to join.

However - keen to support future steps.

Would someone be able to create an account for me on the wiki (tim.davies@opendataservices.coop) so I can add info.

Great, thanks. Can someone invite to the slack channel? 9i think I'm hooked in elsewhere). graham@mc3.coop

Graham, just tried to add you to Slack but says you're already in. Maybe somebody else got there before me...?

Indeed. Thanks anyway. 👍

networks.coop and/or broadband.coop also not on Slack list. Can someone add them or me too please? either shaun@networks.coop or s.fensom@broadband.coop

Also to update info pages on my two coops in the wiki I need a log in I think. CAn someone help?

I have added an account for you to the wiki and you have permissions to add other accounts, but don't appear to have permission to add email domains to the slack team, I'm not sure who does?

Thanks. Anyone help on the Slack?

@shaunfensom I don't think we've discussed opening this up to non-worker co-ops yet.

I'm not particularly against it but I feel we should get agreement first. The meeting went really well (in my opinion) and it would be good not to derail it.

Can we at least ensure that no exploitative companies or co-ops consisting of exploitative companies are added at this stage?

Yes, certainly. Let's discuss. Suggest two possible approaches:

a) Some sort of associate status for non-worker coops - eg Brighton DX, Coop Digital, The Phone Coop

b) Or something along the lines you say. This could not be very formal however. BDX has small digital businesses as members, they'd be fine for you I'm sure, but if we start trying to define 'exploitative' we will very quickly hit treacle.

I think it would be a real shame not to open up in some way to people like BDX and Coop Digital.

PS. Is there a concern about being BDX listed in the wiki? Happy to remove while we discuss if so.

Regarding "is there a concern about being BDX listed in the wiki?" -- I don't personally have a problem, but to make things clear why don't we use categories -- for example "Workers Coop", "Consumer Coop", "Multistakeholder Coop", "Consortium Coop" etc. in addition to the "Coop" category?

Done!

Shaun I'm not sure that the VisualEditor works correctly for categories -- you haven't actually added one to the Brighton Digital Exchange page, I'd suggest you "edit source" and add [[Category:Category Name]] the the end of the page manually, I don't know if this is a VisualEditor bug, I'll investigate this at some point...

Thanks Chris. Think I've done that.

That looks good to me :-)

Having chatted (albeit too briefly) about your approach of using co-operativism as a way of converting traditional capitalist businesses to a better way of working I'm much more relaxed about it that I was.

Personally I'd prefer the associate status model. I'd be concerned that if The Phone Co-op or Co-op Digital joined they'd potentially overwhelm us with their size and change the focus of what we're doing. For example, one common issue we all share is how to be economically successful and non-hierarchical, etc. which is not a concern of those organisations. Similarly we'd all like to see more digital co-ops spring up, but starting a digital agency is quite different to starting a community co-op.

I'm very keen for us to engage with the broader co-op and tech communities, but I just think we should be clear that 'we' is not just 'everyone involved with tech and/or coops'

Perhaps it's worth us having a chat about how to build out this broader network and where the opportunities lie? I'm in vague discussions with Co-operatives UK and Co-op Digital about collaboration so it would be good to have something to tell/offer them.

Yes, speaking with Claire Braithwaite at Coop Digital the retreat came up. I said it had gone really well. I agree we need to be clear before making any approach.

Happy to talk in more detail. I think there's huge opportunity. Likely in London on the 8th...

I've been keeping in touch with various people at Co-op Digital, Member Council, Co-ops UK etc regularly for the past 18 months or so. Worth a more formal conversation now we have a thing.

The stuff Claire, Emer and gang are up to in Federation House is really interesting. I was planning on going up to visit in the new year now they're up and running. Happy to syncronise watches and a few of us go together.

No doubt there'll be things we can each do to align/multiply each others efforts without one having to join the other. Protocols rather than formal partnership.

Also an opportunity for our group to model good behaviour in terms of demonstrating 7 principles and making it easy for them to adopt.

Hi there, we have a couple of requests to join this group from people who are (potentially) not tech co-op workers.

