SHARE FAR AND WIDE!
CoTech Spring Break 2021 8thâ9th April
NOTES FROM THE SESSIONS AVAILABLE ON WIKI
We invite all members of CoTech to join us for two days of delightful time together! We also welcome guests from international co-operative movement, particularly those specialising in tech.
Summary
The gathering is going to take place mainly over the morning of Thursday the 8th and afternoon of Friday the 9th. In between participants are encouraged to self-organise and hack away!
The general CoTech, GLADYS PERKINS ROOM will be open throughout two days of the gathering. The main scheduled sessions (announced below) will take place on Thursday morning and Friday afternoon.
Throughout afternoon on Thursday we invite people to explore topics we care about such as website and code of conduct.
We will mainly rely on the Meet.coop platform but we also intend to pull people into the exploratory world of the Fun Circle, all available through your browser.
Thursday, 8th of April
â The State of CoTech
GLADYS PERKINS ROOM
10:00â11:00 BST
Facilitators: Luke decentral1se (Autonomic), Szczepan Orlowski (Animorph)
Welcoming session to touch base with what everyoneâs been up to. We will share a presentation of birdâs eye view highlights departing from the recently published newsletter. We will also discuss priorities for CoTech and see what could we engage with in the over the coming two days such as reconsidering what CoTech is and updating the website.
â Co-operative Company Handbooks / policy documents
SADIE PLANT ROOM
11:00â12:00 BST
Facilitator: Hannah Blows (Animorph)
The original seed of the idea was to create a simple shared resource for CoTech members to view certain documents from other CoTech co-ops as templates for each other to remix, especially those that are less frequently shared publicly, e.g. template contracts, license agreements etc. But the wider landscape of how co-ops run can also be captured, and the idea quickly spread into policy and operations⊠How do you decide the ways you operate together as humans? What goes into your membership agreement and contract? How do you document agreements made within your co-op? Whatâs your process to onboard new workers into your co-op? Come and letâs puzzle this out together!
â Hubl and its trial at CoTech
RADIA PERLMAN ROOM
11:00â12:00 BST
Facilitators: Cyril Thiriet (Happy Dev), Calum Mackervoy (Code-Operative)
To those new to Hubl, the session will introduce its philosophy and direction, as well as summarise how CoTech has been involved in test-drivng the platform over the past months. We will hear from Cyril from Happy Dev, the team behind the project, on how Hubl is progressing. We will also find out about the upcoming features consolidating the user experience. We will also discuss how CoTech can contribute to development of this open-source system built on Solid. Thereâs things we could jump at immediately. not all of them require coding!
â Collaboration within CoTech
ROY CLAY ROOM
12:00â13:00 BST
Facilitators: Polly Robbins (Outlandish), Aaron Hirtenstein (Agile)
Session will look at how co-ops collaborate in CoTech. The motivation is to look at some of the examples of and barriers to collaboration. How can we establish a shared understanding both on the culture level as well as on the very down to earth elements such as day and cost rates. Three usual ways of co-ops collaborating will be shared and discussed to understand what would work best in the future.
â Shared Digital Infrastructure
SALLY FLOYD ROOM
12:00â13:00 BST
Facilitator: Shaun Fensom (CBN)
How can CoTech members work together to share digital infrastructure? At what layers can this work? Can we reduce reliance on service providers who donât share our values? What are the challenges? Are there any easy wins? In tandem with the discussion Autonomic will present their new software project: Co-op Cloud!
â Website update session
GLADYS PERKINS ROOM
14:00 onwards BST
Facilitator: Chris Croome (Webarchitects)
Chris Croome: Iâm aiming to spend some time updating the CoTech website during this event, the key aim being to update the listing of co-ops, Iâm aware of two that need removing and 8 that need adding 4, Iâve sent these 8 an email asking them to join this gathering or let us have some content prior to it. If some other people would like to join in this effort that would be appreciated, we can do some screen sharing if necessary and hopefully a few more people could be got up to speed in how to update the site.
Everyone wants our website to be better!
â First glimpse of Fun Circle
FUN CIRCLE ROOM
20:00 BST
Friday, 9th of April
â Working groups space
GLADYS PERKINS ROOM
10:00 onwards BST
Open room for any other ideas people wish to explore together during the gathering, potentially resulting from the first day.
