Fully agree with having some “updating the website” sessions, we could also try to see how many of the bugs / issues we could squash 
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Yes indeed - I got the github issues up and failed to link to them.
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I’d also like to
- Map the skills of CoTech individuals
- Come up with a training plan
- Agree dates for 2017 CoTech events, including regional meetups
- Identify opportunities for cross-selling between coops
- Agree a rate card that includes the current range of rates for various roles based on age, experience, etc. as well as what we’d ideally like the rate to be (charge out and take home)
- Create some sort of “tasks to be done” agile board - maybe using waffle.io and github issues so that we’re not reliant on yet another service
- Review the funding proposal competed by the Dot Project and look for additional funding opportunities
- Create specialism clusters e.g. Design and print, websites, software, consultancy, marketing, content, etc.
- Create regional clusters e.g. Midlands and north, Scotland, South East - we bed to make some tech coops in Wales and the South West I think
- Create sector clusters e.g. Education, arts, business/corporate, charity/ngo, etc.
- (MVP for clusters = email addresses/distribution lists)
- Put together a joint proposal to the Co-op Group to sell them a significant proportion of CoTech’s capacity
- Show each other how we manage our accounts, contracts and various other business systems and identify opportunities for sharing/improving
- Think about what a welfare system might look like and how it could be funded
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I’m also very keen to discuss and work on improving the relationship and overlap between co-operatives and the free / libre open source community and also to help wean co-ops off their dependencies on non-free (free as in freedom rather than beer), corporate software and services (Google Docs, AWS, OSX, etc, etc) — how can co-ops be truly autonomous if they are dependant on non-cooperative corporations?
I’m concerned by the rise of the BSD / X11 style licensing that global corporations are so keen on (as code licensed under these terms give you the “freedom” to privatise the code and make it non-free) and think that as co-ops we should strongly favour licensing that enforces sharing (the best known example being the GNU General Public Licence) — open source doesn’t always mean the same thing as Free Software.
I’d like to follow on the conversations we started having last year regarding a minimal viable co-op replacement for AWS, we ended up concluding that OpenStack would be the way to go but it’s very hard to see how we could get this off the ground without a large amount of capital?
Looks like a great organisation Graham but, I gotta say, that was a disappointing click 
Fork it if needs be? The code is released under the AGPL
It would be interesting to know how many orgs have been created using this tool and how they have succeeded, @athertonjohn might know the answer to this?
I was just kidding - I think the “one click” bit is a bit overly optimistic.
On a more serious note, it’s pretty unclear what would happen if you click ‘submit’ (presumably an email is generated to sales@uk.coop) but from a UX perspective it’s pretty off-putting.
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I make no claims as to whether it is good, bad or ugly. Merely flagging up it’s existence. No doubt it could be better, like most things.
Thanks for the reminder of One Click Orgs existence, if people are going to spend some time and resources on this idea it would seem daft not to build on the work done previously rather than starting from scratch… It would be for things like this (preventing the reinvention of the wheel and duplication of effort) that having someone from Co-operatives UK at Wortley Hall would be good?
Just a few thoughts, the conversation you’re having is very stimulating!
I think that focusing on developing autonomous infrastructure is an important purpose of our time together in Wortley Hall. I agree it would be best to get off g docs and others of the kind. In Animorph we’ve set up up a free g docs equivalent but at this time it’s accessible only locally and not very useful, it requires a bit of investment to make it widely accessible, for instance to all members of the network and potentially our clients as well.
In my opinion planning things we want to make together goes arm in arm with tracking down and neutralising corporate infiltration on a low level such as ‘free’ software. The trick is to replace it with something fully operational and preferably appealing to many (outward facing), because this is the only way we could scale up by convincing normies they don’t lose anything(!) when abandoning corporate vessels.
During the last planning session I got really excited about the direction we started heading, that is aiming to channel the results of Wortley Hall into the CoTech website. Hope during the following meeting on the 3rd of November we can extract the essential goals in tune with the agenda being prepared by @laura, @PeteBurden and @Sion. If our website were to become dynamic, it could address even vast topics that @harry listed yesterday.
