Welcome to Digital Co-ops

Do we feel it's useful to take on the challenge of defining membership? Personally, I feel an "official" list of members is an obvious missing piece of the puzzle right now, and that drawing one up would help move us on from some of these (let's be fair, slightly meta!) conversations.

If others agree, does somebody want to attempt one?

I'm imagining a Loomio proposal with 1) a description of who qualifies as a member, and then 2) a list of "founding members". If we're feeling really adventurous, we could attempt 3) a "new member process", but perhaps just steps 1 and 2 for now...

Ditto to @brianspurling on this;

GS has members who engage with digital tech to a greater or lesser degree, but we're not tech* per se.

That said, there does seem to be some agreement that the skills we bring to the table would be of benefit to CoTech as a whole (and possibly to individual members) on which basis it seems worthwhile having us participate.

Whether that participation extends to voting rights is moot - I doubt we'd see our participation being conditional on that - but then again, that position itself may be a matter of principle to be considered; do all Members, by definition, have all rights, or are there to be 'degrees' of membership etc, etc?

All I would say is that, for GS to be most effective, it would be best for us to have at least a watching brief.

(*What is 'tech'... discuss.)

@graham2 I believe we're already paying for this Loomio, though i don't seem to be able to find the receipt. Definitely in favour of paying.

I think we should be aware that the work involved with trying to collect money from everyone would be significant and getting a coop to volunteer to pay the costs would be a lot more efficient.

The UI suggests that this is not a paid-for group, but if it is being paid for that's all good, let's make full use of those additional features. Indeed the work involved in collecting payments would be a faff, but it also enables the parties involved to have some skin in the game, albeit symbolic, and on that basis I'd say it was a solid if small step towards the goals.

On the basis that the front page of this group has a link at the top right to sign up to pay I strongly suspect that this isn't a paid for group.

The annual cost would be around £185 (19*12/0.8) and the payment link takes you to a chargify.com page that asks for card details, so someone / one co-op would have to take that on. If a sub-domain of coops.tech is needed let me know, but I guess using a sub-domain of loomio.org is fine.

Personally I'd prefer a service that was less dependent on 3rd party corporate services but since all the docs on self hosting it are outdated so I'm not going to offer to try to take that on!

In terms of Brian's suggestion to write:

a Loomio proposal with 1) a description of who qualifies as a member, and then 2) a list of "founding members".

I think this is a good idea but wonder if we shouldn't be aiming to work on proposals like this over the coming year with a view to get all this kind of stuff formally sorted out when we meet next year, and in the mean time keep using the loose working definitions we have been working with?

Thanks for the comments @chriscroome . I'm in agreement that in an ideal world Loomio might not be so dependent upon 3rd party corporate services. However we don't live in an ideal world, and perhaps this is exactly the sort of issues that this Cooperative Technologists group might choose to tackle, with the goal of providing a workable alternative for the likes of Loomio and no doubt many other 'tech4good' initiatives.

In the meantime we are where we are.

I see two key benefits of this Cooperative Technologists group putting its hand in its pocket and shelling out for the service:

1. The reality of the situation is that Loomio needs revenue in order to stand any chance of surviving and thriving, and whilst $190 is not going to make a huge difference it will help, and will also add to the number of paying customers that Loomio has on its books, which strengthens their case when seeking additional funding support in order to keep the ship afloat. If Loomio goes under, which as I understand it is a very real concern, I believe that would do enormous damage to the whole digital/cooperative thing that is happening right now.

2. The act of making even a small payment towards the cost will be practical act of solidarity (both to Loomio and to the Cooperative Technologists) and will therefore serve to cement the work that has been done thus far.

I do see the development of clear policy on membership criteria emerging over time, as people are able to take it on, and also guided by emerging clarity about the aims and objectives of this group. I don't want those discussions and deliberations to stand in the way of practical action that we can take right now.

I'd also like to suggest a further clarification on the proposal, as requested by @asimong on the status of these payments. My recommendation is that payments towards the Loomio fee are - for the time being - voluntary. Individuals and organisations that have opted to be part of this group should feel under no pressure to contribute towards costs, and should only make a contribution if they feel that it is a positive thing to do and of course that it is affordable for them to do so. As I've offered to administer the process of collecting contributions, should the proposal succeed I'll suggest an amount that people might want to contribute that would cover the bill for the first year, and provide a mechanism by which that payment can be made at low cost (probably a bank transfer into MC3's account. I'll then organise payment to Loomio, and any surplus that might exist I'll be content to sit on for later use by the group as it sees fit.