â Afternoon check-in
GLADYS PERKINS ROOM
14:40â15:00 BST
Facilitators: Animorph
Touch base session to review what happened so far, discuss next steps and prepare for the upcoming sessions of Day 2, inevitably leading us into the weekend!
â Planning physical gathering summer 2021
STAFFORD BEER ROOM
15:00â16:00 BST
Facilitators: Sion Whellens (Calverts), Szczepan Orlowski (Animorph)
The next Worker Co-op Weekend is Fri 23- Sun 25 July at Selgars Mill in North Devon, Stir to Actionâs new residential training and events centre. The previous day, Thursday 22 July, has the potential for one or more pre-events, including a Solidfund strategy forum and potentially a CoTech gathering. Sion has checked out the venue. This discussion is to consider whether itâs something youâd like to consider, or to look at alternatives.
â International collaboration: experiences from other networks
ARLAN HAMILTON ROOM
16:00â17:00 BST
Facilitators: Nicolas Dimarco (FACTTIC / Fiqus), Naska Yankova (Camplight) & Neto Licursi (FACTTIC / Camba)
How we can evolve cooperative collaboration while building trust, growing our expertise, and getting organised in order to be sustainable, competitive, assemble interdisciplinary remote teams, and transform together to meet the challenges we face today.
Please use the Moodlight link to capture your answer to the question: âHow do you feel working with other cooperatives?" Would be great to have your input prior to the session.
â Fun Circle
WORK ADVENTURE FUN DUNGEON
17:00 ONWARDS
Coordinators: John Evans (Code-Operative), Simon Ball (Blake House), Melissa McNab (Code-Operative)
Howâs everyone doing? Hang out and drink, snack here in the WORK ADVENTURE FUN DUNGEON. Itâs like the lobby, itâs open all night and where you can talk about CoTech and other fun stuff.
There is a multiplayer 8 bit work adventure world also you can also explore, itâs open from 17:00 but you may want to hit the lobby and chat. first up to you.
You can make an Avatar explore and talk to folks from CoTech in a 8bit world.
This is the link to WORKADVENTURE REALM
FIND SIMON IN THE WORK ADVENTURE 8BIT WORLD⊠he will be your guide to new adventures âŠ
FROM 20:00 - Organised Fun - In work adventure world, get your avatar and be there for more organised fun in work adventure worldâŠ
ENDS WHEN APPROPRIATE
Original Post - 20th of October
Seems like pandemic is not going away anytime soon. Last year we had two gatherings (Sheffield in April and Newcastle in December. We planned to organise next gathering alongside Worker Co-op Weekend in May this year. This summer @aaron from Agile Collective kickstarted organising a gathering for later in the year in Oxford but we soon learned this would be very challenging to organise.
Those who have attended any of the CoTech hacks/gatherings know the beauty of connecting to fellow co-operators in person and jointly contributing to strengthening CoTech (e.g. by drinking beer). Understandably, there has been a limited appetite for online gatherings since we communicate on this Discourse instance and other channels for years now. However, we do have new members (as well as long-standing ones) who might have not experienced any gatherings as of yet.
At the last monthly governance call we discussed the idea of connecting online for a hackathon but we did not know what could be collectively desired outcome of such an event. I was tasked with setting up a thread here (apologies for doing it so late) to start a conversation exploring ideas for an online hack. Before we even approach the question of dates and potential platforms, it would be great to hear from everyone whether they are interested at all and, if so, what would they like to engage with.
As a start, please allow me to suggest an exercise of listing 3 top things we could address at the potential gathering in early 2021. I will enumerate mine, feel most welcome to suggest completely different items as well as refer to each othersâ points (for instance, do take apart my input below):
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Network trajectory and coordination - revisiting what CoTech has brought to the member co-ops and how to create more practical opportunities for us to come together. Naming the direction we want CoTech to go.
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Remote collaboration - understanding skills, aspirations and availability of other co-ops. Engaging with Hubl based on the trial period.
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Shared infrastructure - reviewing co-operatively run platforms for operations within co-ops and between them. Whatâs needed, what exists & works and what doesnât. How can we contribute to improving co-op platforms?
If we gather enough input from different co-ops here we can hone the ideas at the monthly calls and eventually propose setting up the gathering via Loomio. Please share your thoughts & feels!