Mapping co-ops and their relationships

I definitely agree that starting is a good idea, and that gives us a platform from which to explore/learn/iterate, etc.
I do have my eyes on some of the long term aspirations, and there are a few very small things that could be done early to smooth the way (off the top of my head, I can think of only one!)

I’d find it easier to collaborate if we were tracking suggestions, issues, code, examples, documentation, etc on something other than discourse (much as I love discourse). I suggest creating a repository on github, and I’m happy to create one if there’s agreement (among those who want to work on this). If we want to go down this route, we should probably start a new thread to make it more visible within CoTech.

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and my axe ! :hammer: :knife:

I’m up for:

  • :white_check_mark: making a simple site which makes it easy to view the data from the API
  • :white_check_mark: entering future collaborations in

IMO anything that makes this data more alive gives this initiative a better chance.

Let me know when you’ve got an API I can consume up @harry


future dreaming (distraction) - I’ve friends who’ve worked in this domain a bit with things like holodex

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The code is already in github I believe: GitHub - cotech/website: The Cooperative Technologists WordPress website - see CoTech WordPress - CoTech for details

At the moment there is a bit of a bottleneck in that only @chris can deploy to the test and production servers at the moment (I believe). I’d like to be able to deploy at least to the test server - I believe we may need to join webarchitects to get access to their infrastructure?

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Splendid! I suggest that a new repository is set up for work that is to do with data/api (the exact name may need some pondering depending on what we think is the scope of what we are doing). Then we have a place to raise issues, document usage, make suggestions, etc. Of course, some of these may require implementation in the website repo, but having a separate repo keeps things de-coupled, and some of the content in the data/api repo may have nothing to do with the website.

Go ahead :slight_smile:

Probably just easiest to start the repo on your own github and then get @chris or @olizilla to fork the repo into the cotech org github.

@mattw Send over your GitHub username and I will add you to the CoTech org.

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And my :bow_and_arrow:

I love to fork repos into other repos and am occasionally available for such duties. But be warned if you summon me, I may keep my self amused with self narrating photographs.

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matt-wallis. Thank you :slight_smile:

@harry said:

At the moment there is a bit of a bottleneck in that only @chris can deploy to the test and production servers at the moment (I believe). I’d like to be able to deploy at least to the test server - I believe we may need to join webarchitects to get access to their infrastructure?

The issue is that the dev and live sites are running on shared servers and clients only have SSHFS / SFTP access to update their sites, however SSH access is needed due to the way this site is deployed, the way around this issue would be to have a virtual server just for these sites, then we could do exactly what we want, but we would also then have a extra server to maintain and pay for…

The current issue with the pull request from Matt Kendon is one I’m afraid I need help with, do you want to follow this up on that issue thread?

Feel free to boo, but how about Heroku?

| pros                             | cons                 |
|----------------------------------|----------------------|
| fast                             | it's a middleman!    |
| easy management                  | costs more money     |
| practice spending money together |                      | 

I honestly think spending together accelerates cohesion.

We’ve had pretty bad experiences with Heroku and have resolved to avoid it where possible.

There are a couple of hosting Co-ops involved in CoTech though (Media Blaze and WebArchitects) as well as a devops co-op (Department of Binary Affairs) so hopefully one of them can make a suggestion and implement it.

We’re happy to contribute towards costs.

We’d be more then happy to set up at minimum a test server environment for
you, whatever the needs. And can always make the transition to production.
:slight_smile:

There are some other source heroku alternatives such as dokku
GitHub - dokku/dokku: A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications deploy to server and create projects

We hired Founders and Coders some time ago to do some work ‘mapping’ CoTech which we’re just about to get started.

Everyone say Hi to @jsms90 and @bradley (not registered?) who are leading on the research.

We’re hoping that they’ll be talking to everyone over the coming weeks to work out

  • what information do we need to capture
  • how do we need the information presented

Outlandish is also expecting to add a ‘Person’ post type to the WordPress site so that people can be mapped to their skills, experience, technology, availability, etc.

The idea is that before hiring a freelancer everyone should check the CoTech site to see if one of the other co-ops has someone with availability. There are other use cases which hopefully Jen and Bradley will be uncovering.

Please suggest use cases here (and ideally volunteer to make something that satisfies the use case).

@harry that sound awesome :slight_smile:

If any WordPress developers are able to pick up this issue that would be really appreciated — I’m totally stuck on solving this and we could do with getting the dev site up and running again so we can update the code on the live site.

Media wiki is a bit rubbish for unstructured data. I’d suggest WordPress
which is surprisingly fine.

Have you checked out Wikidata?

Short of setting up a virtual server just for the CoTech WordPress site would the best option be to have a copy of the site running locally and develop on a git branch and when a new feature is working locally ask that it is deployed to the dev server so more people can test it and if everything is OK then create a pull request and merge it into the master branch and then make it live?

I’m happy to set up a test environment/server if you need it let me know.
Really like to help we I can, if anyone has anything they need doing again
just Bob me a message :slight_smile:

Thanks to @chris getting the site super easy to update I’ve now exposed the JSON API from the CoTech dev site. Wahoo!

The API is exposed at https://dev.coops.tech/wp-json/ and you can get the collaborations from https://dev.coops.tech/wp-json/wp/v2/collaboration

I’m sorry to say for all you linked data geeks that a bit more work would be required to make the output more traversable. For example, https://dev.coops.tech/wp-json/wp/v2/collaboration/2196 lists the “collaborating_co-op” as “1840” and it would be better if it listed either “https://dev.coops.tech/wp-json/wp/v2/co_op/1840” or “Small Axe « CoTech « Cooperative Technologists

Any volunteers to have a go at enhancing the API? Or building something with it? We can easily add fields to the backend (e.g. co-op number? Co-op directory URL?)

The main issue (judging by last time) will be getting everyone to enter their data.

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I might well be up for gathering and entering that data…