Circle Call 2022-03-30

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Wednesday, 30th March 2022 @4pm in CoTech Meet.coop room, see also the forum post.

Agenda

  • Check-in
  • Matters arising from the last call, which are not already on the agenda
  • Worker Co-op weekend
  • Fund update
  • Hubl update

Attendees

Attendees: Chris Croome (Webarchitects), Chris Lowis (Go Free Range), Szczepan Orlowski (Animorph), Alex Bourlier (Happy Dev), John Evans (Code-operative)

Minutes

Check-in

  • Climbing chat, what is a 100metre tall rock?
  • Surviving pandemic, still!
  • Busy, good spirits!

Matters arising from the last call, which are not already on the agenda

  • No capacity to host it by Autonomic. They have passed us details of venues we could use in Birmingham.
  • Perhaps CoTech could wait until the outcome of Worker Co-op weekend before we commit to a gathering so we can bring a proposal round?
  • Future of CoTech could be up for grabs after the Worker Co-op weekend.
  • John would be happy to organise a gathering for June.

Action: John to test the waters on our Discourse on the topic of gathering in June.

Worker Co-op weekend - thread

  • There might be a proposal to setting up a separate network from Co-ops UK. A new worker co-op organisation could be formed and CoTech could be a tech representative within the industrial network.
  • Might need to ask Siôn Whellens to update us on the progress of the plans for a new workers coop federation.
  • Is there anyone going from CoTech?
    • Chris C from Webarchitects, Liam from Mediablaze, 4 people from Agile...
  • Could we request a report back? Perhaps a session for CoTech people explaining the outcomes?
    • Chris C is up for it!
    • 🍻

Fund update

  • Last update thread
  • We are approaching end of the current tax year, so would proceed to sending invoices for 2022/2023 in April.
  • Have over 5k in the bank account.
  • Fund covers ongoing costs, also paid for newsletter.
  • We want to continue maintaining Fund to socialise the costs, everyone who pays in appear happy to do so.
  • Perhaps next gathering could cover some costs?
  • Objections? Thoughts:
    • We have a Nextcloud instance but no one is using it. It might make sense to keep Discourse server separate from other modules such as website, Nextcloud, LimeSurvey etc. There could be one repository with all the Ansible playbooks so people can contribute to maintaining it. More people could get more exposure to Ansible.
    • Would CoTech pay for 2 VPS-es?
      • The invoice could still cover similar amount of money. It would make sense to cover some work Chris C has done.
      • Might configure the cotech.uk domain + redirect. Makes sense!

Action: Szczepan to start sending out invoices to co-ops for next year of Fund. Chris C to migrate the server contents, get domain, set up redirection and invoice Fund.

Hubl update

  • Test run report.
  • Last discussed at the Spring Gathering 2021.
  • Szczepan recently spoke to Cyril from HappyDev and heard about things progressing with Hubl and that perhaps CoTech could look at it again since we haven't resolved the issues we face.
  • Alex: After the first attempt to roll it out we took a step back and focused on French community of freelancers. Hubl allows people to close their deals, get jobs via platform hence bringing money. Sometimes people are unable to staff their projects and Hubl team can help them find workers. Also, person arranging the collaboration (vouching for the freelancers) can take a cut (2.5%), Hubl facilitates the process for 3% cut. Current focus is make the ecosystem work together and be beneficial by sharing deals so people could be more keen to switch to Hubl in the future from the tools they are using.
  • Szczepan: Communities don't use Hubl anymore?
  • Alex: Some communities still do and there's updates, e.g. when someone posts a job with a skill required that matches your skill, you get an email notification about it. The main focus now is setting up the business model.
  • No clear way of getting CoTech people on Hubl. Previously people found the tool interesting but would not really use it on regular basis.
  • Would Hubl make itself spring to peoples' minds? Tends to require a lot of work to make people used to it.
  • Hubl has been working on incentivising participation to onboard people more effectively.
  • At CoTech we've been using Discourse, some people are on Slack, or just call each other. Sharing happens but it would be helpful to have a specific tool for that. This topic could be one of the main things at the upcoming gathering.
  • People are used to their tools. If they don't miss something it will is difficult to expect switching. In French context deals are shared via Hubl so it's proving attractive.
  • A new reason for switching to Hubl is needed? Currently people go one-to-one working down the list to find someone who could you could outsource the work to. Hubl could save us time and make it more open.
  • Would it make sense for Hubl to try and get people on board? Are there unattended business opportunities where Hubl could facilitate co-ops and clients coming together? There are several lakes/ponds some co-ops share. A lot is obscure so difficult to assess whether a lot of opportunities are lost.
  • Co-ops in CoTech operate on a variety of scales, technology might overlap but people work on different types of work.
  • Might be worth running a workshop where different types of coops can share how they currently share work. Alex is excited to get a connection going. CoTech should consider holding a workshop/mapping session at the upcoming gathering.
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