Wortley Hall accommodation booking open

CoTech Gatherings
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Hi everyone!

We have block-reserved rooms at Wortley Hall for 3 nights checking in on Monday 27th November and checking out on Thursday 30th November.

There will be sessions from Monday afternoon until Thursday late morning, and the facilitation team will be in touch shortly with an update on this.

Wortley Hall have reserved:
4 x single rooms
21 x double rooms
24 x twin rooms

We also have the option of one of the cottages on the estate if we require the extra space.

HOW TO BOOK
Unfortunately, Wortley Hall cannot manage the room reservations themselves as we have booked them as part of a conference package. That means that we (Agile Collective and Go Free Range) are managing the booking and invoicing of the rooms on behalf of CoTech.

Here’s how it works:
There’s a form linked at the bottom of this email
Follow the link to copy the form to your Google Drive account (If you don’t use Google Drive please contact us for an Excel version)
Fill it in on behalf of everyone in your cooperative who is attending including a contact name and number
Send it back to us (by sharing it with chris.lowis@gofreerange.com and aaron@agile.coop )
We’ll allocate the rooms on a first-come, first-served basis.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Based on the interest there has been in this event there is unlikely to be enough rooms for everyone to have single occupancy. Please, please consider sharing a twin room with someone else if you can to ensure that as many people as possible can stay at Wortley Hall.

If you do not wish to stay at Wortley Hall, or we’ve run out of rooms by the time you send the form back to us, there are some alternative accommodation options available. See the end of this message for details.

There is also the option on the form to request “lunch only” or “lunch and dinner only”. Wortley Hall charge for day attendees and use of the conference facilities so you must choose one of these options if you are attending even if you are not staying overnight.

We are aware that some people would like to come but are unable to stay for the full 3 days so we have added this to the booking form.

In the interest of full transparency the costs quoted to us by Wortley Hall (and that we are passing on to you) are
Single occupancy (full board) = £102 per-person / per-night
Shared occupancy (full board) = £87 per-person / per-night
Day rate (lunch only) = £35 per-person / per-day
Day rate (lunch and dinner) = £57 per-person / per-day

PLEASE NOTE there will be some additional costs to attend the retreat - likely to include at least facilitation and possibly entertainment. In the interests of getting our accommodation with Wortley Hall secured, these things will be arranged (and invoiced) separately.

Thanks for reading! Now, go ahead and fill out the booking form:

https://docs.google.com/a/gofreerange.com/spreadsheets/d/1ITdfTtvr_57wIgH6DoAx6VhC6D7fU2fnLcEWPfchS8E/copy

And when you’re done share it with chris.lowis@gofreerange and aaron@agile.coop

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Cheers,

Chris (Go Free Range) and Aaron (Agile Collective)

Alternative Accommodation Options

The Premier Inn Sheffield Barnsley. A 5 Minute drive from Wortley Hall. Around £45/night.
Tankersley Manor. A 5 minute drive from Wortley Hall. Around £80/night.

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I have updated the wiki page for the event with a link back to this thread.

Would it be useful to have a separate room sharing and a lift sharing thread so people can sort these things out between themselves?

It appears to me that the spreadsheet incorrectly adds up the totals, but I’m no spreadsheet expert.

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It appears to me that the spreadsheet incorrectly adds up the totals, but I’m no spreadsheet expert.

@chris I think I’ve just fixed the formulae for the total cells. Would you be able to check? Thanks.

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Hi!
Wow, it is getting real! Last year I couldn’t attend and I would love to attend this year, but I’m still not very sure about the real possibilities.

  1. As some of you may have seen in my post a couple of weeks ago (People looking for jobs - #6 by Pau), I am not still in a co-op, although I would love to be in one, either joining an existing one or finding the right people for setting up a new one. I have read in the wiki that I cannot attend the event if I am not a member. Can I become a member on my own then? Or maybe we should organize a different event for people interested in joining the co-operative movement?

  2. Maybe I am taking things for granted, but related with the diversity issue of getting more women to the event than last year I want to ask, has the possibility of having childcare as part of the event been discussed? I haven’t seen any reference to this, so maybe it is not an issue for any of the members of CoTech.

I just think these are interesting questions to raise.

Cheers, Paula.

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The totals look good now, thanks James! I have shared a second copy of the spreadsheet, on behalf of Webarchitects, with Chris and Aaron — ignore the first one!

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Hi Paula, I’m not aware of childcare being discussed, there are are guests being invited on this thread — would you like to be proposed there?

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I’ll have a look. Thanks!

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Hi Paula,

sorry for the slow reply.

CoTech is currently only open to co-ops, rather than individuals so you can’t join on your own I’m afraid. We’ve investigated various ways of trying to bridge the gap (e.g. this Discourse forum, creating a freelancer’s co-op, inviting non-members as guests to events). Of course we’d ideally like to be in a position where anyone who wants to work for a CoTech company can do so, but we’re a little way away from that at the moment.

A group of CoTech members did organise a summer camp which was intended to be more open and accessible than Wortley Hall. I think they had a good time, but were a bit disappointed by the attendance so probably aren’t planning another one in that format.

Regarding childcare, one of my colleagues is planning to bring their ~1 year old, I believe. If others are planning on bringing young ones it would be nice to co-cooperatively care for them but for some reason no one ever seems keen on me organising Outlandish childcare. Maybe it’s the name.

Hopefully we’ll find a way to integrate you soon :slight_smile: Have you tried contacting @liam and @shaun who are both based in Manchester I believe and might know of some co-opportunities (sorry about that).

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Hi everyone,

Still waiting for quite a few coops to fill out the booking form for Wortley Hall ((see above for details). After November 1st, we will be extending the invitation to people outside of the network according to proposals made on this Loomio thread.

If you’re still thinking of coming but working out costs / feasibility then do let me know via email aaron@agile.coop.

Nice one,

Aaron

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And invoices for those that have already completed the booking form will be sent out this week

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We have a wiki page of potential members — UK based tech co-ops that are not involved with CoTech (and I suspect there are some missing from this page…), would anyone like to try contacting them to see if they are interested and if they are post about this in the Loomio thread?

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Hey @chris could you add Autonomic when you get the chance? We’ve only just started out but would love to get involved in CoTech.

https://autonomic.zone/

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Hey Harry!
I didn’t see this before, but thank you for your answer. I will contact @liam and @shaun and eventually join or set up a co-op, I’m sure!
Outlandish childcare is a great name, but sometimes really interesting initiatives (like the summer camp) don’t work as well as expected. It is good to mention it though, as other improvements of accessibility, just for showing that it is possible if demanded.
I hope you all enjoy the weekend at Wortley Hall!

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@kawaiipunk You don’t really count as a “UK based tech co-ops that are not involved with CoTech” since you are posting here :slight_smile:

But msg me here with what username / email address you would like used and I’ll create an account on the wiki for you and you can add yourself and create a page for your co-op :slight_smile:

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Hi Paula. If I can be of any help then happy to meet for a coffee when suits you. Shaun

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