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If we wanted our own office application (perhaps the wiki isn’t good enough for shared documents and we do?) I’d suggest using Nextcloud — this can be setup with Collabora to allow WYSIWYG document and spreadsheet editing using a web browser (in addition to WebDAV access to the filesystem for editing documents using a local application such as LibreOffice) and we happen to have some Ansible playbooks to make setting up and configuring a Nextcloud server rather easy…
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Leaving aside for a moment the question of who facilitates, could we discuss the broad format of the event.
Currently we have the proposal from @laura @sion and @PeteBurden which is fairly structured. There has also been talk of just having open spaces.
Personally I like the idea of it being more hack-day-like, with minimal interruptions but spaces that people can go if they want to be entertained or chill out. For example, we could have several themed spaces (the final list would need refining):
- communications and marketing
- governance
- technology (our website, our comms channels, open source project we might want to undertake)
- business development/sales/finance
- training/skills exchange
- help, I’m lost and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing
People propose hacks for each of the spaces, and people form into ‘teams’ or just generally get into the relevant space and do some work with some practical outputs. e.g. Marketing and Comms would be about proposing new copy for the website or other marketing materials, and the output of the hack would be the new materials.
In the evening of each day there could be a ‘proposals hour’ where people can bring proposals from the individual groups that need broader approval. The lunch break means there are roughly six half-day ‘hacks’ - some people can focus on tech while others focus on governance, and those that want to can do a bit of everything.
How do people feel about interruption-free hack day format vs more the structured format? Is there some way we can have both? Is the “help, I’m lost and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing” stream where the facilitation is needed?
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Hi Harry.
That is very helpful, thanks.
As Sion said "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 [groups - those who want structure, and those who want less].
I think what you have proposed is almost exactly what we have in mind. Laura’s agenda is quite detailed (for our own purposes) but in essence our approach is to use the principles of Open Space. (Open Space Technology - Wikipedia) - the same participatory principles that underlie hack days, BarCamp etc.
To more simply summarize Laura’s agenda it really says:
- meet and say hello
- get together and surface ideas for themed spaces
- break into smaller groups and work in these spaces
- get back together later on and review what came up
So yes, the themes you suggest make perfect sense - our intention is to gather them from this topic, but also refresh them on the day. Because sometimes people’s energy for things changes in a new situation and setting.
We also had envisaged, exactly as you suggest, proposals being brought forward and agreed on, probably daily. Longer Open Space events can, in our experience, sometimes seem a little incomplete, so we wanted to bring in exactly the structure of proposal making you suggest. My own view is that we should use ‘consent’ as the basis of making these decisions.
The only addition we are making is some occasional sessions of our own design to break up the cycle/patterns and perhaps learn new conversational skills. But like the whole agenda, it is all completely optional. And completely flexible - a big part of the facilitators’ job in our view is to keep adjusting the process so it best reflects the changing needs of the participants…
Hope that helps.
Pete
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I’d love to discuss the practicalities of getting more CoTech collaboration off the ground in 2018. I’ve added a new topic: Wortley Hall: How to collaborate with other CoTech co-ops. I’d love to hear ideas from other people who are interested in this.
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I’ve created another topic for something else I’m interested in chatting about: Wortley Hall: Software development methodologies.
I’ve written a blog with some ideas about how CoTech could develop over the next year: What should CoTech be doing in year 2? :: Outlandish - I’d be interested in people’s comments and thoughts on this thread.
It’s all very much a straw man to be deconstructed or burnt.
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I just gave an internal (tech focused) presentation here at Outlandish about our use of OpenShift (https://www.openshift.org/ - basically Kubernetes with some extra useful stuff on top).
Would be very interested to re-present that, and discuss the topic with others (devops, hosting, docker, etc…). Could be a good platform for the “co-operative cloud” concept…
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