It's been suggested that this proposal could be extended to become a policy of this group, that wherever practical this group purchases goods and services from cooperative providers, and that by doing so we support the solidarity economy. I'd be very happy to put forward such a proposal as a follow-up, assuming that this initial proposal succeeds, which it looks like it will judging by the current voting position with just a day to go.

I wonder if, through these clarifications, further explanation, and by making this follow-up proposal public in this way, I might encourage some participants who have yet to vote to take action now in the last hours of this proposal, and also perhaps enabled those who have this far abstained to review their decision.

Would be an interesting experiment to start using http://cobudget.co for this!
(for who hasn't heard of it before, it's what Enspiral use for their co-budgeting).

Can i suggest that this is more of an operational issue rather than a governance decision? We're a multi-million pound organisation with hundreds of workers and this forum is essentially our board. The cost of everyone taking part in this discussion has already considerably exceeded the cost of the actual Loomio subscription. It's also potentially a distraction from the main task at hand. I'm very keen that this organisation is about doing stuff rather than discussing stuff and adding to our already busy lives.

@andrewcroft The mechanics - such as they are - are set out in a post a little further up this thread (spoiler: it's not very exciting). I agree in many respects that it would be great to have clarity about what this emergent organisation will do and how it will do that, but I don't currently see anyone making any great strides in that direction. In the meantime Loomio is rapidly approaching the end of its runway and needs revenue to avoid having to shut up shop, so I thought that it might be a positive step to give them some cash.

I also agree that Outlandish cannot be expected to sponsor this grouping beyond the substantial input that it has already made. Another reason to support the proposal I would have thought? Or perhaps not...

@harryrobbins I'm sure you're right. My experience of emerging organisations and the process that happens during their formation suggests to me that often small practical steps like the one I've proposed can be really useful in helping the group to move forward. If there are other live proposals or active discussions around key governance issues that I've missed then I'm very happy to simply set this aside for the time being - I certainly don't want to waste anyone's time.

@graham2 apologies, i wasn't meaning to criticise. I guess in my experience a lot of groups start with baby steps and exploration of governance issues but never move on.

I guess the big governance issue that needs to be faced and that is rumbling under the surface is who are the members of cooperative Technologists. My understanding was that it was a network of co-ops but some people have suggested it should be open to all who are interested in co-ops and technology.

@kayleighwalsh @harryrobbins you both seem pretty sure we're already paying for this group, but clearly something somewhere has gone wrong because we're clearly not (or rather, Loomio doesn't think we are), because if we were the Upgrade button wouldn't be displayed on the group homepage as it is now (it isn't e.g. shown on SolidFund homepage, because we pay).

@harryrobbins also, I was pretty shocked and mildly concerned by your message asking people to leave the group :-/

To me there is a really obvious solution to this: the "official" CoTech decision-making group should be a sub-group of this wider open group. Once who can be a member is worked out and then members formally join, only those members would be allowed to join the official formal decision-making group.

Simples. No?

It seems like a trivial point, I know, but going down that route is synonymous with creating a discussion forum out of the larger Loomio group. (by definition, because it wouldn't be a decision making tool if it included non members). I have little experience of anything good coming out of discussion forums. My experience of Making Stuff Happen is that quick chat to discuss ideas plus structured focused discussion to make decisions is a much more useful combo. I just don't see what value a Loomio super group adds over an open slack team. Surely we only want one place for conversation??

IMO, Conversation belongs in slack. Decisions belong in Loomio. But that's just personal preference, no doubt. If you are proposing a conversation-only Loomio group, fine, but I'd feel more comfortable if you also proposed closing down the slack team. See what I mean?

Sorry to shock you! This group has always been described as "a place for members of tech co-ops to discuss principle six" so it didn't seem unreasonable to ask people who are not members of tech co-ops leave.

I don't really see how something open to anyone and governed by consent can be an effective decision making body.

I've started a thread to discuss this properly https://www.loomio.org/d/SP6XgvHC/

I don't think the subgroup model you suggest works in Loomio terms as you can't have private/restricted subgroups. As @graham2 points out on that other thread we probably need both the narrower and the wider group so the question becomes "which group is this?"

you can't have private/restricted subgroups.

Yes you can! (hence the suggestion)

See this create sub-group screen shot:

and there are even more settings too:

My underestimating that sub-groups have the same membership as the main group but can have different permissions.

