Is Cooperative Technologists a network of co-ops or something else

@sionwhellens said:

Can anyone link to an actual example of the FairShares society rules or Company Articles?

Since they are not yet FCA approved I'm guessing that there might not be anyone using them yet?

@harryrobbins said:

I still feel pretty strongly that if both CoTech and Outlandish have human members then I'd end up with a conflict of interest when recruiting people, etc.

Why, you can be a member of multiple co-operatives -- I bet almost all of us here are already...?

Might it be worth getting a bit of a sense of who's up for joining various different types of co-op too?

I still feel pretty strongly that if both CoTech and Outlandish have human members then I'd end up with a conflict of interest when recruiting people, etc.

@chriscroome I guess Outlandish's mission seems pretty similar to CoTech's - at least they overlap a lot.

When I talk to people who are talented tech people that want to save the world I generally try to recruit them to Outlandish. If I now have to explain that there are two co-ops they can join, both of which are consortiums with overlapping goals, different governance systems, etc. it's pretty complicated.

I also feel a pretty strong responsibility to make sure that people in Outlandish have a decent livelihood. Obviously I'm keen that everyone in each of our co-ops have a good livelihood but I feel that if we're all in our individual co-ops, which are in turn part of CoTech I have a reasonably clear responsibility to my fellow members first, as well as to the overall membership of CoTech.

If I am a member of two co-ops, both of who contain individuals looking for work, then I think I would feel that I should be looking for work for both sets of people equally, which sounds like a lot to take on at the moment.

Co-operative Technologists being in a position to employ people, or us even agreeing we would want it to, seems rather a long way off... or I'm I missing something?

I thin it's much too early to consider incorporating CoTech, which I see as an evolving network at this stage - however we could stay unincorporated and test one or more 'as if' CoTech constitutions. More important would be to set out what is the nature of the relationship between CoTech members and what the 'business' of CoTech would be. At this stage perhaps we should think of it as a 'secondary coop' providing services to its members that it's better placed to provide than the primary members themselves; for instance if we do joint marketing, we would anticipate needing a fair and transparent process for putting together member consortia to deliver projects that come through CoTech; and for identifying what opportunities came through CoTech, as distinct from projects that came to/through a primary member where they were looking for partners in the network.

Just (finally) got round to registering an account on The Hive https://community.uk.coop/s/ This is peer-to-peer support for co-ops. Not really taken off yet but it's young. There's an option to set up a group. Would it be worthwhile setting up a Tech group to attract people who might be interested in forming tech coops? If I set the group up, will some others join me in keeping an eye on it? - by creating accounts there? Apologies if someone has already suggested this.

Yep - I'd be up for helping out. Do I just create an account on The Hive?

I believe @kayleighwalsh and @matthewparsons may be interested too.

@harryrobbins @kayleighwalsh and @matthewparsons yes, just set up an account. I'll set up the group then.

I've just set up an account, my username is Kayleigh.

Hi Shaun, did you set up a CoTech group? Looked, not found (username royAB)

Also happy to help keep an eye on this Shaun. Username is PeteB

@roybrooks @kayleighwalsh OK group set up and you've been invited. @harryrobbins you don't seem to be there yet, but easy to find since it's the only group

Just logged in, I haven't received an invite...

Thanks Shaun

I've signed up now but can't see how to join the group.

Tsk, supposedly all three of you were invited. Slightly counter-intuitive UX (well, that's my excuse). Try now?

Plus @roybrooks

Would you invite me to The Hive group, please? account name (obviously ;) ) "asimong"

@asimong just invited a Simon Grant - assume it's you

Shaun could you invite Sion? Ta!

@sionwhellens Done. There seem to be two of you....

Earlier in this thread multi-stakeholder co-op rules were mentioned and although this is a little off-topic I thought I'd mention that the New Internationalist has adopted the Somerset Rules and rather than weighted voting as the Webarchitects version has they have a rule that 75% of the management board must be worker members. The New Internationalist yesterday launched a community share offer seeking £500k and in a day have raised over £73k which is awesome and I guess they might be heading to be the biggest multi-stakeholder co-op in the UK?

@marcd so far we've just adopted the broadest definition of tech/digital services which includes design for web/email, film/video that's distributed digitally and consultancy about digital services. There's no requirement that co-ops main output is tech/digital. Do you see an advantage in a tighter definition?

It's a good question. My immediate reaction is to keep it as broad as possible and let potential members self-define if they deliver a 'digital service'. And spend time on communicating the shared interest, aims and purpose of the consortium.

I am interested to know, have groups developing open hardware come up in conversations yet?

Will give some thought over the weekend.

OK, so, possibilities i can see:
1. keep restrictions as they are
2. open up competely
3. try varying the boundary criteria
4. do it by recommendation

To me, any clearly definable criterion (1, 3) is likely to have edge cases that fail, while complete openness (2) would require self-selection: how can we manage that? Would there be a possibility (4) for defining who is definitely in (as at present, perhaps) and then adding others by agreement of (say) at least two of the core constituency?

We obviously need to continue the thread on "how are we defining tech/digital services?", though personally I'm happy with the formulation of Co-operative Technologists -- I think that covers it.

And we need to continue to work out what, if any, formal structures we want, I'd suggest a multi-stakeholder model with the member co-ops having the majority (say 75%) and individual members having a minority, but I think we are only going to be able to make a decision on this when we next meet, at the earliest.

Regarding the poll to open this group up, I think that makes sense and if / when we have a formal organisational structure we can create new (more restrictive) forums for the decisions making of that organisation.

@aaronhirtenstein as suggested earlier by Sion this is no longer an appropriate place for decision making for CoTech since there are people who are members of this group who are not part of CoTech. The suggestion is that this Loomio becomes a place for interested parties, and CoTech gets it's own decision making forum (probably on the basis of one co-op, one vote - a la CoBudget).

thanks @harryrobbins I did read and understand what @sionwhellens said at the time but did not take it in! I will change my vote on that basis...

I should add that I'm not really convinced Loomio is the best tool for what people have in mind - some kind of forum/discussion software would seem more appropriate.

Also we will need a decision-making tool for CoTech. Are we imagining another instance of Loomio or something else?

This discussion has made me realise that I'm not really sure what the purpose and audience of this group is. Given that it sounds as though there are already non-CoTech members of this group then I can see two options: remove non-CoTech members from the group or open it up to allow anyone to join. I don't feel particularly strongly about either of those options so I'm going to abstain.

I think my preference would be to point people at the public mailing list for general discussions and support, and to use Loomio for collective decision making among co-tech members. I'd remove voting rights for non co-tech members from here (but allow non-members to observe if possible). If we are to use Loomio as a general discussion forum for anyone interested in this area I think there are better tools available for that.

This sounds sensible to me. However, I think the current "public mailing list" may be the email address used on the CoTech website for prospective clients / members to contact us. That doesn't seem like the right place for discussion either. It feels as if we need the following:

1. A decision-making tool for members of CoTech only
2. A shared email address for prospective client / members to contact us - only visible to members of CoTech
3. A public discussion forum open to anyone

We have a public email list and a separate private contact list already.

Ah. My bad. Thanks for the clarification.

It would help if some more people voted, we are on the cusp of the "open it up" vote being a minority:

• 9 Agree
• 3 Abstain
• 6 Disagree

18 out of 83 have voted so far...

Sorry for being late to this. Having taken in what others have said, I think I would have gone for making this a discuss-and-decide group for coTech and popose a Facebook group for the wider comoonity ...