Brussels sounds good to me!
I’m less clear about what the goals are
I’ll try my hand at giving CoTech a (limited) definition:
- A federation of tech co-operatives in the UK
- Useful for new co-operatives (like mine) who exist in part because of the support and contacts of CoTech, and certainly learned our sociocratic processes from CoTech and Outlandish in particular
- Useful for the social connections it provides (e.g. Co-Op Cloud came into existence from CoTech connections)
- Useful when using CoTech as a brand to apply for work from large organisations (it has happened once or twice)
The initial goals I had in mind:
- Helping organise the next steps towards CoTech-esque organisations in France, Netherlands and Germany (these are just the people who have expressed interest in doing a European event)
- Taking on the task of European federation, i.e. duplicating CoTech, but on the next scale up (for now this might just mean putting a bunch of faces, committing together and making new tools (website, forum, loomio)… and that’s already a lot)
Possibility of goals we could extend to if we’re comfortable with a bigger scale:
- Possibility of expanding to other organisations (e.g. I’m aware of hackerspaces in London, Paris, Strasbourg and Brussels) - so European federation for these kinds of orgs as well, if we get the people there to do it
- Open for new ambitions, but also keen to narrow down the core scope
I’m noting that there have been some enthusiastic responses and nobody yet has raised any critical concerns (please do!)
I’m proposing some first steps:
- Contact CECOP, ICA, other organisations in Brussels
- Propose some dates
- Propose a scope
- Get an initial budget, search for sponsors (including CoTech fund). Figure out how much we need from ticket sales
- Open a Loomio poll (as soon as we have some rough estimates, dates etc)
Anything I’ve missed @Graham @decentral1se @asimong ?