For example, i think you can create some threads where non members can comment and vote and others where only group members can comment and vote.

I can't see a way to create a sub group with a subset of membership to the main group, though of course I could just be Rubbish At The Internet.

just don't see what value a Loomio super group adds over an open slack team

Personally I don't think slack (nor any IRC-like chat room tool) really works well for asynchronous conversation/ discussion. They work really well for synchronous chat for teams of people who are online all the time and are always in the channel, but that's about it imho.

I could just be Rubbish At The Internet.

You said it! :P Of course subgroups can have a subset of membership to the main group! That is kinda the definition of a subgroup, no?!? :P

I think @josefdaviescoates nailed it:

Personally I don't think slack (nor any IRC-like chat room tool) really works well for asynchronous conversation/ discussion. They work really well for synchronous chat for teams of people who are online all the time and are always in the channel, but that's about it imho.

Slack is almost exactly like IRC (especially if you use the Slack to IRC gateway!) and Loomio is essentially the same in nature as an email list, discussion board or USENET newsgroup (without being distributed or having threading but with the addition of permissions and polls).

Myself and some of the Outlandish workers have made good use of Slack today and yesterday getting technical hosting issues ironed out for the new site and it is ideal for this, but a discussion board / email list / USENET newsgroup / Loomio group is just the thing for discussions...

Yes, absolutely agree with that, and was hoping somebody would bring it up :). I'm not saying that Slack replaces discussion forums, I'm saying that conversation belongs on Slack and Decisions belong on Loomio. And I think forums belong in the 90s.

If people are forced to hold conversations to help them prepare decision making proposals for discussion, we'll get a lot more done. The middle ground, which a forum-esque system would indeed service well, adds little value IMO.

Traditional organisations don't have an equivalent of a forum. People chat; people hold meetings and make decisions. Very few things tend to rumble on in open discussion. And if they do, they tend to attract criticism for being unproductive. I think forums are a side product of the internet, not a new, valuable invention in organisational design; I think that the proliferation of forums is based mainly on our human desire to have our opinions heard.

If, however, CoTech does decide it wants a forum, I would suggest Loomio is not the tool for the job. Partly because Loomio's USP is the decision-making bit (so let's not muddy the water), and partly because forum discussions tend to be long and the long Loomio threads run like a dog on my phone!

This makes a lot of sense to me. Asking the question "what is a forum for?" initially may sound naive, but later sounds quite penetrating. If people "want their opinion heard" fully, I doubt any kind of electronic forum is really the place to go. it's more like a deep one on one talk with empathy. On the other hand, as a medium for floating questions or ideas, which aren't yet formulated as distinct accepted issues, what else is there? How else does one introduce oneself, and get a quick sense of who else is there? And how else does one talk around the issue, compare assumptions, and get a sense of what proposals might be worth making?

So here's my floating an idea for today: would anyone like to have a discussion focused on the differential roles of different kinds of electronic communication, and which features of software seem to work well for which kinds of communicative tasks? The discussion might benefit from views from someone who has researched or thought deeply about what kinds of communicative tasks there are...

I find it a bit ironic that this discussion is going on under the heading "Welcome to Digital Co-ops" ;)

Thanks Simon - your reasoned response mirrors my thinking yesterday evening. I'd certainly be up for contributing. While I can't claim formal expertise, as a marketer, in the process of developing messaging for both CompuServe and Lotus Notes - which were, essentially, 'forums' - I've been wrestling with this topic since screens were green

Simon, I think your suggestion goes to the very heart of our disagreement. Your proposed conversation sounds very interesting, but I have a deep-rooted feeling of... (it's hard to articulate...) "wasted effort", "lack of focus", "talking shop", "un-tangiblity"?. I feel it's the sort of the conversation that belongs in academia, or maybe think tanks (although we'd be so lucky that any think tank would spend that long talking about something! :) ). The result that comes out of it will probably be a more rigorous conclusion than we would otherwise come to, but in the meantime (following my approach) I would have already implemented all the tools we need and would have moved on to changing the world. And, when push comes to shove, "just about good enough" is exactly what it says on the tin: just about good enough. Striving for perfection is a waste of effort.

Personally, I would rather those of you who might participate in such a conversation instead put your time into making some decisions and implementing some tangible assets for CoTech.

But obviously if people want to have those conversations then good luck to you all!, and I bear no negative feelings whatsoever. I have no desire to participate though: my life is too busy and I have too much I want to get done. My leading point in all of these discussions has only been: please don't do it in this Loomio group, otherwise I can't hear myself making decisions!! :P

I don't think that finishing pun works. You get my point: the long-running conversations drown out the focussed decision making, puts people off using the app (dozens of unread threads, of hundreds of messages each... it brings dread to my very soul!).

