Spring Break 2021/The State of CoTech
Session context
- GLADYS PERKINS ROOM 10:00–11:00 BST
- Facilitators: Luke decentral1se (Autonomic), Szczepan Orlowski (Animorph)
Welcoming session to touch base with what everyone’s been up to. We will share a presentation of bird’s eye view highlights departing from the recently published newsletter 2. We will also discuss priorities for CoTech and see what could we engage with in the over the coming two days such as reconsidering what CoTech is and updating the website.
Redhat podcast about Gladys Perkins
Present
Kristy (dot project), Luke (autonomic), Aaron (agile collective), Tim (data content reach), Geoff (animorph), Hannah (animorph), Caitlin (good praxis), Calum (code-operative/startinblox), Liam (mediablaze), Ieva (?), Sion (principle six, calverts), Calix (autonomic), Chris (webarchitects)
Welcome and check-ins
We have resurfaced on the other side!
New working space by a co-operative in Oxford
Welcome Data Content Reach, new co-op in CoTech!
Tomorrow 3pm discussing a prospect of a physical gathering!
Great to see yous!
State of Cotech
open question: how do you actually figure out the state of CoTech?
50 members in the network.
loomio
Community users totalling 139 people, sometimes individual, sometimes co-op-wide accounts
Feedback from a user on SocialHub (ActivityPub/Fediverse/Mastodon community) that Loomio might be redundant when we're using a Discourse forum.
forum is hopping
in the last year: - 165 sign-ups - 309 topics - its an amazing info sharing resource already
https://community.coops.tech/admin?period=yearly
monthly circle calls
ripping monthly since mid-2019
https://wiki.coops.tech/wiki/Sheffield_2019/_Cotech_governance#Proposal
CoTech forms a general “decision-making” circle that meets virtually on a synchronous basis once per month. This meeting should be attended by one representative of each member coop. The number of co-ops necessary to constitute a quorum for decision-making is one-third of the membership.
https://wiki.coops.tech/wiki/Meetings#CoTech_Community_Calls
It was useful for disseminating information and some operational decisions on ongoing basis. Struggled to make any fundamental decisions. It's still down to Loomio.
CoTech calls are transparent and welcoming.
newsletter is up
https://community.coops.tech/t/cotech-newsletter-march-2021/2613
Brilliant way to learn about so many things that are happening!
It's great we can now do it more regularly with a bit of a financial support from the fund.
There could be better way of distributing the newsletter going forward.
process: https://git.coop/cotech/newsletter/-/blob/master/sources.md
co-ops working together a bunch
- we've heard vicious rumours of widespread co-operation in the network - can anyone tell us more?
We have 50 members of CoTech.
Aaron/Polly set up a sheet to document the collab case studies. Add yours!
Expectations from the gathering
What would you like to get from the gathering? (Aiming for the stars!)
Geoff: Info sharing - how we do it, what works what doesn't, how can be improved.
Chris: Have website listing all co-ops in CoTech
Aaron: Collaboration, not necessarily answering but picture-forming! Also curious about the physical gathering!
Igor: Collaborative aspects of the network - how to create more opportunities and improve procedures/relationships.
Hannah: Handbook, internal collaboration, how to reduce reduntant efforts we all engage with.
Tim: Meeting everyone - ticked! Collaborating with others in the network, how's that possible?
Calum: Semantic Web, party!
Luke: More co-ops, bigger projects, infrastructure! Tangible ethical code.
Kristy: Internal co-operation - people, processes, tools and external with the clients.
Caitlin: Looking to get fresh air from how other people are doing! Maturing of co-ops.
Liam: Building shared resources.
Szczepan: Getting closer to each other, planning physical gathering.
Everyone's invited to work on separate threads, e.g. Chris from Webarchitects wants to do work on the website.