Birmingham Cotech Gathering 15th and 16th June: It's happening!

Hello all!

The gathering is on! From 9am to 9pm on the 15th and 16th June at the Birmingham Warehouse Cafe and Meeting Rooms, which is situated at 54-57 Allison St, Birmingham B5 5TH

Attendance is free, so please come along. We are planning sessions on the Wiki here: (page is work in progress) June Gathering 2022 - CoTech

See you there!

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Sound good to me, I’d like to feed back from the workers co-op weekend new federation discussion and to see how viable the idea of CoTech becoming the IT sector of it is with everybody.

Have you discussed this with @Cweb-Nick? Since web.coop are based there – he might be able to help with some of the logistics.

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Sounds good to me too! I may well not be able to attend as we’re expecting our first child this month. Selfishly I’d prefer later in the month :slight_smile:

I think it’d be good to have something on the agenda for helping those who joined cotech or a co-op in cotech during the pandemic to get to know the other members.

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In relation to a CoTech gathering, there will be a significant co-op conference/event happening in Manchester in October this year, under the ‘Ways Forward’ banner. The last such conference - the seventh in a series if I recall correctly - was in 2019 and since then the pandemic has put paid to it. These conferences aim to bring together people and organisations from across a spectrum of progressive movements and sectors of the cooperative economy.

It would be great to see lots of Cotech people and organisations involved, and if there was interest we could probably plan in sufficient time/space for a specific CoTech gathering to take place. We’re currently firming up details of the event, and will post info in this forum once we have it, but wanted to give a heads-up.

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Birmingham’s a good location for us, but June is a bit too soon probably, and in the middle of junior’s gcse exams.

Manchester is ideal (selfishly) and October a much better month.

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Would love to but will probably not make it back UK way after Workers Co-op Weekend 2022 â›șđŸ”„đŸș✊ - #19 by decentral1se. Cool that you’re organising this though! Would like to see any talks and stuff that go down :relaxed: We would hopefully have our beta launch of Co-op Cloud at that point so it would be nice to have a chat about it.

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A CoTech gathering in Birmingham would be great and would be more than happy to offer any help in organising one, whether that be in June or later down the line.

Co-op Congress is currently scheduled for 17th-18th June in Birmingham so could look to do before or after that as they may already be co-operators planning a visit? Or keep it completely separate if we’d prefer

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Thanks for starting the thread @KingMob, will discuss with our members. I like @Cweb-Nick idea of running the gathering just before or after the Congress! Perhaps we could draft a proposal at this month’s General Circle call and put it on Loomio right after?

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Cool so suggestion is to do cotech gathering on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th June as a prelude to the Congress on the weekend? That works for me

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I’ll bear this in mind for next time. Last one was in September, so trying to get one fairly soon as we’re a bit overdue

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This sounds good @KingMob I’d be up for coming for sure. And that 16th-17th works better for us here too!

Also happy to have a chat about previous’ years approach to organising the event etc.

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Just to note. Me and @KingMob have been discussing this idea for a while. However I don’t have the capacity to lead on this so @KingMob is helpfully coordinating.

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Warehouse Venue coop in Birmingham have sent over a pricelist. We could book a large and small meeting room for 2 days 9-5 for £300, if we’re a small community organisation (they define as having some regular income and up to 2 paid staff) or £440 at their standard rate.

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Warehouse Venue coop in Birmingham have sent over a pricelist. We could book a large and small meeting room for 2 days 9-5 for £300, if we’re a small community organisation (they define as having some regular income and up to 2 paid staff) or £440 at their standard rate.

I would also recommend booking out the Warehouse Cafe (ran by a separate worker co-op) and the garden space (run by some collective that either Warehouse venue or cafe can put you in touch with.

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Damn - sadly I won’t be able to join on that date after all :frowning:

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I can recommend the Warehouse Café

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Any recommendations on accommodation?

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Here is the gathering thread & Fund vote on Loomio: CoTech Gathering Birmingham - 15-16th June 2022

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Super stoked about this! Is there gonna be an organising meeting some time soon or?

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Just spent all day at warehouse cafe yesterday and it is a wonderful spot. good people, good food, good vibes. seriously re-considering getting back for this one after the worker co-op weekend vibes!

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