Loomio
Mon 5 Oct 2020 2:32AM

Initial Proposal on Social.Coop and Meet.Coop

MN Matt Noyes Public Seen by 95

Based on our discussion with @Oli SB and @Graham of Meet.Coop and the two strategy summits last month. I propose that Social.Coop join Meet.Coop as a multi-user member, for a trial period of 3 months, at a cost of 90GBP per month.

Social.Coop members who contribute the equivalent of 3GBP/mo. or more to Social.Coop will be able to use Meet.Coop's Big Blue Button video meeting service (subject to reasonable bandwidth/resource controls).

Social.Coop empowers the Community Working Group Operations Team to create a circle of members to implement this new service in collaboration with Meet.Coop.

At the end of the three months, the circle will facilitate a retrospective and make a proposal to continue (or discontinue) the service.

Note: we also discussed other roles that Social.Coop might offer to play in Meet.Coop, but I would like to focus on this issue first.

As proposer, I would like to follow the integrative consent process we have used before. So this first round of discussion is for questions and answers about the proposal. I will then integrate the comments and make a formal proposal. - Matt Noyes

Notes from the SC and MC meeting are here: https://cloud.owncube.com/s/GBPZYYDssykKJtn

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caseyg Thu 8 Oct 2020 12:36AM

I support this proposal! I've been contributing $1/mo to social.coop and $10/mo to meet.coop — but I would gladly integrate my memberships via social.coop at $3/mo.

Just for clarity, I'd consider defining reasonable bandwidth/resources or specifying who decides what is and isn't reasonable.

NS

Nathan Schneider Thu 8 Oct 2020 2:45PM

I'm very concerned about this. In the guise of a partnership, the result is it would introduce a tiered payment system to S.c. We specifically created the membership pricing structure as a solidarity measure.

Of course, cooperatives often have paid-for extras—at your food co-op, some people might buy the fancy butter, while others might get the regular stuff. But since this is at the level of the membership fee, it's a bit different. A couple options:

  • Find a way to make this service a commons available to all members

  • We can create a separate contribution structure in Open Collective for access to Meet that is not presented as a membership fee, but is instead an add-on purchase

I strongly prefer the first option if we can make it work.

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Graham Thu 8 Oct 2020 2:55PM

Wearing multiple hats here, so won't say much, but just to feed back on Nathan's point: according to https://opencollective.com/socialcoop social.coop already presents a tiered pricing structure. While that may be designed for a given purpose, I personally don't see an issue with offering access to meet.coop as a member benefit to anyone paying in at all but the lowest level. It still makes access to social.coop as broad as possible without giving it away, and recognises that there is a cost for the meet.coop service.

NS

Nathan Schneider Fri 9 Oct 2020 4:59PM

It is not a tiered membership structure, it is a solidarity membership structure. The different levels of contribution do not equate to different levels of services.

DC

Derek Caelin Thu 15 Oct 2020 4:30PM

I like that language.

MN

Matt Noyes Fri 9 Oct 2020 6:13PM

I think Nathan raises a good point. The ideal is to offer BBB as a service for all Social.Coop members. Which would mean offering the service to everyone who donates at least 1GBP/mo. Which raises a different question: is 1gbp/mo. a reasonable membership contribution if we offer more than just a cooperatively governed/managed Mastodon instance? Taking into account the additional admin involved in managing BBB and member accounts, and participating in Meet.Coop.

SC

Simon Carter Sat 10 Oct 2020 8:38AM

As someone looking for a communication platform, could you please decide something?.

NS

Nathan Schneider Sat 10 Oct 2020 8:12PM

Why don't you decide something—it's your co-op too:)

KT

KC Terry Sat 10 Oct 2020 7:32PM

I would be ok seeing this happen in either form, but if possible I much prefer Nathan's suggestion that the Meet.coop/BBB features become a commons/basic feature of Social.coop membership at all contribution levels, instead of a premium feature offered only to those who pay a particular amount. I don't anticipate myself using the Meet.coop features very often at all, but I would be willing to increase my Social.coop contribution somewhat so that this feature is available to me if/when I need it.

That being said, I recognize that Social.coop needs to make ends meet one way or another, and I'm aware that we benefit from the work of unpaid/minimally paid volunteers currently. Perhaps there is a way to present a guideline of suggested contribution levels based on feature usage, yet not actually block those features, and not place guilt or blame on those people who need to use specific features yet cannot meet those contribution targets?

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Buddy Tue 13 Oct 2020 12:14AM

Likewise, I would prefer the co-op try integrate Nathan's suggestion that meet.coop/BBB become a commons feature if at all possible.

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