POSTPONED: CoTech gathering at the Worker Coop Weekend 2020 - now late July?

Worker Coop Weekend has been postponed. The Worker Coop Council and Coops UK are now aiming at 23-25 July 2021 for WCW, venue TBC but favouring Stir to Action’s new training centre at Selgars Mill in north east Devon, if bookable (and cancellable at 2 months’ notice).

We are looking at putting on a programme of online events and discussion in late May, with an international focus (separate thread)

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Agreed, the 2019 thread is here, I was planning on proposing this on the first CoTech decision making circle call.

Incidentally we appear to have found a bug with the location plugin, it doesn’t have a map link above, so I have raised an issue on GitHub and posted it to the developers Discourse server. The map link above is now working, I’m not sure why it wasn’t before :thinking:

Following a discussion about this proposal on the call today I have posted a formal decision thread on Loomio and also started a thread on the Workers Co-op Weekend Loomio board regarding the proposal.

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Just one day left to run on the Loomio poll asking:

  1. Are you intending attending the CoTech / Workers Co-op Weekend in 2020?
  2. Would you attend an additional CoTech day at the start of the weekend (Thur-Sun)?
  3. Are you willing to help organise the CoTech / Workers Co-op Weekend 2020?

It would be great to have some more feedback!

Yes I would like to attend Workers Co-op Weekend 2020 and additional CoTech day :slight_smile:

I have heard from John Atherton at Coops UK that the date of the Worker Coop Weekend has changed to 15th - 17th May to avoid it being on the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Not sure how tp update the date in the thread. @chris are you able to?

Have done @aaron, however there appears to be a bug with the location plugin as this has stopped working… so I have posted a comment about this on the GitHub project and the Location plugin appears to be working again.

I have just had a chat with @athertonjohn about running a parallel CoTech gathering at the Workers Co-op Weekend and he is going to speak to the venue this week to see about the possibility of us having an additional day at the start and what the cost implications would be.

I’ve created a wiki page for the event.

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I’m afraid that due to other bookings it isn’t possible to have a days extension to the Workers Co-op Weekend just for CoTech however we can still plan a full day of sessions for the Saturday — what would people like to cover? I have started a list on the wiki, please free free to add to it.

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Thanks for looking into this Chris.

I’d originally through that I’d be away that weekend but that is now looking unlikely so I’m hoping to attend.

I think that something that encourages other co-ops to buy from CoTech/work with us would be good. I ideas that I have are:

  • ‘Keeping money in the co-op economy: what you can procure from CoTech co-ops and how to do it’
  • ‘Upskilling your digital team (or boosting your digital tools): beyond social media’

I know there was also something that was mentioned at the last gathering about some of the techy/designery people in the other co-ops feeling quite isolated in their own co-ops. So maybe we could do something about that.

Usefully, I would probably not have much of a clue to run a workshop on any of the above! LOL. Sorry. But if there’s anyone out there who thinks any of these titles are worthwhile I’m certainly up for teaming up to deliver one of them.

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The Co-ops UK booking page, with prices, is now live, there is a Google Doc Agenda (for the Workers Co-op side of things we will have our own on the wiki) and there is a SolidFund thread on bursaries.

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With the additional CoTech day this will be 14th - 17th May 2020? Is this functioning as the thread to organise the gathering or do we need another one?

I’m afraid the additional day isn’t an option this year, we could use this thread or start a new one, it might be simpler with one thread or it might be easier with a new thread, I’m easy either way.

I think it makes sense to use this one? @Sion could you update the description so that it’s obvious that this is the next CoTech gathering as well please? (we confirmed this at the Newcastle gathering)

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@calummackervoy I have made the top post a “wiki” post so I believe others can edit it, can you test this (I might need to make you a moderator before you can edit it, I’m not exactly sure).

Tested and I was able to change the text content :slight_smile:

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Coops UK’s web page for Worker Coop Weekend has been updated to include CoTech Gathering

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Unfortunately this is the same weekend as Radical Routes. I really don’t understand how this happened as it happened before.

It really shows how uncoordinated the UK co-op movement is tbh. Pretty disappointing.

It happened because the UK Government changed the bank holiday dates, this caused the Workers Co-op Weekend to move and the clash to occur, @athertonjohn explained this on a thread on Loomio the other week.

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