As I see it, successful communication, particularly non-verbal, asynchronous, remote communication is going to be at the heart of developing a thriving CoTech.

That this particular issue is also a growing challenge for an increasingly networked world suggests to me Simon's suggestion we invest time in discussing our needs and trying to identify and investigate a suitable tool or tool kit goes beyond a simple academic discussion;

If, on investigation, the currently available tools prove inadequate, surely it's an opportunity to develop something better for our use - it can only make the task of coming to mutually agreed decisions and managing the network easier. It's also the sort of utility we could share with cooperators in other sectors too - either as a salable product or as part of our principle 6 obligation.

Even if the investigation confirms that current tools are adequate, we can share that knowledge with other cooperators to everyone's benefit.

But going beyond our immediate need, there's more potential upside;

Developing our own, better solution would give us a competitive edge. What's more, given the inexorable rise of distributed working in the wider commercial world, there's no reason why a tool that works for us couldn't be productised for the non-coop market. There's always demand for a better tool.

Lastly, even if the investigation shows currently available tools are fine, that we're even looking into it can be promoted as part of our thorough, professional approach to work. Going further, tech studies, analysis and reporting could even become part of our offering - after all there's no real reason why they have to remain they exclusive preserve of Deloitte and McKinsey...

I feel frustrated that this conversation seems to be going nowhere and I'm sorry I keep making the same, detailed and pernickety points. Hopefully I can drop it after this post and let everybody get on with all the great work we all want to do :). So much of this is simply about semantics and the subtleties of the right-tool-for-the-job - it's probably not worth any of our time!

So, (what I hope is) my last thoughts on the matter..

Simon called it a "discussion" earlier (on "the differential roles of different kinds of electronic communication"), but I would say it is much better described as a "(small) research project".

I agree with the potential value-add of such a project (although, if I had to get off the fence, I would agree with Harry's "test quickly and iterate" approach, but that's just a different way of approaching the same problem. Sometimes thorough research is justified, of course).

And I'm adamant that whatever the chosen approach is, such an investigation is not well suited to a network-wide, single-thread discussion tool.

For example, the team who've just built the coops.tech website didn't run their workings through Loomio - sensibly and thankfully! They did, however, bring a decision about the mailing list to Loomio - sensibly and thankfully.

And when I finally get round to kicking off a working group on CoBudgeting in the new year, we will not run that through Loomio either. But we would bring important spin-off decisions to Loomio, and probably a final proposal too.

So I struggle to understand why a research project would be any different?

I bang on about this point only because it servers as a useful example to explain how I feel about Loomio. I would love to preserve Loomio for collective decision making, and when we need to explore an idea in more depth - as we will so often need to do - I would love us to take it off Loomio and find better-suited structures and tools to deal with it (kick off a research project, use video conferencing, organise a retreat, have conversations on Slack, use a chat forum, release the carrier pigeons...)

Again, sorry for being so stubbornly repetitive on this.

Likewise, (& my last $.02 too :)

Is Loomio the right place to propose/debate/confirm issues material to CoTech. Doesn't seem to be anything better out there...

Is Slack good for general discussion outside the above? Yes.

Is a build quick, fix, iterate approach right for key CoTech tools needed right now eg the website, wiki etc? Yes.

Is there massive potential within the group to develop (over time) new, more efficient tools for our use, for other cooperators and for the world at large? Yes.

Is Loomio the right place for discussing/developing such a project? No.

Merry Xmas All

'IMO, Conversation belongs in slack. Decisions belong in Loomio.'

Ditto that and @brianspurling's broader observation on decision/action process

@brianspurling You appear to be assuming that a larger group that might be encouraged to form around and outside of the CoTech cooperative would have no need of any decision-making facility. I'm not sure what leads you to that opinion.

I think part of what shocked me is why you picked on those people in particular?!

e.g. you didn't pick on me (I used to make most of my money from WordPress but haven't done so for a while now, but I like being part of this group :-D) nor @sionwhellens (let's face it Calverts are printers, not really a tech/ digital co-op, even if they do do the odd website or digital printing/ graphic design!).

osb@open.coop (who I think had left already anyway) is a Designated Partner in The Open Co-op LLP who are delivering the Open 2017: Platform Cooperatives event (and does actually make most of his money doing web stuff)

@vica has already said her piece but very clearly has valuable contributions to make imo.