One is from John Atherton (Co-operatives UK) and one is from "A Waterhouse" who apparently just wants to observe.

I think it's a bit confusing to add observers to Loomio as everyone can vote and it's odd when someone 'blocks' or similar when they're supposed to be an observer.

Shall we add them to the Slack and direct them to the Wiki instead?

Should we make this group public so that people can see what we're talking about without actually joining?

Good questions, generally I'm in favour of things being open unless there is a good reason for them to be closed, in terms of the things I set up:

• The wiki is open to be read by anyone, only people with accounts can edit it and the account list is public and currently all account holders have the right to create accounts for others (but only a couple have the ability to grant accounts that don't have the ability to create other accounts this ability, I'm happy to give more people this right as needs be).
• The list is set so anyone can read the archives, anyone can join the list, but only list admins, me and Kayleigh, can see the list of list members.

I'm happy to tweak the settings above to be consistent with the other channels, if needs be...

This does point to, now that CoTech is public (wiki, blogs, twitter etc), the need to consider a strategy to manage 'interested (by definition external) parties' looking for information & engagement.

Three constituencies spring to mind;

Potential members/collaborators - group and individual
Potential clients
And, in the widest sense, 'media' - from the tech & coop mastheads eg http://www.thenews.coop/ & http://www.theregister.co.uk/ etc, to freelance journos & bloggers

Essentially; recruitment, sales & PR

Another can of worms, which I was, kind-of, trying not to mention, was "do we need to, want to and are we going to, register any more domain names?"...

We have:

• coops.tech -- impulse buy as it was cheap for one year, less than £4, and I needed a domain to host the wiki on... (note that it is owned by Webarchitects with the intention to transfer it to a new legal entity if one is set up)

Haha. Well, I really do think we should have technologists.coop (tech.coop is taken).

Have contact with .coop domains & I know there's a strategy to reserve some names for 'significant' entities. If we can get a list of possibles sorted, I'll inquire.

Group is set to "Open" so "Anyone can find the group and ask to join. Only members can see who is in the group. All threads are public."

Yeah, pointing at the slack (and being better about chatting there and keeping loomio for proposals) is a good idea.

John

Would like to be using the Slack. Is anyone able to add broadband.coop to the slack, or join me some other way? Or am I being obtuse?

The wiki is public facing. Other channels don't need to be, and perhaps should not be. At least one channel should not be publicly accessible so as to enable people to share potentially sensitive information.

It is indeed open for people to view. I'm fine with that for now at least. A bit unclear why someone would want to join in order to be passive - I've emailed them to find out more.

@graham2 I suggest we keep it open until we have secret stuff to discuss. Not sure you can make just one thread private.

We now have three categories of co-ops on the wiki:

• Coop consortium‏‎
• Multistakeholder coop‏‎
• Worker coop

And all that is needed now is for the co-ops to categorise themselves following the instructions on the front page...

Getting a .coop does make sense, but they are expensive... there are lots of cheap options these days, for example coop.technology is £15.73 a year...

Well .coop was invented in a UK tech coop and took a fair chunk of life and stress to bring to market - from myself and others in this group. So I'd like us to back it :)

Fair enough, you have convinced me :-)

At less than GBP100, a .coop suffix is probably the cheapest/most valuable bit of branding anyone can buy today - distinctive, unique and (in Gildedsplinter's experience) a great way to introduce the coop story to the uninitiated.

To confirm: .coop domains are happy to reserve a name or names and suggested technologists.coop as a starter

Re the rumbling categories/associate member/who's allowed to join debate (coops have such a reputation for this).

CBN is listed as a 'freelance coop'. Which it is. In other words a group of people working together in a cooperative structure to sell their labour/share the fruits of their labour. That, it seems to me, is a worker coop (albeit that we have Cooperatives UK coop consortium rules). So, I'll mark CBN as such. Hope no one objects.

I successfully lobbied CUK to classify freelance consortia as worker coops if they ID themselves as such. This makes them eligible to vote for me in elections to the Worker Coop Council :)

Ha! Er, how do we ID ourselves ;)

Just tell them when we join Coops UK!