Podcast season focusing on cooperatives

WAO is starting to think about our new season of the Tao of WAO. With principle 5 in mind and this community’s response to the hub-bub in the tech industry, we’re noodling on a more in-depth look at some of the complexity around cooperatives.

Our last season focused on learning and we had wonderful guests sharing a wide range of expertise. We want to do something similar and are wondering – does anyone here want to be a guest? What ideas do you have for topics?

We’re interested in showcasing the diversity of this community, so a special request and callout to those of you who do not identify as cis/white/males. You’re very welcome to respond to this thread or ping me in private!

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On a different tack, in preparation for this season, Laura and I have spent some time making notes on the ICA’s Guidance notes on the Cooperative Principles which, for those who haven’t read it (I hadn’t) is worth it. 120 pages, though! :sweat_smile:

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Yep, it’s a good if long read, agreed.

I think the key point on the guidance notes - outstanding though they may be - is that very few people are likely to read them (this seems to be confirmed by the initial results from the ICA’s recent survey). And so, in many ways, they might as well not exist. What’s required is not a learned treatise, but a practical useable toolkit that can help cooperators to do better.

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I’d say it’s not either/ or, but yes, be nice if some of the best practice patterns from the guidance could be extracted and shared in a more digestible and readily useable format.

We’ve just released Episode 04 of our co-op focused Tao of WAO season. This one is super interesting because our guest, John Atherton, is super interesting!

The audio is here: Stream episode S06 Episode 04: Coop Economy by Tao of WAO podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
But we’re also doing transcripts now: S06 E04 - Co-op Economy - Learn with We Are Open Co-op

Hope you enjoy it. You can find the entire season thus far: Stream Tao of WAO | Listen to The Tao of WAO - Season 6 playlist online for free on SoundCloud

(apologies for cross posting for those of you who are also in the workers.coop forum!)

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