cross-posted on the We Are Open Co-op publication
A couple months ago, I helped facilitate the annual CoTech Network meet up at Wortley Hall. When I realized that the network was a crazy bunch of crazy fun chaos, I suggested that a community call would help keep folks up to date with what others in the network are doing and how we might co-operate. I’m a big believer in Community Calls. Want to start your own? Here’s how.
Anyway, we just had our first CoTech community call. We connected using our new jit.si URL, which worked pretty well once we figured out that Chrome is better for it. Then we kicked off the agenda with a primer on what Community Call means in my world. Basically, a community call is:
- Participatory with a collaborative agenda
- Open to everyone in the community
- A recurring online event
On that third point, we talked about the best way to ensure a consistent and convenient time for the call. We decided that we would hold the CoTech Community Call regularly during the 4th week of the month. I created a Doodle poll to ask CoTech members which day and time they prefer.
With the logistics of the call out of the way, the group started talking about what content we might include in the not-yet-established CoTech newsletter. We had a bit of a discussion on who exactly the target audience is (e.g. internal for network members or external for prospective members or curious clients). There was a suggestion to make it monthly and to figure out a way to have revolving responsibility. In any case, we need volunteers to do the heavy lifting of putting the content together. To our great appreciation, we already have some folks taking ownership.
Next, we talked a little about the CoTech brand. A self established “branding group” met a few weeks ago and decided to write a creative branding brief for the network. This group will share the brief with network members in our community forum and solicit feedback. Once folks have had a chance to comment on the document, the group will start working on our collective brand! The next meeting for the Branding Group is February 7th at Space 4. I do not know how one is invited to this event (wink wink nudge nudge CoTech Members, maybe you want to create an event in our events category?)
Speaking of Space4, a couple members have recently attended events organized by CoTech members. The first member skillshare happened just last week, and just the other night CoTech member Free Range talked about their co-op.
Other events that have been happening include meet ups to discuss co-op based web hosting and putting together a data center.
Next on the agenda, we discussed how to move forward with the ratification of an initial CoTech Constitution. We talked about first capturing the implicit constitution of the CoTech, so that we can ratify it and give clarity to current members. Without a constitution it’s hard to know how to interact and what’s expected of us as members. After a constitution is ratified, we can propose amendments. We decided to put the conversation in our members-only decision making tool Loomio.
Cat from the Dot Project talked about some work she’s been doing around how CoTech collectively bids for projects and, should we win a bid, how we would work together from a practical perspective. She talked about how a group of co-ops have come together to see if we could pitch collective services, and we’ve realized it’s quite ambitious. They’ve discovered a lot of rich information have identified key priorities (only from the few co-ops) on what should we be focusing on right now.
Cat and her colleagues are working out the best way to share out this information.
At the end of the call, we talked a little about more localized meet ups. I suggested just going to a bar and inviting folks, as the We Are Open Co-op does when we meet IRL. And we finished with a call for agenda items for a future call.
I love a good community call, so I hope the next one is as engaging as the first. Thanks to everyone who participated!