CoTech Newsletter: February 2018

Newsletter
1

CoTech Newsletter February 2018

Welcome to the first edition of the CoTech Newsletter! One of the themes that came out of the retreat at Wortley Hall was how difficult it is to keep up with the goings-on across CoTech. Our aim with the newsletter is to collate and curate the news from across CoTech into one place: “If you only read one CoTech thing a month, read this”.

Thanks! - The CoTech newsletter team

Contributing

Featured Coop

Animorph is an immersive media workers’ co-operative specialising in augmented
and virtual reality. We provide software solutions to institutions, which aim
to establish themselves in the emerging mediums. We work with social
initiatives and artists to increase their impact, deliver workshops to young
audiences and build our own prototypes. We are particularly dedicated to
developing augmented reality interfaces because of AR’s potential for
transforming everyday lives. We believe that the next computing platform
should increase human potential in a sustainable way.

animorph.coop

Cool Stuff

1st CoTech Community Call

Laura Hilliger from We Are Open organised the first CoTech Community Call - a chance for CoTech members to drop in and meet virtually once a month. Laura has shared the minutes of the call and some thoughts on how it all went on the We Are Open Blog, and there’s some discussion on the community forum about when the future calls should be.

CoTech has a constitution

One of the outputs of the Wortley Hall retreat was to try and write down a constitution that puts into words some of the ways we’ve implicitly made decisions up to this point. The document is simple, has some obvious inconsistencies but provides a starting point to more formally codify our processes.

Aptivate work with Pula to support their work with farmers in Africa

In order for a crop to be successful farmers need the weather conditions to be right. Farmers invest in seeds and if it doesn’t rain they can lose their investment and be left without the money to buy more seeds. Pula’s project provides farmers with Germination Insurance, included with each seed purchase.

Jeremy Corbyn Visits Outlandish and Space4

Jeremy Corbyn, labour leader and constituency MP for Islington North, paid a visit to Outlandish and had lunch in the Space4 office with the CoTech members who work from there and the other organisations that use the space.

Open Data Service review of 2017

The Open Data Service co-op shared their review of 2017 in a twitter thread.

Webarchitects are 20

Webarchitects has been going for 20 years (although they have only been a co-operative for 7 years) and they are having a party to celebrate in Sheffield on Saturday 3rd of March 2018, register for a ticket if you would like to attend.

Collaborations

Hiring

Events

Decisions and Debate

7 Likes
2

This is awesome! Thanks so much to @chrislowis and anyone else that helped.

I know some fixes were done last week to add email/newsletter functionality to the WordPress site, but this feels like a better platform, as we can discuss, update, etc. and people that want to stay up to date should become forum members anyway.

2 Likes
3

Thanks @harry. @decentral1se found all the links and @chris provided a lot of technical help (and words).

We’ll need even more help to make this a regular thing - the more the merrier.

I think discourse is a good place for this in the end, but we can always move/redirect later if we want to.

1 Like
4

This is great! Hey and (this being my CoTech bee-in-bonnet), can I ask how/who resourced the work to put the newsletter together, so we can know and acknowledge? Was your time a) personal and voluntary b) you were paid by your coop c) it was resourced from elsewhere and d) were there any outcosts/expenses? The branding group is using this methodology and we would include it as part of our reporting back to CoTech.

1 Like
5

@Sion

how/who resourced the work, so we can know and acknowledge?

a) personal and voluntary

Yep, voluntary.

b) were paid by your coop

Nope.

c) it was resourced from elsewhere

Nope.

d) were there any outcosts/expenses

People’s time. git.coop infra hosting/account.

2 Likes
6

Thanks @sion! My time was paid for by my co-op (Go Free Range).

2 Likes