Oggcamp festival 2018

SAT AUG 18th - SUN AUG 19th 2018 - SHEFFIELD, UK

https://www.oggcamp.org/

“OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activites and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you’ve loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it”

Since it’s literally on my doorstep, I plan on hanging out at it.

In theory … I could submit a 25min talk on CoTech… dunno about the practice of that though.

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Well … if there were any such short talks already done elsewhere with abstracts and slides to crib, it would definitely increase the likelihood of this virtual presentation becoming real.

Looks interesting, might well get there myself. Happy to participate in planning/giving a talk if that’s of interest. @chris and I did something in Manchester a while back although CoTech was only one point of focus in that.

Can you share the presentation you reference?

You can listen to it here, not sure where the slides @Graham produced are?

https://wiki.coops.tech/wiki/Platform_Co-ops_Presentation

It wasn’t really about CoTech so I’m not sure if it’ll be any help.

Aah, yes. I do have those. I’ll add them to the wiki page.

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@kate

I have my notes and basic slide from even I have a talk about co-tech at co-op UK AGM last month, what’s your email address I’ll send it over to you.

Once I get round to it, I’ll publish them here.

:grinning:

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I’m sure some of us from Autonomic would love to come. I submitted a talk about CoTech to EMF Camp (which is late weekend of August), so if that goes ahead, I will be looking for tips also.

Draft submission for the oggcamp call for papers

The themes are

  1. Free and Open source software
  2. Open Hardware
  3. Digital Rights
  4. Free Culture
  5. Personal Skills
  6. Other

So I suggest submitting under “Free Culture” or “Other”
Draft below, closing date is 16th June. Comments, Edits, Suggestions ?

Technologists of the World Unite. You have nothing to lose but your bosses!

We hereby give notice to technology companies that do not treat their employees fairly, do not give their workers control of their businesses and do not seek to create a fairer world, that your days are numbered.
We are more creative, more committed and more resilient.

Come and hear how workers are taking control of technology, how you can start a workers co-operative and how you can join a tech workers co-operative.

CoTech

  • CoTech has more than 262 staff and revenue greater £10m.
  • CoTech works in technologies from .Net and Adobe After Effects through Mailman and MariaDB to Xen, Yii and Zeplin.

But much more interesting is that fact that CoTech is owned and managed by it’s workers.

CoTech Manifesto

We believe in a fairer world in which wealth and resources are distributed to the people who need them rather than those best able to take them.

As Co-operative Technologists we aim to ensure that technology plays its part in creating a fairer world.

Our individual worker co-operatives have shown that workers who collectively own their companies and control their destinies make better workplaces, better suppliers and better digital products.

We call upon tech workers who share our vision to join us.

We call upon consumers of digital products – including trades unions, charities, governments and private companies – to reject the false assumption that only multinational conglomerates or private equity-funded startups can be great tech companies. Technology is the lifeblood of all our futures, not just a gravy train for the fortunate few.

We hereby give notice to technology companies that do not treat their employees fairly, do not give their workers control of their businesses and do not seek to create a fairer world that your days are numbered. We are more creative, more committed and more resilient. Join us.

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This is what I submitted to EMF. It was done in a hurry and I’m could do with a re-work :smiley:

Think outside of the boss!

In a tech industry that is increasingly centred around huge monopolies such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Uber that invade our privacy, abuse their worker’s rights in the name of constant growth. With ubiquitous connectivity, automation and AI becoming omnipresent, these hierarchical companies will exert more and more influence over our daily lives. We can build a better and more democratic society starting now. This is how.

Worker’s Co-operatives are a way of organising a businesses so that they are owned and run collectively by their workers If implemented correctly, co-operatives ensure that the capital generated by providing goods and services doesn’t disappear into the hands of shareholders and investors and profits are distributed ethically among workers and the community. We are accountable to each other and we operate under principles of transparency, consensus and decentralisation.

This talk will briefly delve into the origins of the workers co-operative movement from it’s beginnings in Rochdale in 1844 to the present day. We will look at CoTech, which is a network of 34 UK based tech co-ops that employ over 260 people. We will examine characteristics of this network, the technologies we use, how we are organised and the links we have made with other co-operatives around the world.

We will then look at how to start your own co-operative. The different types of co-op and share some predictions for the future of this growing movement.

“We hereby give notice to technology companies that do not treat their employees fairly, do not give their workers control of their businesses and do not seek to create a fairer world that your days are numbered. We are more creative, more committed and more resilient. Join us.” - CoTech

I know @polly and @Kayleigh have done some talks about CoTech before, perhaps they have some more resources?

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@kawaiipunk What’s the proposed duration for your EMF talk ?

Not too sure. 30-45 minutes I think.

I submitted the following

Technologists of the World Unite. You have nothing to lose but your bosses!

Learn about Cooperative Technologists, and the Co-operative movement

The co-operative movement offers a different way viewing the world, based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy,
equality, equity and solidarity.

Co-operative organisations look to co-operate amongst themselves to effectively build and strengthen the co-operative movement, and they work for the sustainable development of their communities.

There are many similarities between the free software and free culture movements where code and content are freely given back to the community to be remixed, improved and re-engineered.

Come and hear how workers are taking control of technology industry, how you can start a workers co-operative and how you can join a tech workers co-operative.

CoTech https://coops.tech

  • CoTech is a federation of 34 worker co-operatives in the tech industry sector employing more than 262 staff with total revenue greater £10m.

CoTech Manifesto

We believe in a fairer world in which wealth and resources are distributed to the people who need them rather than those best able to take them.

As Co-operative Technologists we aim to ensure that technology plays its part in creating a fairer world.

Our individual worker co-operatives have shown that workers who collectively own their companies and control their destinies make better workplaces, better suppliers and better digital products.

We call upon tech workers who share our vision to join us.

We call upon consumers of digital products – including trades unions, charities, governments and private companies – to reject the false assumption that only multinational conglomerates or private equity-funded startups can be great tech companies. Technology is the lifeblood of all our futures, not just a gravy train for the fortunate few.

We hereby give notice to technology companies that do not treat their employees fairly, do not give their workers control of their businesses and do not seek to create a fairer world that your days are numbered. We are more creative, more committed and more resilient. Join us.

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I also submitted this.

How I learned to love the lambda

An introduction to functional programming, mathematical induction, the Z combinator, and computing using Python lambda expressions.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand how things work when there are less concepts available rather than more.

In this presentation we show how to throw away every keyword but one from the Python programming language and create a new functional programming language using only the lambda keyword.

It won’t be fast, it won’t be pretty, but by doing it the features that distinguish functional programming languages from procedural ones become evident.

In the 1930’s Alonso Church invented untyped lambda calculus as a model of computing. Python contains a complete untyped lambda implementation, and provides a nice REPL to experiment in.

OK… My much more interesting talk on Church’s lambda calculus got rejected, however the one on coops in tech was accepted.

Saturday, August 18th: 15:00 - 15:25

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Sorry to see your last message Kate, I’m sure Church’s lambda calculus is exactly what I need to learn :wink:

Seriously, I was thinking to ask if they need another volunteer, do you know the OggCamp email address please, anyone? Doesn’t seem to be on their website. If not I’ll try one of the social media channels. Ta.

Hi @jonathan there is a Freenode channel, that I’ve seen them in… #oggcamp. There is probably a slack and matrix, but I’m not that hip

OK ta Kate I’ll have a look over the weekend, cheers :slight_smile: