Is Cooperative Technologists a network of co-ops or something else
Harry "Outlandish" Robbins PublicSeen by 536Some people think a network of co-ops would be most useful and others prefer the idea that it should be open to anyone who's interested.
Let's set up a Discourse forum server at community.coops.tech
proposal by Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Closed Wed 29 Mar 2017 11:01AM
There wasn't a consensus on the proposal from @harryrobbins to "Let anyone who's interested join this group" so I'm not convinced that we should follow the majority vote on that, how about this as an alternative proposal:
- We setup a Discourse server at
community.coops.techand make this open to anyone interested in discussing the intersection of technology and co-ops. - We restrict the Loomio group to members of CoTech co-ops.
Technically this would require a virtual server with 1GB of RAM, I believe that Webarchitects would be happy to provide this and the sysadmin time to set it up and maintain it at no cost to the group.
This proposal is, in part, driven by the feeling that people like modern interfaces and appeals to use the email list rather than Loomio for discussion have failed, in part, because of the old fashioned nature of Mailman -- Discourse probably has a nicer interface than Loomio so it might work as an alternative...?
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 19 | 100 | 20 |              | |
| Abstain | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Not voted | 77 | 80 |               |
I much prefer this compromise. Nice work Harry!
I agree with Chris in principle but have to ask (as I am genuinely ignorant) why we cant just have the wider discussion on Facebook page? Would suit our needs and be public facing and therefore promote Tech Co-ops. Keep Loomio for Co-Tech members.
and I'm very glad it's not Facebook!
+1,000,000
Discourse is fantastic, and as someone who recently deleted their Facebook account (for the second time) I'm delighted that's not an option!
Strongly agree!
and 3. change the name of this group to CoTech too.
Good idea.
I think this is a good idea. I'm old fashioned enough to enjoy email, but if discourse will help grow the community, I'm all in favour. In setting up the server, let's not forget part 2 of this proposal. Someone (an admin?) needs to make that happen.
I think this sounds like a great idea, but we should 'sunset' slack and or Loomio as we're getting too many channels and it's getting harder and harder to post a message in the right place
Double yes to it not being Facebook (Andy, Discourse is open source, so a big plus for me instead of the tax dodging FB).
This sounds good to me. I agree with Harry that we should get rid of some of the other channels as part of introducing this; although I don't think the details of that should hold this up.
I agree with the proposal but it's important to keep Part 2 in. Definitely anti-Facebook on principle and it's not suitable for discussion anyway.
I'm please that the new proposal looks like it has more chance of achieving a consensus -- I really wouldn't have been happy if we had implemented the last proposal when there was so much disagreement. I think a open forum that anyone who is interested can join would be great, especially if we get people joining to ask questions like "how can I set up a co-op?" etc...
If we do as @josefdaviescoates suggests:
- change the name of this group to CoTech too.
Can we also 4. Change the logo as well, please 😃
And it look like I might have to get my head around how to setup services using Docker, which should be fun... if this proposal passes next week then it might be another couple of weeks before I have an Ansible playbook I'm happy to use in production, perhaps this is something some of us could co-operate on using git.coop, I'm looking at @alexwa here 😉
@chriscroome
Happy to collaborate on this!
@chrislowis from the Discourse website:
Mailing List Support
Opt into a special mode where all messages are sent to you via email, exactly like a mailing list. Start new topics via email.
Can we kick off a discussion about how to streamline comms? Can I suggest:
Mailman (email list) - keep this for announcements, old fashioned folks, etc
Discourse (forum) - use for discussions/polls/chats/etc.
Slack - close it (replace with Discourse)
Loomio (this one) - close/archive this Loomio - it's not currently great for discussion or decision making
Loomio (new one) - set up a Loomio along the same lines as the CoBudget - one co-op, one vote
CoBudget - keep for budgeting decisions
Twitter - keep for external discussions (maybe get it to auto retweet stuff?)
Yes please, the spread over platforms means I'm not sure where I should be putting my attention, and it's definitely getting in the way of how much I participate.
Might be worth including these in the comms list?
- The MediaWiki site
- The WordPress site (if the proposal to start using it to post blog / news item's to it in implemented).
- Google Docs (could we use the wiki for things that Google Docs are currently used for?)
- HackPad (we stopped using this following the Wortley Hall gathering when it was replaced with the wiki)
In terms of Mailman / Discourse / Slack I'd suggest we start using Discourse for a while before we decide what to do, it might become obvious. The open email list has hardly been used and Discourse claims to work well for email interaction. Slack is different in nature from a discussion board, it is more like IRC, I have found Slack really good when it has been used like IRC for sorting out the hosting for www.coops.tech and when working with people from Outlandish on some Ansible development -- a discussion board wouldn't have worked for that.
For a new CoTech Loomio group agreeing that each co-op has a vote is one way forward, but since people have individual Loomio accounts and we might not want to restrict access to one person per coop it might make sense to make it open to all workers in member coops but ask that coops have a single person who can cast their vote?
