During today’s governance call we discussed the monthly newsletter, the last of which was sent in March 2018
They look cool!
I suppose the best way to start the conversation is with the people who were involved in the previous newsletter… What are your thoughts, what worked last time, what didn’t, why did it stop?
Head over to cotech / newsletter · GitLab 
Basically, it took about 2-3 hours a month, I think, when I was doing it for the 2 months. I would manually take a trip around the cooperative internet (see sources.md · master · cotech / newsletter · GitLab) and whatever looked cool, just drop it into an open file in editions · master · cotech / newsletter · GitLab and then at the end of the month, paste that into a “newsletter” category post after it was reviewed by Chris or whoever else was helping out.
I would say it is a thankless job but loads of people said thanks
Good luck with it!
Note that is was @chrislowis, not me, producing it a couple of years ago.
@LeoSammallahti has kindly offered to help with writing the newsletter, and I’d like to help, too. We’ll form a working group so that it’s open for participation
I’m assuming it’s okay that we repost to Mutual Interest? I’m in favour of a public-facing newsletter, personally
I think that the first milestone should be to publish our first newsletter, and then we can review it, and discuss new ideas? Is the end of September a realistic target?
In the posts above we have examples of the previous CoTech newsletter and documentation on how they did it to help us start. I’ve already been sent stories by Code-Operative and GreenNet
Sounds good to me, @LeoSammallahti is a user member of Webarchitects Co-operative and we host the Mutual Interest Media Co-operative WordPress site. I have added @LeoSammallahti to the Sister Co-operative group in Discourse so he now has access to the private co-ops category here.
Count me in to help. We originally decided to post it to the CoTech forum because it has a nice “subscribe to this category using email” function which helps with distribution.
I suggest we license the text under something very permissive so people are free to repost wherever.
I had a look at the 2018 Magazine, it obviously took some work to put together, it’s good, and I maybe could contribute … Would you go beyond the “press release” type of article, into news, comment, tech questions, etc? Just askin’
My preference is to start short and simple for the first newsletter and then reflect on it… experimenting with new innovations in the coming months?
Hello all! Please let me and Leo know here, by message or email the content you’d like to feature in the September newsletter…
I think for this one we’re planning short and simple, and keeping closely in line with the March 2018 structure. With that in mind we need nominations for:
@decentral1se @chrislowis is newsletter [at] coops [dot] tech still active? Could I have access please?
I made a start on the September newsletter
Please edit freely and add your own content
Thanks I’ll work on it tomorrow!
I’ve added a couple more stories. Will we be able to publish on 30th September?
You can also send me your content as text and I can transfer it to markdown
I’ve written some content for it so that we can publish today so no worries. Just waiting on @edmaw and @MelMcNab to send me some content from GreenNet and Meet.coop and then we’re good to go
In October I’m not going to have the time to write it again, CoTech-wise I’ve got the Hubl onboarding to focus on and I’m looking to create some more time in my day for some personal projects
Does anyone know of any junior or student writers who would be interested in taking it on? It seems to me a great opportunity to gain commercial experience in a friendly and welcoming environment
Would you go beyond the “press release” type of article, into news, comment, tech questions, etc?
Added the newsletter to the monthly call agenda later today… will you be attending? I’m hoping to ask if anyone had some ideas for things to try out in the October edition
Heyo,
Thanks for the all the efforts on this initiative!
Please can we edit the job description at the end to:
Job Opportunity: Part-time Communications
Animorph are looking for someone sociable, attentive, and curious to join their team as the person in charge of outward communications, working 8–12hrs per week over the next 6 months.
Please read the full job description, and share with your networks today!
Applications are open until 10th October 2020.
Done! Will publish now
Hi all! I’m not able to write a newsletter for October due to workload and in November it’s gonna be worse - I’ve signed up for an event which involves writing 50,000 words 
I’ve been looking for a volunteer to take it over for a couple of months, @Caitlin very kindly got in touch with some master’s students (I think junior/student writers is best because it will help with their careers), and they asked about payment (which I think is fair!)
I want to open a Loomio proposal to set aside a little funding towards this? What do people think about it, and about the budget we might need?
My thoughts:
Hey, good luck with the work!
Good you raised this. It seems like the newsletter just came back and now it is gone again. Which shows again that the network cant rely on volunteer unpaid work because we’re mostly already overclocked with work (a lot of that already unpaid).
Most coops I know struggle to even drop a post or two on their own twitter every month and handing out a wage for someone working for the network is another instance of the seemingly unsolveable issue. So, this is all kind of hard to do! I guess you are aware 
I don’t have much faith in the push system but I do think 3 hours of work is a known quantity, anyone could do it really since we have aggregated all the places you need to go looking for it.
Did our collective attempt to come up with an internal solidfund ever take off? I am certainly not in the loop, maybe it did? I’d like to know. However, I wonder if we can’t just try to bake this into something like https://solidfund.coop? We work with them to sign up coops (some of us are already in there, right?) and then make a propsal for a recurring 3 hours work a month which specifically aligns with bringing cooperators together in this network. The existing posts on this forum show that it is a serious morale boost.
Those are the thoughts 
Hey this is my bad - I promised to commit to this but didn’t keep my promise. Will make sure to put at least few hours a month to write something up in the future. It’s no problem for me to commit few hours a month to write this pro-bono.
It did indeed. The CoTech fund category has some more information, and you can see the accounts, invoices etc on git.coop. You’ve reminded me that I need to update this and share another report.