Online infrastructure for UK workers coops

Just a quick response on the final point you make Tim, suggesting that CUK doesn't take worker cooperatives seriously. I don't believe that this is the case at all. In fact I'm sure that the org does take worker cooperatives seriously. However, I feel that there is a hard reality at work here: in recent years at least, the funding that CUK increasingly relies on is not focussed on supporting or growing the worker-owned sector. A large percentage of worker cooperatives are not in membership of CUK, and even if they were if probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the budget.

As someone who was there at the time of the merger between ICOM and the Co-operative Union back at the turn of the century, the big win from that merger as I saw it (bringing together the innovation and energy of the worker cooperatives with the scale and assets of the consumer movement for mutual benefit) was never realised.

The move to create a new federal makes huge sense, and I agree absolutely with you that if it is to succeed it demands very careful thought, planning and execution.

@ratcrook an impromptu working group was formed at the WCW to develop some digital infrastructure for a new worker co-op organisation. Attached is a scan of a relevant flipchart page, I don't have any more specifics than that. I'm sure a full report from the Worker Co-op Council will be forthcoming soon.

I'm sorry that we haven't got anything up and running yet, I have a Discourse server half set-up I need to do some more work on it so that emails work, without that people can't activate accounts, I have to drive to London now, I should be able to get everything working on Friday, once again sorry for the delay.

@Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) I wouldn't worry, you're miles ahead of where I thought we'd be at this stage!

I don't understand why high-level decisions about technical infrastructure (host everything ourselves) are apparently being baked into the design of a potential worker co-op federation with so little consultation or explanation of the underlying thinking.

The tech should serve the organisation and not the other way round. My impression is that we risk designing in a massive barrier to participation via an unspoken and frankly irrelevant commitment to using open software.* Every new system and sign-up imposes a cost on users, and many of them will simply opt-out when faced with unfamiliar chat, docs and meeting apps, especially if the sign-up process is convoluted, complex or poorly documented.

At the very least, we should be looking at previous experiences here:

• What are the user needs of the worker co-op federation around tech, both for the inner core and the members who will need to interact with the organisation? From SolidFund and this group, for example, we know that getting people to sign-up to and use Loomio is a barrier to participation.

• What has been the impact of self-hosting open software on engagement elsewhere, e.g. in CoTech? (For a survey of one: I have never managed to summon the energy to make it through this list of CoTech sign-ups - one of which requires my co-op to buy a share in another co-op, while others appear to require me to send an email to someone unspecified.)

(*At ODSC we have an open source policy, build open licences into our contracts, produce a huge amount of original open source software and open data standards, and much of our work is ultimately directed at producing open data. We use open software and tools where we can. But we also use Google Workspace and various other SaaS products to get our work done, and collaborate with others. That's a compromise we make so that we can concentrate on the areas where we can make the greatest impact.)

Hi @jacklord

The proposal that Chris made above is very modest. It's just to buy a domain and then setup a Discourse forum so that we can co-ordinate next steps.

> Webarchitects sets up a Discourse forum at forum.workercoop.uk and we use that to decide what to do next

This strategy is clearly very effective for CoTech as the Discourse forum has 100s of users and we have organised many events using it and connected with co-ops around the world. The ICA also has a Discourse forum that is active. I can't think of a proprietary service that does what Discourse does as well.

what's the benefit of starting a new forum as opposed to keeping on this one? I think there's 309 members here, which will be difficult to migrate consensually to a different forum.

No objections to a forum. But in the flip chart posted above there is clearly a lot more going on (NextCloud, Rocketchat), and all of it is built on the self-hosting open software idea. It's the totality of how all that works that I am concerned about, not whether one component works well.

Apologies, perhaps posting a rather 'brainstorming' flipchart page out-of-context wasn't that helpful. I don't really think any decisions were made last Sunday, there wasn't really time for one thing, not to mention the requirements/input of everyone who wasn't in a barn in Devon at just the right moment needs to be taken into account.

There will need to be a lot more thinking about the user needs before committing to any particular software beyond a basic discussion/organising platform. I agree the technology must serve the federation. At my own co-op we (mostly) use Google Workspace, attempts at using unfamiliar software that requires additional user accounts haven't (yet) been that successful for our mostly non-technical 68 members. A robust, flexible and well documented SSO would likely help!

Leaning from the experience of CoTech and other federations like the USFWC will be really important too.

My 2p would be there shouldn't be a forum, a slack/irc/mattermost/whatever and a loomio group. Where possible a single flexible space for conversation works better. And resources are likely to be stretched at least to begin with, so keeping it simple to start with makes sense.

"The tech should serve the organisation and not the other way round."