Thanks for your blog post, I very much agree that “getting more money and resources into the system is key” — as I posted in the Loomio structure / decision making thread, I’d suggest that our main priority should be sorting out how we can organise ourselves best to win and deliver work for clients (once we have that solved we should have spare time and resources to address everything else) and that if this necessitates a legal entity then we should set one up and the question of membership cost would be determined by the nature of this organisation.
There’s a lot I agree with there @harry . Also strongly in favour of breaking into smaller themed spaces, it sounds more productive.
In case anyone missed it, I interviewed a lot of people in the network earlier in the year and summarised the main patterns as suggested topics here.
To tl;dr it, I’d say:
- Prioritise how you bring in money & work to collaborate on inc branding / marketing strategy, and developing a common framework. A lot of the constraints boil down to finances. If this is about creating a non-private alternative way of doing tech, let’s focus on testing a minimum viable strategy for doing that that benefits us.
- Strengthen internally:
a) Establish themed groups at Wortley Hall, or organisations like @dansmallaxe & @harry suggest, so people with expertise, energy and ideas know where and how to contribute them with the consent of the network.
b) Create more incentive to cross paths and strengthen social ties (working together is the core social glue). Identify ways to make more members aware of and involved in CoTech.
c) Start thinking of ways to accommodate common processes, tools, technologies. Collective training, sharing and development of common best practices, etc. - Scaling sustainably. Creating a profitable coop is a high barrier to entry (tried - failed); over time, we’ll need to think about creating entry-points for new individuals, and our strategy for converting existing businesses and gaining new members.
1 is the thing I’m most confident about moving forwards personally, 2 & 3 depend on it really. Unsure if 3 is a big thing right now. Discussing purpose, membership, decision-making, is necessary to lead to smoother engagement, actions & decisions but I think it’s important to be practical and settle on a minimum viable version rather than get too lost in hypotheticals.
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Hi Laura
Just found this year’s event although we did manage to get Jack there last year I think! Isnit still possible to join for part of this or engage remotely in any of the sessions.
Cheers
Bob
I don’t think there any plans for remote participation, but since you are close by why don’t you come for the day on Tuesday or Wednesday?
Hi Chris
If I can juggle my work commitments out Tues or Weds might work.
Bob