👋 Introduce yourself!

Hi David,

Totally agree - lots of room for techy people who see beyond the tech parts and into the different sectors. Nice to have you here!

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Thanks Matt - just had a look at the Equal Care site - very good work!

There’s just three of us in Cooperative IT at the moment - two are just over the hill from Hebden Bridge, and one is based in Manchester. We’re pretty good with Docker. We need to have a General Meeting in Manchester at some point, so could be an opportunity to meet up and talk nonsense if you wanted.

Keep up the good work

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Sounds great! I’ve got a nice spot at the Manchester Museum if you wanted to call in there one day… Keep me posted :slightly_smiling_face:

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Heya David, great to find out about you, your background and what you’re up to. Lots of my work has been with / is with young people too! I’m currently Inclusion Producer at Promising Trouble working on our Community Tech programme and network, and helping to steward a community of practice for interested folks.

Thought you might like to know we are having an in person meet up for our community tech community of practice at the end of the year in Manchester - wonder if you/your team would like to come along as you’re local?

We’re still working on the event details but in the meantime you can read about the work we’re doing in Community Tech and how you can get involved / connected in for now :pray:t4: go to: communitytech dot network for more details

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Hi @roseanna

Your work looks really interesting. Yes, please do let us know about the meet up when you have more details - I’m sure at least one of us would make it down and could be a good excuse to meet up with @equalmatt as well?

thanks

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Brilliant, I’ll be sure to post details on here!

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Hi, I’m Aleix - and I’m looking to change the path of my career.

I don’t know a lot so far about how CoTech works, but I was directed here by someone once they got to know that I will be leaving my job, so I thought I’d introduce myself since the website was quite enticing.

I’ve never been part of a co-op and will be leaving a fairly conservative company where I worked as an IT-Technician. They tried to recruit me as a network admin, potentially because I am DNSSEC/DMARC/DANE certified by SWITCH, but sadly failed to inform me until the last moment that it’s Windows…

I’ve got 10+ years of experience with Linux and other unix-like systems, basic to medium programming skills in several languages (mainly Python) which I am currently expanding on and a strong interest in DevOps practices. I’ve also got some experience in frontend development. These skills I sadly could neither use nor expand on in my last job.

Other than that I feel a strong drive to learn, this experience showed me that I have an interest in HR roles as well, like Diversity and Inclusion Manager or a position that is responsible for internal conflict resolution and general employee well-being.

I live in Berlin, but depending on opportunities that could change.

I’ve also worked as a volunteer German teacher for a year. Other than these things I am a musican (mainly piano, but many other self-taught instruments) and an artist.

I like to dabble in DJing, sound engineering and handicraft, researched interpersonal communication and relations for about 9 years (as well as crisis management and conflict resolution, in all of which I have practical experience) and I like to teach myself natural languages - my usable ones are English, German, Catalan, Spanish and French, but I am going to expand on these as well potentialy.

I hope to learn more about CoTech and who knows, maybe an opportunity will arise. if not I’ll get to see more of how other people work, and that’s worth a lot already. I’m looking forward to browsing more here. Happy to be here!

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Hi everyone! I’m @camilladegodoi, a Brazilian designer, 30 years old, and a proud member of EITA Co-operative based in Brazil. I’m truly impressed by the thriving co-operative community in the UK, and I’m excited to be a part of this forum to exchange experiences with all of you. Please bear with me as I may take a bit to fully warm up my english.

In addition to my co-op involvement, I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree focusing on participatory methods, work co-operatives, and federations. Engaging with this forum is truly a treasure for me in the context of my studies.

Professionally, I wear multiple hats as an Interaction Designer, UX/UI specialist, and workshop facilitator. My expertise spans from project management to delivering visual interfaces.

I’m eager to learn from all of you and contribute to the collaborative spirit of this community. Looking forward to fruitful interactions!

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Welcome to the CoTech forum @camilladegodoi :slight_smile:

The grass is always greener on the other side, however from where I’m sat, in the middle of the UK, it seems that many countries in Europe have a more thriving co-op community than we do… and in terms of tech co-ops I don’t think anywhere comes close to what is going on in Argentina!

