Making contact with other tech co-ops outside of the UK?

Has anyone made any contact with co-ops outside the UK? I noticed this list has some cool stuff on it.

If anyone speaks Spanish, it would to check out what some of these folks are up to:

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Related: Tech Co-ops Assembly 34C3 - CoTech.

I’ve spoken to other co-operatives who are active in the Drupal community, including:
Home | PB (Greece)
http://agaric.com/ (USA / Nicaragua / UK sometimes)
and I’ve emailed a few others while researching worker ownership with the Drupal community, mentioning CoTech along the way:
http://quilted.coop/
Mission and Principles – Electric Embers
Design Action Collective | Contact - Design Action Collective
http://gothamcitydrupal.com/
http://flywheelcollective.com/
https://fiqus.com/en/#contactos
https://palantetech.coop/
https://www.gcoop.coop/

It would be great to be able to approach such co-ops with a clear offer of a way to be involved in discussions to broaden the network, at the appropriate time.

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I just came across FACT[TIC], (and have only just realised that they are linked in the top post above :roll_eyes:) they appear to be a network of 16 tech co-ops in Argentina, with a nice looking web site that links to them all at the bottom of the front page, @Kayleigh have you come across them before?

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My friend is a fluent Spanish speaker and would be happy to contact these folks of behalf of CoTech is required.

A few here from way back when I was gathering a list of people to talk to to gauge interest in what became 1st Wortley Hall event → https://etherpad.net/p/MEGAZORD

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They are probably aware of us. It would be great to contact all of these above mentioned co-ops and invite them to use this forum to build the tech co-op community internationally.

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Not quite the same, but Framasoft - Wikipedia in France are doing lots of very cool stuff.

@jdaviescoates Framasoft sounds a bit like https://simplon.co/ (also in France) who are a bit like Founders and Coders but more commercially/growth focussed.

@chris Great find with FactTic - have you got in touch with them? @Kayleigh @Sion and I have been talking to two co-op networks in Venezuela who are keen to start a South America-wide network.

Also @Katebeecroft of GreaterThan and Enspiral is doing some work on network convergence - potentially a network of network networks or similar!

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No I haven’t been in touch with FactTic.

Hi guys,

We are a France cooperative network of almost 300 freelancers in Tech.
@olisb and Louis Cousin talked to us about you.

We surely have no specificities, and don’t want to diminish how much you are unique, BUT I believe we do the same thing. We also are strongly animated by a will to connect with similar initiatives in Europe, which we already started.

I would love to meet !
We might be present at Open Coop 2018 in London. Could me cool to meet before then I believe.

Let me know.
I am glad we found you.
I wish you all the best !

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@alexbourlier what is the the name of this network?

More the merrier when it comes to co-operatives :rofl:

The network is called Happy Dev.
I am sorry we only have french material at the moment, but this is about to change.

We are also working on an open source framework to build cooperative and interoparable platforms.
We should meet :slight_smile:

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Very exciting @alexbourlier - we should meet indeed. Where in France are you based?

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Hi @harry,

I myself am playing the “network connector”, not that it is my official title, it is just something I do, mostly for free today.

So originally I am from Paris but I spent my time visiting the collectives of freelancers within the network present in Nantes, Le Mans, Rennes, Montpellier, Sophia Antipolis, Lyon and Poitiers. I rarely have a fixed location.

That beign said, you can find members of the network in all the cities I mentionned above.

I hope this answers the question.
Where are you yourself ?

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It’s so good to hear from you! Do you know anyone from https://dtc-innovation.org/ ? They’re part of CoTech (Tom is based in the UK) but legally registered in France

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That sounds brilliant are there any details online?

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I’ve worked with Pointblank in Thessalonika (thanks to being put in touch via Agile). Also GreaterThan (are they a co-op? don’t know, but they are part of the Enspiral beast), and CiviCoop (which is an interesting group focussed around CiviCRM, based in the Netherlands I think, but with members from other parts of Europe as well.

The CiviCoop model is an interesting one that might have some legs within CoTech, although my guess is that interests and specialisms are perhaps too diverse for it to work. As I understand it the business model is that developers like to develop, and don’t like getting tied up in all of the downstream support. In CiviCoop, the members come together to co-fund a support desk that takes a lot of the pain away. Personally I quite like doing support stuff, but I guess it takes all sorts. Interested in others thoughts on this idea, and what people are doing currently on this.

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Hi @Kayleigh,

I didn’t know them, but I’ll say hello right now :wink:

Thank you for finger pointing them to me

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