Extraordinary General Meeting, Monday 5th June, 3pm - to wind up or not?

As I understand it Chris is looking at the optimal approach in terms of innovation.coop - as a registered society can best take control of Platform 6 Development Cooperative Ltd (which is a company limited by guarantee). Both of these legal forms are specific to UK jursidiction. An important question being, given that Platform 6 is a cooperative, can it have just one member, or do we need to take a different approach?

Within our social‍.coop Loomio forum, with respect to P6 transitioning to Innovation‍.coop, @Graham mentioned that “the details of the transition, while agreed in principle in July, only became clear [recently].” I also understand that a brief was being drafted by @Chris Funnell on this transition from a legal perspective.

Are there any updates or next steps that you can share?

Thanks Cath - I really don't know how you do it. You effectively chaired the meeting AND wrote minutes! Outstanding.

Hi all - minutes from today's members' meeting to review the EGM actions from 5th June and consider Graham's proposal above. TLDR: support the proposal, details to be worked out slowly, consider the possibility of remaining a membership organisation, @Chris Funnell to look into legalities of whether we can proceed without changing much in the short term/having another members' meeting.

In advance of Monday's call I'd like to share some positive news, that may encourage more people to join the call on Monday, and to bring useful input and questions to that discussion:

Since early June when we met we've been exploring possible options for the future of Platform 6. As we have discussed, the organisation has created a number of useful resources and assets, and done valuable work in respect of it's fiscal hosting service that has proved valuable to groups like social.coop and meet.coop among others (please join both of these groups if you've not yet done so), and the Cooperative Ways Forward conference, etc.

We have been successful in identifying a partner who is enthusiastic to work with us on this. innovation.coop has agreed, subject to due diligence, to take over the key fiscal hosting service. More than this, and in order to effect a seamless transition, the agreement is that innovation.coop essentially takes control of Platform 6, thereby enabling it to continue to operate. Longer term, they may choose to wind it up (one option that proposed was to convert it to a society and then undertake a transfer of engagements), but all of that is for future deliberation. In the meantime all of the stuff that Platform 6 has built up can continue to be useful.

A bit about innovation.coop: it's a relatively new organisation, and a project that I've been involved with since about 2008, when I did a piece of work for Midcounties with Shaun Fensom to develop some strategic thinking about who to make the dotcoop domain name service more successful. The ideas and thinking that we developed have spent some years in the dark, but in the last couple of years we've revisited, updated and attracted some serious attention. innovation is about to start trading, and it has the support of a retail society. The overarching strategy is to develop a cooperative ecosystem (a protective "biome" within which business ideas can be innovated, incubated and developed all within a 'cooperation-by-default' context, with multiple organisations working collaboratively for mutual benefit using cooperative governance rather than contract law to govern the relationships between them).

For me, in many ways innovation.coop is an evolution of what I had in my head when Platform 6 was dreamed up, so this move feels like a very natural transition.

I hope that others share the positive view of this move that I know @Cath M in Bentley (A Commune in the North/Radical Routes/Platform6) and I both have, and I'm looking forward to working with colleagues in innovation.coop to take this forward and build on the good things that platform 6 has been able to achieve.

See you Monday at 3 here: https://de.meet.coop/b/gra-cpf-owy-a9s

Likewise

Gareth

Director

Co-operative and Mutual Solutions Ltd

M: 07967 815321

My normal working days are Monday to Thursday

@Graham Yes, I'm planning to be there.

Reminder: 31st July at 3pm - call to follow up and agree next steps.

oops ,sorry - mins amended x

@Cath M in Bentley (A Commune in the North/Radical Routes/Platform6)Thanks Cath - just to note that I was there too!

Thnx sorry for no show. Reeling from dentist appt. Bob

Thanks to all who came along today - it is heartening that we are all so keen to make good use of the resources that we have.

Minutes/notes attached below. TLDR: we're not quite ready to let it go, would like to salvage bits for younger co-operators to take forward, a couple of people are going to spread the word in new places, we're reconvening on 31st July, 3pm, to review.

