I remember this Chris, and definitely think that we should speak about it.
I’m keen to hear thoughts from more people - what is your response to the proposal @chris et al?
hi everyone,
I’m really glad this discussion is happening, but would love to hear from people in other coops. It would really help to get input from a wide variety of people/coops, especially those attending Wortley Hall this year.
To echo @Abi’s question, what cost would be acceptable to participants / facilitators?
Aaron
Thanks @Abi. The reason I quoted those day rates was for transparency and understanding, not a negotiating ploy!
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Unfortunately, I only have questions:
What might the total costs look like per delegate based on the
facilitator’s quote?
How do we work out the value to put on this event? eg The value of
potential business either from direct collaborations or referrals by being
part of the network? The value of skills shared and professionalism
mutually gained?
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I’ve been holding off from chipping in to this thread. I didn’t go the event last year (in part because the programme looked a bit weak), and I won’t be able to go this year because of family commitments, hence my reticence to stick my oar into this discussion. However…
For me, the fact that these issues are being raised speaks to the failure of the agenda/facilitation at least year’s event and therefore, ironically, to the need for much better facilitation at this year’s event if effective progress is to be made. We’ve all spent a good deal of time over the year trying to reach some consensus about what CoTech is for, who is part of it, how others can join it, and how we might most effectively cooperate. These are issues that, in my view, needed to have been resolved a year ago. They weren’t, and that has held this network back as a result. We now have a second bite at the cherry, so the need for a clear and focused agenda, and effective facilitation is required.
Felix asks the very pertinent question: what is this event worth? I’d argue that there is huge potential if the core questions can be answered. For me (and I stress it is only my opinion) the focus needs to be not on who might facilitate the event and what they might need by way of compensation for their efforts, but rather what are the objectives of this event?
Answer that question, and we’ll have a much clearer understanding of the value of the event to you, to your co-op, and to CoTech as a whole. It will then become much easier to decide on the most appropriate approach as regards facilitation, and what that might be worth to the participants.
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I agree that last years facilitation could have been better (I think less of it would have helped at times, rather than organised activities like the one outside we would have been better off setting more of the agenda ourselves and working out what we wanted to discuss between ourselves, the most useful discussions I had were not in any formally organised sessions), however I disagree that we could have agreed a formal structure last year, these things take time to coalesce and I think we will be in a far better position to progress matters of this nature this year.
It’s a great shame you can’t make it Graham, if you could call in for even just half a day I think it would be worthwhile.
This is a bit off topic but in reference to the comparison of facilitation to programming and the hours worked and rates charged…
I wouldn’t dream of calling myself a programmer however the most interesting parts of my current work involves writing Ansible and Bash code so perhaps some people might consider that the term "programmer" covers sysadmins like me…
As far as I can recall I have only had a handful of jobs that involved 5 days straight work this year, a couple, at the start of the year, were the result of meeting Outlandish last year at Wortley Hall and then in April I coded new servers for The News Coop and the only substantial job since then has been a vBulletin to Discourse migration that came my way thanks to Agile and I’m working on this at the moment.
Fair comment @chris - as I say I wasn’t there so I am speculating to a degree, but hopefully the point is made. As far as going this year is concerned, I’m very happy to look at the planned agenda and see if there is anything that I could sensibly participate in given my constraints. Is there anything by way of an outline timetable/agenda yet?
No agenda yet, as far as I’m aware, but I can’t imagine a moment when there wouldn’t be something you could participate in, even if it’s chatting to people in the bar 
I’d suggest coming at a time that fits in with the kids and not worrying about the agenda in advance.
@Graham I just had another thought, how about you suggest what sessions / discussions you would like to be a part of and when you can make it and then that is taken into consideration when the agenda is planned? Would that work?
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One of the things that struck me from planning session notes was the absence of tech topics!
Here is the streams/sessions list from those notes:
- Sales and Business Development
- Operations and Finance
- Branding and Marketing
- Outreach
- Community (and internal communication)
- Governance and Decision making
- Skill sharing
Only Skill Sharing had a sub point (Pioneering blockchain and crypto) that sounded more techy (although could easily be focused on non-tech aspects too). Maybe those other sub points are very techy, I cannot tell, but it certainly doesn’t seem the main focus.