@johnatherton isn't part of a digital co-op, but having the UK's apex co-op body keeping an eye on (and, where possible, supporting) what is going on here can only be a good thing imho - collective intelligence requires being able to see the relationships and connections between people.

But I did also just tweet at someone saying "ALL viable systems have boundaries and systems for exclusion. How well do you think you'd function without skin?!" so I get that you want/ feel the need to start working that out :)

I guess I'll head over to that other thread you created and (maybe) continue this there...(or not)

@josefdaviescoates the reason was that those people had only been members of the group for an hour. Prior to the Wortley Hall event various people were added where it was unclear if they were members of tech co-ops including yourself and some people who don't really offer tech services. At the Wortley Hall event there was (I believe) a consensus that a narrower organisation specifically about tech co-ops would be useful so we've not been adding people who are not members of said organisations. That is until Sion Whellans decided he was in a good mood and approved all the pending requests. Asking people who had only just been admitted with limited consultation seemed more reasonable (and I hoped less controversial) than chucking out people who were already in. Again, sorry to shock and it wasn't anything personal. I'm writing up a document summarising the discussions to date and outlining some options for the future which I'll circulate in due course.

Sounds good to me. I suffer from message overload and struggle to keep up with real time conversations on lots of different platforms when also doing my normal job (I'm on holiday now so it's not so bad).

Happy to go with the crowd and do my best to keep up.

Agree about the danger of poor signal/noise ratio on Loomio.

To my mind the "is CoTech a network of tech co-ops or something else" thread makes sense on Loomio as it's building up to a decision. In my opinion operational decisions (should we use this tool or spend £200) are best tested and quickly and iterated.

I think I am hearing you, @brianspurling

And yes, happy to call it a (small) research project. I'd love to collaborate and participate in that, and certainly not with Loomio as the main communication medium, completely agree with you there!

Often, when a conversation seems to be going nowhere, it's because it's really about something other than the supposed topic. Here I suspect it's about identity -- individual and group. I don't think that kind of discussion can be resolved with purely text media. So I'm looking forward to meeting more of you, and discovering that sense of shared identity where we can find it.

Hope we can move on, elsewhere as appropriate.

Simon

What's the protocol here? Should I e.g. start a proposal that whoever is up for it meets -- initially in a separate thread here on Loomio, but open do decide otherwise -- to formulate a practical policy for assigning different kinds of communication to different tools? Maybe the discussion could extend to "what are the different kinds of group / team communication and how can they be recognised?"

I'm also all for supporting a "build quick, fix, iterate approach" for specific specified tasks, challenges, problems, etc. My own experience is that understanding what we're trying to do, before launching off and doing it, can also save time and effort and frustration in the long run. But it's hard to be sure whether we're in a context suitable for "build it first" or "understand it first". I don't think that either approach is always correct.

Does anyone know of good ways of discerning which position we are in? One approach may simply be to try to formulate a proposal. If the proposal makes sense to enough people, go and do it. If there's no clear agreement, then reflect more. What I find really helpful, if the answer is "reflect a bit more", is doing that in close collaboration with other people who may have a stake in the answer.

And I recognise that discussing what I have just written is not to everyone's taste. Fair enough. Apologies for taking your attention. Back to my idea of proposing a separate thread to understand each other's experience and ways of thinking about that experience.

Any takers? Seriously, I'm asking for advice, do I make this into a proposal?

Oh, and one thing I'd like to add. Pragmatic research is partly about discovering what is out there. Traditionally, market research. But in the commons, because it is open, the question is, has anyone done this (or a significant part of this) already? Because if they have, we can save ourselves a whole lot of time and energy. Very often it's worth doing this. It's also called "not re-inventing the wheel".

I would very much be interested in talking about this more and agree with everything you have pointed out + would very much be interested in exploring what works for everyone and what doesn't (so really value also all the other contribution on this thread).

The idea of online platforms for collaboration in my view is to facilitate (= make easier) collaboration rather then be an extra burden on it's users. But to understand how that happens, we need to be able to understand better how each of us work.

As a starting point I would suggest it's good practice that the heading of a thread reflects the topic that is discussed! So I wouldn't hold back on anyone creating new threads.

A good practice for me in Loomio is:

1. Set up a thread to discuss a topic.
2. If someone is uninterested in that topic they can "mute" the conversation, so they don't get email notification but can still participate when they log in to Loomio.
3. If a group starts to form around that topic over time, create a proposal for setting up a smaller working group to work/discuss on that issue.

