For some reason I’ve only just noticed your response on this thread. Sorry!!
You’re always welcome to have a meeting here. I kind of thought that this is what the branding group had been working on. Where did that go?
I think that the 2 things you’ve mentioned here are generally how we try to frame it here at Outlandish. There’s a blog article here which is a little dated but still pretty pertinent:
It’s looking fairly unlikely that we’ll get the financial buy-in to do an official Tech Week event, but I’d be very up for chatting about some guerilla marketing and some concurrent events at S4.
Branding group met a couple of months back, but we didn’t manage to get a date for a follow up. I’ll probably have another go once we complete this bit of work looking at Co-op group - we’ve made some progress on positioning and copy in the process I think.
Have emailed you about another event, will probably call in at some point this week and we can chat about Tech Week then.
Richard Edwards (Outlandish), Dan Stanley (Small Axe/various), Szczepan (Animorph) and I have been having some chats to move this along. Our preference for the event would be to host it at Newspeak House (swanky, Shoreditch), advertise through Tech Week promo, have a couple of short talks, but mainly try to sell CoTech by having lots of our people in the room, chatting with the guests that we hope to attract through Tech Week.
However, we’ve also been pricing up the above and it would come out at something like £2.6k - we’d recoup about £1k from ticket/drink sales so total cost would be £1.6k roughly. We currently have £222 in the CoBudget pot and even though I know some people have kindly offered to put it a bit more, we’re still way off the mark.
Therefore we’re proposing to host the event at Space4 which saves us a lot of money since hosting at Newspeak was one of the larger costs. We’d still advertise through Tech Week and we’d still brand it as a CoTech event, so hoping to bring the benefits and exposure to the whole network. We’d have a few short talks, followed by a knees-up (talker slots open, let me know if you’re interested).
The bizdev case for this event is that it’ll get our name in front of lots of people from big companies, who are commissioning tech projects: they’re interested in ‘disruption’, may want to learn more about flat structures, and may want to have more social responsibility - we can sell CoTech businesses both in terms of our tech work and as thought leaders in the field of non-hierarchical governance in the teach world. We’d also see this as a networking and socialising opportunity for CoTech members who can get to London.
Bare in mind that we’re seeing this year as a foot-in-the-door, making a name for ourselves so we can attempt something bigger next year - along the lines of ‘The Alternative London Tech Week’.
What do people think?
Is anyone else up for chipping in to such an event? The more people who can chip in, the cheaper the tickets will be!
We’ve had a bit more of a chat about it and have agreed to cover the cost of the advert (£300 + VAT).
So it sounds like we’ve got a space (Space4), some ad copy (Dan?), an organiser (Polly?) and financial support pledged from Autonomic, Agile Collective, Animorph, The Dot Project, Wave, Go Free Range and Outlandish. It’s coming along, team
Polly - Let me know if you want us to pay for the ad directly or whether you want to invoice us.
Hey all, sounds great to me. Although have to admit I struggle to envisage how it might generate sales for CoTech members?!
I also couldn’t notice that the copy so far mentions neither the word co-op not worker ownership which personally I think is a mistake.
Could we perhaps add words similar to those found on the website?
Cooperative Technologists:
Building a tech industry that’s better for its workers and customers through co-operation, democracy and worker ownership.
Think the CoTech logo and url should obviously be on the fly/ graphic too.
Newspeak House nice (and I really like the outside terrace for smoking etc) but hosting at Space4 does seem to make most sense.
Also: do we really need to pay a DJ? Surely together we could just play a few records/ playlists/ whatever. I’d actually rather like to bring a few random records along (funk, soul, reggae, that sort of stuff) if they’ll be decks to play them on? (or is that really why we’re getting a DJ? so they’ll bring their decks) And/ or my laptop which has loads of music on (as I imagine does everyone else’s)
Hey all, sounds great to me. Although have to admit I struggle to envisage how it might generate sales for CoTech members?!
I don’t know whether it will generate any sales but I reckon we should give it a go given how relatively cheap it is to get CoTech in front of people that probably wouldn’t hear about it otherwise.
Now wondering if proposed CoTech hack days are before or after this… (Hopefully before so we can have more in place prior, especially better handle on skills and capacity within network)
Ah no, Tech Week before (11th-17th June) CoTech hack days at Space4 (21-23rd June). Oh well, nevermind. It’ll still be awesome and still very much worth doing (and hopefully will give a bit of impetus for member co-ops to ensure all their data is up to date too anyway)
Outlandish has agreed to pay up to £1000, provided that the party is at Space4, not ticketed and not paid bar: seeing it pretty much the same format at the Space4 launch party. (Hoorah!)
Hilary from Sleuth co-op will also put in £100. (Hoorah!)
Ouishare has agreed to promote the event as a partnership and will (hopefully) also contribute financially towards it a small amount. They also have some contacts with corporate organisations who are interested in flat structures and adopting some co-operative principles so they will target them.
SUMA has offered to bring 13 cases of beer.
Also met someone who works at Tech Nation who might help us with invites and promo.
@jdaviescoates re. your comment about a DJ, last time we had someone there who brought the equipment, including a mic for speeches. It was really great not having to worry about that side of things on the night. Sometimes we’ve had DJs and sometimes playlists. I don’t mind either way, just personally don’t want to have any of the hassle on the day. If you’re willing to take this aspect on that would be great.
@jdaviescoates re. sales, this is indeed an experiment. We hope that we’ll be attracting at least a few new people and that those people will be working in the digital arm of institutions and larger organisations (there are quite a few big legal and pensions companies who seem to be involved, for example), and they they may have budget to spend on tech projects or consultancy work about non-hierarchical organisations. By keeping costs as low as possible this year, it should allow us to learn whether this is something to do next year with more prep and targeting. This is kind of a foot-in-the-door.
@jdaviescoates about the ad copy, that was basic placeholder. Anyway we now will not be building our own mini-site. But yes, noted re. mentioning CoTech more in line with whats already on the website.
Next steps:
Everyone draw up a list of desired invitees - think this should be existing contacts and desired attendeed.
Write some copy for the ad (me and @RichardE and @dansmallaxe ). Once I get this sorted @chrisroos I’ll send it over and if you could pay for the ad direct I think that’s easiest.
Appreciate your comprehensive individual responses to my many random comments - hope I didn’t come across as questioning in any way your evidently awesome organising skills - just trying to help and thinking out loud
re. DJ was just wondering how to cut costs and save money (and I fancy playing a few records ), but sounds like we’re pretty sorted on money front now and so £120 for someone to minimise hassle and sort that side of things sounds like money well spent.
I’ll give you a shout next week about music, would be nice to crowdsource it. Can you put together some kind of digital playlist or are you just on vinyl?
@polly I’ve got an 800Watt PA, plus mixing desk, that i could bring in.
It was used for live gigs including outdoor theatre, so is probably a little over-powered for the indoor space you have, but the offer is there if you need it.
We have finally published the event. Hoorah! The party will be on June 15th at Space4. Please see below for the link and to sign up. Please share with clients and friends. Please Tweet etc.