@Chris Funnell time willing would be happy to be involved in feedback panel. There is also a potential for us to use future cohorts of Barefoots (new to the trade, so arguably useful sets of eyes) to provide feedback when relevant tools are ready for testing (e.g. needs analysis tools). We currently get learners to look at and appraise the Bright Ideas diagnostic tool as an example of the sort of thing development workers may be asked by a project to use.

Grateful and humbled that even as it contemplates closure P6 has renewed commitment of funds to the online tools for co-operative development project. The project will soak up tens of thousands of pounds but the P6 monies will ensure CAN has the confidence to get it rolling. We have just entered our thirty fifth trading year and the tools that we use have had many hundreds of hours development work in them. If we can succeed in taking that work, further improving it and making it available for cost-free wider use on line then it will be a significant part of the substantial P6 legacy. If anyone is interested in playing a part, perhaps as member of expert feedback panel, please let me know. Thank you. In co-operation. Chris

Morning everyone, reminder that this is today at 3, https://de.meet.coop/b/gra-cpf-owy-a9s

I'm working on how much money there is in the various funds now.

Suggestions for good homes for the various funds welcome.

A few thoughts on this situation. Reflecting on the thing, I'm sure we did lots of things wrong, and almost certainly didn't follow the advice that any one of us would have given to a start-up. We also did a good deal of interesting and useful things. We've enabled and supported https://social.coop and https://meet.coop along with a bunch of other nascent cooperative projects. We've kept the Cooperative Ways Forward wagon on the road in the face of the pandemic, and we've facilitated and been party to some great conversations that (still) don't seem to happening in other places. If there are people who could use the infrastructure we've built up to good effect to do stuff around cooperatives and cooperative development it seems sensible to hand all of that on rather than shut it down.

The meeting will be at https://de.meet.coop/b/gra-cpf-owy-a9s and i've added that to the original post. Thanks @Chris Funnell for the prompt!

I'm planning to attend the meeting. Sadly I think this outcome has been inevitable for a while, as the aspiration for a wider movement fund never managed to build up a sufficient head of steam (and there don't actually seem to have been many conversations with the consumer sector). I'm not sure there are too many parallels with the issues faced by Development Co-op and the Young Co-operators Network, but it would be interesting to discuss further at the meeting.

@Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) yes it would... I'll see what i can do over the next week

Aiming to join the meeting. Well done for persevering this far. It would be good to have some figures for the various funds being held and what unrestricted funds there are at the moment.

afraid I won't be able to join you live on the 6th, but echo all of the sentiments ably expressed above by others - I'd be included to favour option (a) to encourage some clear lines to be drawn to help with reflections, people being able to move on, etc, rather than it going into a limbo space...

Thanks and appreciation to Cath Graham and Austen. I will be with you on June 5th. Chris

Understandable. It isn't fair or sustainable for a few enthusiast activists to be left holding the burden with no let up in sight.I can't take this on. Was always one of the supporters. I'll think about your options and try to attend.
Bob

@Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) It's Monday the 5th Sion.

Likewise @matt wilson - I know we've been on the whole passive supporters/participants. Platform 6 was in my mind a test of whether the Solidfund methodology could work to generate 'wider movement' development resource, and there are lessons to be learned. Solidfund itself is due a review of its purposes, although it will always be a worker co-op focused thing - simply because there is a passionate community of people who will put their hand in their pocket for the cause (actually this is its 'secret sauce', along with the 'trade union' direct debit style way of collecting subscriptions).

I'll be on holiday and mainly away out of phone signal/internet on June 6th, but will come if I can.

Sorry to hear this. maybe you're all just feeling relieved, but i know these things can potentially be tough, so I hope you're all feeling ok...

I don't thave much to say on a practical level, except for the Ways Forward side of things. I'd really like to see that continue, and would be up for maybe seeing if it could be brough under the worker fed project somehow... not sure exactly what it would mean to pass this on, but happy to have a chat about this, on this forum or directly...

cheers