In general I would say though, as the holidays are coming up, we shouldn't assume that if people are not currently active on Loomio they are not interested. So let's just keep that in mind over then ext weeks.

Happy holidays to all!

Are people in this group aware of the US tech worker coops network, https://www.techworker.coop/ ? Time to forge fraternal/sororal/gender neutral links?

Before heading over to the new 'what is cotech actually' thread, reflecting on the debates here. Aware that I've been lurking a bit rather than contributing, apart perhaps from my reckless approval of new group members on the basis that they had something to say, rather than qualifying as members of worker-controlled tech coops.

To me there are a number of dimensions/tensions to the discussion, beyond the obvious 'people who want to get on and do it/people who want to feel their way into the idea':

Tech v not-tech - see for instance @josefdaviescoates comment that Calverts is not really 'tech', although it does websites (so by implication the software and hardware tools it deploys for design and other types of production are not 'tech'). I think we will need to evolve a working definition, so that we don't fall into lazy assumptions about what tech is - e.g. it's what coders do or computer firms make, or it's platform coops, or what venture capitalists put their money into.
Some people lean towards the view that software and internet-related tools = tech, which if captured, designed and owned in the right way = the revolution; others to a different view.

The network is an 'industry cluster' with a range of possible Principle Six opportunities, from being a kind of coop worker industrial union/employment agency, to facilitating business referrals and collaborations, sharing knowledge and resoures, right up to @harryrobbins vision of an all-purpose confederation of coops pooling equity/surplus/risk to further our cause, support third-party causes and change the world (see also @edrussell's point about The People Coop). Peoples' judgement about the utility of the network depends on how we choose to define the boundaries of the industry(ies) we're in, and also the limits of what they view as 'practical' (personally I lean towards achieving the impossible as the main thing to aim for, and new opportunities/alliances for my coop as a very acceptable consolation prize).

People are going to be excited by, and able to engage effectively, with the range of possibilities and visions according to their individual perspective and capacity, and the capacity of their coops to engage and contribute.

Next, who is a coop and who isn't. In reality we range from developed incorporated limited liability entities, through to two or three-member coops, one person coops with sleeping members, to individuals who identify as cooperators, either trading though service companies or as natural persons with legal liability. The perspectives of these types of potential members are naturally different.

The question of resources. At one end, Outlandish have a profitable business, have already invested in visioning the next level, and underwritten the development of this network. In the middle, there are coops that are breaking even. At the other end, people who aren't making much of a living. This will also affect the nature of peoples' perspective on the network and how they contribute.

And, the enthusiastic participation of a coop member doesn't mean their coop is as 'on board'. I am personally excited by a Robbinsite/Russellite maximalist programme, but right now my coop would not agree to pool control or assets, though is definitely interested in new business opportunities and sanctions me to be involved on that basis. That will evolve. Actually I think it's rare for an established coop to contemplate subsuming itself into a higher thing unless it's in crisis or bust, and the Outlandish initiative has been exceptional in that respect.

Loomio: SolidFund members use Loomio to discuss and decide and it's been reasonably successful although only maybe 10% of the subscribing 500+ members participate. SolidFund is a subgroup of the Worker Co-operatives group on Loomio and its proceedings are visible to members of the main group (but you can make them private). We just started paying for our account. A limitation is that you can't have further nested subgroups. I therefore want to check out the feasibility of transforming the SolidFund subgroup into a new main group. I suggest that if CoTech decides to stick with Loomio for discussions and decisions, it creates a competely new Loomio group, for members/associates, to allow not just for moving the agenda, but also for governance subgroups (with Slack/Trello or whatever for synchronous chat and task/finish). I know that's what @harryrobbins set this group up to be, but it turned into something else.

Thanks @sionwhellens for your great summary and perspective of where we stand.

I agree on reflection that this Loomio is not appropriate as a governance system for CoTech and might be more appropriately re-purposed as a more general discussion board for interested parties.

Also, as the outcome of this thread/decision is that we should pay for Loomio I've just subscribed on the Outlandish card. Happy for us to pay for it for now, but if someone wants to do a whip round or pay for it instead then that's fine with us.

I'd say Loomio is great for making and refining proposals, and for formally voting on them, but it needs a big hinterland of other types of interaction - face-to-face, Slack, closed Facebook group, whatever. It's when we try and do everything on Loomio that it can get overwhelming.