Thank you for sharing your perceptions, Chris. I’ve been recently in touch with FACTTIC, Argentina’s co-ops federation. Indeed, the movement there is quite impressive!

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Hello there :wave:!

I’m originally from the UK (Todmorden to be specific) until my wife and I decided to move to Latvia at the beginning of this year. Previously I came from private agency land, then self employed and now I’ve setup a small company to represent my software consultancy endeavors, still going solo for now.

Bit of an irregular path into tech, I’ll keep this brief… I actually started in post-production studios in Soho. I was creating digital workflows (think lots of scripting and sys admin work) and making custom DAMS and MAMS (urgh acronyms) for film and television productions and learnt on the job. Then a lesser known side-effect of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 was that it wiped out the one factory source for blank high definition tapes worldwide. Back then digital was the small sister to the big brother of tape based workflows but overnight it had to rapidly grow up. That was when I started seriously back filling my programming gaps so I could keep up with facility demand. That then allowed me to work for a big studio distributor for a few years after that as their tech lead for EMEA projects, moved into architecture for other large global enterprises then a principal engineer/consultant for private agencies working on developing web applications, data products and team capability for a bunch of projects for government, finance, media (obviously), retail, food, education, socialcare, healthcare and deathcare. Now I’ve been helping early stage startups (nature tech, biodiversity and climate activism) develop and sustain their first digital product usually as a fractional type.

However all of this is great for tech experience but for a few years now I’ve been thinking seriously about joining or forming a cooperative. Namely because I’m certain it’s the only format that can closely align with my own values and how I wish to serve. Also doing something together is simply better. I’m interested in sustainable development (in all facets), post-growth/degrowth, local-first software and FOSS of course.

I’m currently in the dark about what possibilities exist for cooperative formation in The Baltics so that is an ongoing research thread. But before I can run I’m here to walk by getting to know others who’d like to join/form and to learn from you fine folk.

Happy to be here :grinning:

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Hello, I’m Mohamed but i use Schola as my username, my interests are purely functional programming with Haskell and Haskell adjacent languages and pure mathematics (Category theory, Type theory etc).
Am also a big fan free software, environmentalism, co-ops obviously, privacy etc.
Happy to be here and engage in conversations with others!

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Hello everyone :wave:

I am Leni, a software engineer with a technical background spanning Python (Django, Flask) and Ruby (Rails) ecosystems. I love working on impactful and valuable software, and being part of healthy and engaged teams.

I am part of 508.dev and happy to find this space where I can familiarize myself more with the co-op world :smile:

Excited to be here and I look forward to collaborating with you all :pray:
Feel free to reach out and say hi :innocent:

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Hi, I’m June!

I’m a creative developer in Web, Audio, and Graphics, and I came across this space as I’m looking for work. I’m very passionate about the cooperative mindset and am looking for opportunities to be more involved. If anyone knows of anything I’d love to hear about it! My portfolio is at https://junebug.codes.

Thanks,

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Hi all! My name is Donald and I’m a full stack TypeScript developer with Ruby experience. I’ve been here before but it’s been a while so I thought I’d put up a refresher.

I learned Ruby and JavaScript at Makers Academy London, after which I spent a year translating corporate multinational site Brandwatch.com from PHP to TypeScript with React and Next.

Since finishing that I have been working for a company called Kendraio, building an Angular based no-code super-app.

Thanks for reading!

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Hello! I’m James, a software developer and student at King’s College London. I’m interested in platform cooperatives, digital public goods, and digital public infrastructure, and I’d love to contribute my development skills to a cooperative.

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Hi All!

My name is David Abramson; I work with CoLab Cooperative, an international worker-owned co-op that develops tech in service to the cooperative movement and other values-aligned causes.

We’ve worked on all kinds of projects but some of my favorites are a the platform co-op technology we built alongside housecleaning cooperatives in New York City (and now Philadelphia), called Up&Go, a volunteer signup and training management system for a non-profit involved in election protections, and a pilot project to map data and allow researchers to explore local viability of regenerative solutions.

My main focus right now is exploring how we can collaborate to build useful, open source, and cooperatively owned, governed, and funded tools and tech to help us shift away from our dependencies on extractive big tech platforms and economies into structures more aligned with our values. Would love to connect here with other folks working on similar/complementary pieces of this puzzle.

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