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CoTech Community Call #3

cross-posted on medium

Community Call + Newsletter == Network Coordination?

We held our third CoTech Community Call (January and February write ups), and the first item on the agenda was to talk about the call itself. Since the We Are Open Co-op sponsors the call and I’m kind of busy, I wanted to know whether or not the call was valuable to people. It would appear that it is, as folks thanked me at the beginning AND at the end of the call. You’re welcome!

We determined two new standing agenda items which I will add to the next call’s agenda (the next call is April 25, 2018!). The first is a go-round with a quick update for co-ops to tell the community what they’re working on. The second is an invitation to anyone in the call who is NOT a CoTech member to tell us why they are interested in CoTech. Yes, it is an OPEN call.

Some announcements from March’s call:

  • The NextCloud group has done some testing and is ready for the CoTech Network to use NextCloud. Click here to see the thread.
  • There’s a bid going into Unfound in regards to developing a Platform Co-op. CoTech members are invited to join in the bid. Read this thread, have a think about if it might be something your co-op is interested in, and then respond!
  • Outlandish currently has control of the @CoTechUK Twitter channel, but they would like to share responsibility. They’ll be in touch about having CoTech members do a kind of rotating responsibility for it.
  • Cetis LLP has started a discussion about Commons Transition UK in Loomio. Co-ops, the Commons and Open Source all seem to overlap and we spoke briefly about developing these relationships. Actually, the members of We Are Open Co-op serve as bridges between these communities, so it was pleasing to hear that other people recognize the significant overlap.
  • Digital Liberties has been discussing how to use the “Viable Systems Model” to help the CoTech network. The model should help us determine to what extent is the membership engaging and then look at the future to determine what kind of possibilities are arising. What are the factors that enable us to create CoTech so that it has a life of it’s own? This could be a framework for realizing our own potential. Of course, Agile had a look at the wiki page and thought it was about industrial printing machines or something, so Digital Liberties promised to rewrite it for humans. Once they’ve had the chance, they’ll ask the newsletter group to include the rewrite and then YOU can give feedback on the model and if we should be using it.

We also had a conversation about how this call, along with the Newsletter working group, has started to bring a degree of coordination to the network. Though not everyone who works on the newsletter is able to join the call because of timing conflicts, there’s always one or two from that team that come to the call. Which means I can ask them directly “Can we put that in the newsletter?” I find this to be extremely helpful, and it means that two arms of network coordination are coordinating. That’s super!

We discussed whether we might use the community call + newsletter to assign actions and ask for help, thereby subsidizing the not-yet-hired network coordinator role until we have a network coordinator. We want to try to identify actions, self organise and keep the wheels turning for CoTech until we figure out who can take over coordinating us all.

How many times did I say coordination?

There are some informal conversations happening in various co-ops about filling this role, and we’ve discussed scoping it down from a full-time role to something smaller and more manageable to the CoTech Network. We discussed that different co-ops contribute in different ways to the Network. Perhaps if this role was just a few hours a week, all CoTech Co-ops would be willing to fund the position, whereas a full-time position might be harder for co-ops who can dedicate time but not money.

Check out the full notes and feel free to leave comments or start a new thread about coordination in the community forum. Don’t miss the next call on April 25, 2018 at 4pm GMT.

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