In reply to Harry's suggestions: streamlining definitely important. I still get more value out of instant messaging than forums, and still believe in the long term value of encouraging "real conversations" rather than a "talking shop". So i would be pro keeping slack and losing Discourse. But i acknowledge im on the losing side of that argument :)
I'm excited about Discourse. Any idea of an ETA @chriscroome ?
I feel we should co-budget some money to support Web Architects' great work hosting and setting up our stuff.
Roughly how long does setting up and maintaining a Discourse server cost?
Sorry for the delay on this, it was caused by getting a solid fortnight of work to migrate Co-op News from Apache on AWS to Nginx on one of our virtual server servers (and then the Easter holidays), the Co-op Press have been very supportive and have joined our co-op and also agreed to have the Ansible playbooks we wrote for them hosted on git.coop, so I think we should make an effort to also support them, they are launching a share offer soon and we could also help them with story leads when we have them?
Hopefully I'll complete the Ansible playbook for Discourse in the next week, the outstanding issue is sorting out incoming and outgoing email, everything else is more-or-less working.
Webarchitects still haven't managed to find time at one of our committee meeting to discuss contributing to any of the previous co-budget fund pots so, in my opinion, this really isn't something you should be worrying about. My time spent on this is useful learning -- I haven't set up anything using Docker before, and it'll only need a 1GB or 2GB RAM virtual server to run on so this is something that I feel we can easily carry as a contribution to the movement. The main way other co-ops could help us is with more work -- we could do with more sysadmin / devops type work setting up Linux servers using Ansible.
There is a test Discourse site up and running and it appears to all be working, I want to test it a little more and also solve the issue that emails sent out by Discourse have HTTP links and not HTTPS links (for example for account verification), but it's more-or-less at the stage where the scripts to generate the server are ready to be used to build a production server 😃
If anyone else wants to do some testing please sign up for an account and let me know so I can make you an admin -- there are no shortage of admin settings...
Allow DTC innovation co-op to join CoTech
proposal by Kayleigh Walsh Outlandish Closed Fri 28 Apr 2017 10:02AM
Thomas from DTC got in touch yesterday, he has started a co-op with two other people and knows Matt Shearer (Outlandish) @bevangelist and @chrislowis. The co-op is legally based in France, but he is based in London and one of the other members is soon to be based in Canada. [Please check email Joining the Tech.coop? that came through the mailing list yesterday at 11.46am for more info and subsequent thread].
Are we basing 'UK co-ops' as registered address, or the workers? He has offered to set up a UK address if we ask him to, but this seems long winded and not bureaucratic.
Proposal: Allow DTC innovation to join CoTech
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 10 | 83 | 10 |   | |
| Abstain | 2 | 17 | 2 |  | |
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Not voted | 85 | 88 |     |
I genuinely think CoTech will benefit from having DTC innovation in the network.
I don't have clear views on the issue of the boundaries of CoTech.
We don't have a legal structure or (as far as I'm aware) a formal agreement that we are only open to UK based legal entities / co-operatives (though perhaps we should?) so on that basis I support the proposal to allow dtc innovation to join -- looking at the website site they look fab and they would fit in very well :-)
No reason that Co-Tech shouldn't be international. To my untrained eye they seem to bring some skillsets that would be useful. Just to be sure - are they a real co-op or intending to be?
In lieu of some stronger guidance on who our members should be I think DTC have strong enough ties to the UK to be allowed to join. They also do great work and their voices would add a lot to our collective discussions. I should say, I'm mentioned in the proposal, so feel free to not count my vote.
They sound great, partly based in the UK and would add a lot to our network
Spread the message.
It doesn't bother me where people are based, personally, all should be welcome so for this reason I would normally fully support their membership. But on the other hand, it could muddy the waters a bit if we become a UK lobbying force to have members that are not UK based as full members. So I feel 50/50 about it. Sorry that's not actually very helpful!
Good work @chriscroome
I registered but it didn't send me a confirmation link (I checked spam).
Excited about having this up and running.
Outlandish would be happy to put some cash towards supporting and hosting this stuff. What would be a reasonable estimate of the annual cost?
All the best,,
Harry
I registered but it didn't send me a confirmation link (I checked spam).
Oops, sorry, the firewall was too strict, outgoing email works again now. I'm intending to do some more checking of things this evening and perhaps I'll rebuild it from scratch at ansible.webarchitects.org.uk one last time before I create a virtual server at community.coops.tech. Feel free to test away :-)
Regarding money, this isn't an immediate problem, I'd suggest perhaps adding it to the agenda for Wortley Hall and including it, along with other issues, in the "shall we create a legal entity" discussion...
DTC sound great so so long as they are a proper co-op I'd've voted yes too.
One reason is that this would exclude people without Facebook accounts.