As you probably know, we organise events at SPACE4 which are on subjects relevant to CoTech coops (broadly tech and anticapitalism!). We’ve always been slightly embarrassed that these are so London-centric. So this working remotely thing gives us an opportunity to have some remote events.
We are therefore on the lookout for speakers for the next SPACE4 CoTech event, and we would like to cover the role technology has played in the unprecedented events of the past few weeks.
The primary questions we’ll be asking are:
How has technology been used to combat Covid19? What examples or case studies are there? What effect has Covid19 had on the UK economy and the tech sector? Is COVID-19 going to bring down capitalism?
Would anyone be up for talking? We’re not sure of dates yet, will depend a bit on speakers (these are usually evening events, though we think that since everyone’s wfh daytime might be better right now).
You should definitely have someone talk about all the people working on open source medical suppliers.
Some of my friends at https://wikifactory.com might be up for talking (and I think are likely to have already reached out to some of the people who’ve been leading main efforts in this regard and so may be able to ask them to talk too).
And internationally this is one of the massive efforts to compile and assess what’s out there in terms of Open Source COVID10 medical supplies of all kinds:
May First is organizing a webinar tomorrow (March 26) on the topic of Free software during the epidemic - we have several speakers that you may be interested in approaching to talk at your event. Here’s our page: May First Movement Technology - everyone is welcome to register and join the discussion.
I am part of a project called Cooperation Birmingham, we are a solidarity kitchen and delivery service that use mostly open source software and we are about to launch using Coop Cycle cooperative delivery platform.
Nafeez Ahmed would be a great speaker for a “Is COVID-19 going to bring down capitalism?” session, but he would probably justify his own session rather than a shared one, I’ve posted links to his articles on this subject in this thread:
Massive apologies for the latest reply in the history of late replies.
Thank you for all the ideas of who to talk to. I paused this online event but I will resume it again and follow up on the leads. Any other ideas of who might be interested in this event please let me know. Hope you are well and safe.
Hey folks - we have finally got our arses in gear and actually have an event coming up! Sion and John are speaking alongside Rose, Coops UK’s new CEO and Daniel from Co-op College.
