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

Just a note not to forget CECOP/CICOPA, the federation for coops industry and services, based in Belgium - in case we can use their infrastructure for international events/links. The American federation, Mercosur, is the regional CICOPA affiliate. CECOP is holding its 40th year general assembly alongside Coop Congress in Manchester June this year, and we are lining up 2 days of visits, events and discussions, perhaps under the theme ‘Cooperative organising in a time of social, political crisis’. There is a discussion going on in the Worker Cooperatives group on Loomio about session topics, which include at least two on tech perspectives. Designing European event (CECOP network general assembly), June, Manchester

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(Relevant to the Indie Infrastructure discussions, but some useful overlap to the international co-ops community)

We’re excited about Infracon 2019 - Barcelona - eQualitie next week - it’s early days for this network but it brings together some very useful groups,

Also early April is IFF in Valencia, https://internetfreedomfestival.org/ a couple of us GN folk will be there, as well as lots of our APC colleagues, any co-techers?

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That sounds great, please mention CoTech and this looks like something that is right up Webarchitects street, we have met and worked with various people from Greenhost, RiseUp, LEAP, Autistici and MayFirst over the years so please pass on our support and solidarity :fist:.

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I’ve spent the weekend working with the librehosters network and I’d like to invite people from this forum to participate. The network is very young and we’re currently working to collectively agree on what it means to be in the network (similar challenges to cotech discussions). Please see our outcomes on Gathering to discuss values, governance, criteria and process - #21 by how - Events - libreho.st and feel very welcome to join the debate.

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Hi folks,

Just saying a quick ‘hello’ from CoLab.coop. I recently learned about this board from Rohan at Geddup.com and wanted to drop in to offer a warm greeting.

I’m also sharing this community link with the CoLab.coop international Slack community.

We are definitely interested in supporting international solidarity within the tech co-op movement and welcome the work you all have done to lay a foundation for this and the opportunity to exchange ideas and resources here. I’m at rylan (at) colab.coop if anyone here would like to converse via video chat regarding specific ideas for international collaboration.

Cheers!

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Wicked! I’d love to have a chat with you but in a few weeks because I have lots of work on at the mo. Are you based in Aus as well? I had a quick email exchange with Rohan the other day and he was great.

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Hi Kayleigh!

I’m in upstate NY at the moment (born and raised in California) but just returning from 3 months in Asia (India / Indonesia). A solid block of our membership / member candidates are from India / Indo, and I’ll be heading back there to continue working from Asia later this year. :slight_smile:

You are based in the UK? Yes, would love to chat when things slow down … likewise a bit busy over here at the moment.

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No rush from me, hope it slows down soon and we get a chance to chat. I am indeed in the UK, looking forward to chatting some time in the future.

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Sounds good.
How’s your week looking next week? Drop me a line at rylan (at) colab.coop to coordinate?

On the related topic of international solidarity you may find this blog post interesting I shared yesterday:
https://colab.coop/blog/colab-earth-dream-with-us/

Likewise look forward to connecting Kayleigh!

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2 posts were split to a new topic: InfraRed: international independent infrastructure movement

Looks like these folks are not followed or don’t follow any people associated with the wider tech and platform coop movement. Might be worth contacting, they are located in Bulgaria!

https://comradecoop.com

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I loved the Jeremy Rifkin quote in their website!

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Nicloas Dimarco of Fiqus coop presented at Agaric’s show and tell a few months ago on How they share work via a federation (FACTTIC) See the short video at the bottom of the blog here: Show and Tell with Agaric - Sharing Work with Other Coops

Fiqus and Camba.coop members took a trip to the UK and met other coops - https://uktrip2019.fiqus.coop/

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Re: Coopdevs. Our emerging co-operative (hypha.coop) had an informational interview with coopdevs a few months ago, and they have a really neat model: The have an incorporated co-op with traditional membership at the center of a loose legal association that is more porous. the community/association meets weekly for socials with open invite, and the community and co-op share the same outward “brand”. The co-op members contribute maybe 15% of time to community stewardship. The co-op recruits new members out of the community, after they’re already participating on open source projects together.

It’s quite neat. Full call notes here: https://github.com/hyphacoop/organizing/blob/master/informational-interviews/2019-04-25-coopdevs-chat.md

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Sounds very similar to how Enspiral do it too, Members in the centre, wider network of Contributors see Infographic: What is Enspiral

Here are four Finnish tech coops:

  • FreeCoop, creates websites and provides training in open source software. Site only in Finnish.
  • Sange, hosting, creates websites. Site only in Finnish.
  • BitWeird Games, makes games. Site in English.
  • ExpertOS, wordpress, webshops, cloud services, google suite. Site only in Finnish.

I am not involved with any of them but let me know if I should help CoTech connect with them.

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That would be wonderful if you could connect us all Leo!

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Might it be neat to create a little landing page (e.g., hackmd doc) for prospective non-UK CoTech participants who might not be clear on how they can show up here? Something that someone like myself or Leo or others could share to invite ppl in with context

Gutcheck: worthwhile? (I’m happy to stub it out)

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@patcon and @alex I am more than happy to contact them - any advise what I should say? Also, Patcon that sounds like a good idea.

Not myself a member of any CoTech coop (just an enthusiastic supporter), but being able to book some sort of a boarding call with a CoTech representative might be an idea worth considering.

Don’t know if there are practices already in place!

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I’m happy to improve the category top post if someone can suggest some additional / improved text?

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