Posting here rather than on forum.workers.coop to get a response, can take the converstion there if people prefer.
The US worker co-op tech peer network has reached out to me after my visit to the US regarding building strong links between our two sectors. Interested in the demand from our side and what if anything has already been done to build links?
My initial thought was to organise a round-table meeting over zoom to bring together some of the leading tech co-ops on both sides of the atlantic for a focused discussion around opportunities to work together on three broad topics intially, but if there is interest breaking those out into seperate strands at future meetings:
Busdev oppportunities for sub-contracting work and business referrals between our co-ops
Learning opportunities, whether share practice on running co-ops in the tech sector or tehnical knowledge sharing
Strategic opportunities, for example strategic joint ventures.
The first two topics are fairly straightforward, on the third, not sure if the recent failure of www.meet.coop has been discussed much. I may be massivley naive, but if we get enough of the US and UK tech co-ops to invest in and commit to some shared technology solution… We have a better chance of getting the critical mass of users to make it viable.
Just on the issue of meet.coop - the service hasn’t failed as such. It is running and open to new people and organisations that want to use the service. The team behind meet.coop is looking for a new cooperative host organisation to take over the management and development of the service, which is currently generating in excess of £1000 monthly recurring revenue. It’s an opportunity worth consideration. The challenge that the team faced was/is one of capacity - the project needed focussed input to help grow the user base and income, and despite a significant effort to recruit, it wasn’t ultimately successful. The project itself, which brought together a number of tech cooperatives from Canada, Europe and the UK was a fabulous learning exercise.
Thanks @chris for mentioning us, I hadn’t seen this post.
Patio forum is down for now, but the community behind the forum is more active than ever!
For about 3 years now, several technology cooperatives from different parts of the world have been building a global community called Patio.
We are currently working on building our identity, our landing page and also collaborative workspaces to join forces in terms of internal organization, positioning in the cooperative world and business development.
The site is still under construction, we have not officially launched it yet. We estimate that we will do so by the end of the month.
Any technology cooperative from anywhere in the world can join Patio community. The only requirement is to be a technology cooperative. I encourage you to join as we are building internal working circles that cover topics such as sharing projects, developing our businesses and using free collaborative tools.
I’m sure many co-ops in the network would be interested in joining a discussion to further think about joint strategies. I will share this post in the network to see what other cooperatives join the meeting. Maybe we can tell you a little bit more about the community and the current work dynamics so that you can evaluate joining
Personally I’m focused on FACTTIC (our tech-coops federation) so i’m not particpating in Patio, but @nicolasdimarco and the team are doing an exellent job building the international network!
I’d like to attend to the meeting, even if it’s just to say hello to a few familiar faces
I’m part of a Canadian co-op, but also interested in joining the call if it works out time-zone wise. (I also work with Graham on the meet.coop project.)
Great, working on setting a date with the US tech co-ops, likely to be: Tues 4th or Thurs 6th April @ 17.30 UTC. So pencil those in if your interested and I’ll respond to firm up which one.
Well as should be obvious both those dates have passed. I didn’t get a response from last email so this in on pause until I assume they get the demand together.