Two goals from the document are to “make CoTech work better for all its members” and to “focus on the practical over the conceptual”, so I am curious as to why more “pure” tech topics didn’t come up.
Perhaps people see a need to get the network more well established first? Or members want more support regarding the co-op-y topics, less so tech ones? Or the set of people that would want more tech-focused topics did not input into the planning meeting? Or the purpose of the weekend itself is not supposed to be about the actual tech?
So, to make a concrete example - why is there not a session/topic about how to best configure code splitting when using webpack? and, whatever the reason, is that a problem? (to (hopefully) be clear, I’m not saying there should be…)
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Perhaps we should start a “Wortley Hall 2017 Agenda Ideas” thread for people to pitch in with ideas?
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I started a new thread for agenda ideas / suggestions so best take that part of this thread over there.
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@chris, you’re brilliant.
I’d really like to bring this convo back to Pete, Sion and Laura’s proposal and get more thoughts on it - the event isn’t far away. For those who haven’t commented, what do you think?
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Hi @PeteBurden,
Thank you for the proposal about facilitation and for all the time you and the other facilitators have put in so far.
We’d really value having facilitation at the event to ensure we get as much out of it as possible. Having said that we would also value a decent amount of unstructured time, but we’ll feed our thoughts on that into the thread about the agenda.
The additional £100 or so per ticket seems fine as far as we’re concerned and is certainly relatively insignificant when compared against the opportunity cost of us forgoing billable client work for the duration of the event.
We think it’s entirely reasonable for you and your fellow facilitators to charge a standard day rate, because in acting as good/neutral facilitators, we imagine you wouldn’t be able to participate as fully as other attendees.
Cheers, James, @chrisroos & @chrislowis (Go Free Range).
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Many thanks James, et al. That’s appreciated and useful to know. We’re on the case - we’re trying to to find a way forward that pleases as many as possible. Hoping to have more to say soon. Best
Hi all. @PeteBurden , @laura and I have been listening carefully to what people are saying on the subject of facilitation, including costs, agenda (developing), structure (or degree of structurelessness), for Wortley Hall.
We think a flexible agenda (see Laura’s outline) with some directed activity but also a double measure of open space co-design is most likely to satisfy both those who want to simply turn up and produce, and others who might want to engage in a more reflective/discursive or structured way; and to enable those tendencies - and everyone in between - to interact properly and make it a really effective event.
To contribute to the discussion, and maybe help it towards a proposal (on Loomio?) we’d like to make a revised offer which is that the three of us work as the facilitation team for the three days of the event, on the basis of a collective fee of £5,275 ex vat, which would include all expenses including our accommodation and travel. For transparency his is based on a day rate of £450 x 3 x 3 = £4,050 and £1225 expenses. The prep work, including everything we have done so far, we calculae as an additional 1-1.5 days each and this would be pro bono. This amounts to around an extra £100 per attendee, assuming 52+ come.
We’ve discussed this briefly with @aaron Aaron and @chrislowis in terms of how this money could be collected and managed, but that’s for another place perhaps.
We think this is probably the best way to cut the ‘Gordian knot’, i.e. without triggering a complicated discussion of internal CoTech day rates, free work, and so on.
If people feel this is still not right on balance, then we’ll withdraw and simply attend as members of CoTech, including helping out with organising as we can.
Best, Laura, Pete and Sion
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Sorry I thought I had posted this days ago!
Thanks for all your work so far and for sharing this. To me it seems like a fair suggestion and one that I am very happy with (I am not speaking on behalf of everyone at AC, just for myself). One thing to note is that the proposal does not include any time spent ahead of the event, and I appreciate that a fair amount has been spent already.
Facilitation is a tough gig, and I personally believe 100% that WH should be a facilitated event - I would reconsider my attending if it were not so. We have a team that I trust and believe will do a good and honest job of helping to make the 3 days all they can be, and given the work involved it’s right that this should be paid.
As mentioned before, we aim to submit a proposal to Solid Fund for £3,000 to ease the costs and help allow less well-off coops to attend. If we are successful, it could bring down the cost per person to about £50 - depending on numbers (we would need about 70 attendees).
Did you see this?
If someone can get a proposal in today that could be another £500 towards the costs…