I’ve been rummaging through various documents on the Cooperatives UK website in recent days. In particular I note that they have published a thing called ‘Do it Ourselves’ - National Co-operative Development Strategy | Co-operatives UK - which I understand to be largely a call to action to encourage and enable cooperatives to get active in terms of promoting the cooperative option and providing support for start-ups, etc.
Interestingly, Cotech is named second in a list of “People that are taking action now”. It reads: “CoTech is an energetic new network of technology co-operatives, sharing work and spreading the worker co-op model, with a goal of growing 100,000 jobs in the sector by 2030.”
Also named in the list of people doing stuff now is Federation: what was the hopeful and ambitious Co-op Digital ecosystem (which now looks more like a co-working facility).
I’m also aware that within the published strategy it talks about three targeted sectors: “Early actions and partnerships will include three sectors of the future UK economy around which ambitious new co-operative solutions urgently need to be found.” One of these sectors is "New digital ventures, or ‘platform co-operatives’, using new technology for shared ownership services. I understand that some sort of pilot project is being plotted within the corridors of power at Holyoake House.
Getting to the point of all this: does anyone in CoTech know anything more about this stuff, as I’m interested in the potential for CoTech to work with Cooperatives UK, and potentially Federation/Co-op digital, as well as others, to get involved in this project and take it forward.
Anyone else here who’s keen?