Designing European event (CECOP network general assembly), June, Manchester
Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts)
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It's official! The network for coops in Industry and Services is having its event Thurs 20-Sat 22 June, alongside Coop Congress in Manchester. We have raised £7,450 of sponsorship from Solidfund, Suma, Infinity Wholesale, Infinity Retail, Delta-T Devices and Unicorn Grocery.
The rough programme is this:
Thursday 20 June pm Visit worker coops around Manchester (Unicorn? Suma? Anyone else want to host?) - Dinner at On the Eighth Day (?)
Friday 21 June am : General Assembly (CECOP members) pm: 40th anniversary open session
- historical perspective trends and tendencies in CECOP network (growth, employment, etc) - challenges and opportunities for the future
Saturday 22 June am Open session co-designed with UK cooperators
For this last session, will people suggest an overall theme(s)? Ideas so far:
- New forms of coop coming up in response to the changing composition of the European working class: is the CICOPA world declaration on worker coops still right?
- State repression, state sponsorship of European coops: historical and present day perspectives
Anyone else want to suggest themes for discussion? Bear in mind CECOP is not just worker coops, it's also the sectoral body for community coops, energy coops, social/multistakeholder, coop consortia - in fact all the sectors other than finance, agriculture, insurance, fisheries, healthcare, consumers etc, therefore cross-posting this.
Your ideas please! (as long as it's not Brexit). Then maybe a poll?
Graham Wed 20 Feb 2019 12:25PM
Being a network requires opening up and letting go. That's why it's so hard for these orgs, that historically derive their power by siloing data and operating as gatekeeper.
Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) Wed 20 Feb 2019 12:25PM
Yup
Roy Brooks Wed 20 Feb 2019 1:18PM
Point Graham. But it's a challenge for any entity to step into the 'unknown' - particularly where there's legacy investment. More usual is to tinker at the edges rather than embrace the radical which offers no guarantee of a satisfactory outcome and risks compromising that investment. Likely why successful new projects tend start from a blank sheet where the penalty for 'failure' is limited.
However, 'tech', particularly software development, is an implicitly cooperative activity which has delivered many demonstrably 'successful' outcomes. And that these haven't just provided powerful evidence of the worth of a communal approach but also fostered a slew of technologies designed to enable cooperation in novel ways does present a unique opportunity IMHO.
Shaun Fensom Fri 22 Feb 2019 6:27PM
Three connected themes:
New infrastructure coops - going beyond energy and into digital (fibre, datacentre, cloud) plus EV charging - cf https://chargemystreet.co.uk/ https://b4rn.org.uk/ as well as https://tdic.coop/
Consortiums (or ‘consortia’ if you prefer) made up of emerging SMEs (not necessarily cooperatives themselves) operating in these areas, particularly digital.
Using the cooperative model to provide a neutrality lock for infrastructure sharing - eg https://www.linx.net/ - now largest IX on the planet
Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) Mon 25 Feb 2019 1:39PM
Suggestion of an overarching theme for the Saturday morning open sessions: 'Cooperative organising in a time of social, political crisis'. I think most of the subjects suggested here could fit with this. @graham2's suggestion also fits with the likely agenda of the CECOP GA afternoon session on the Friday afternoon.
Graham · Wed 20 Feb 2019 12:22PM
Getting "as many primary worker-social cooperators to the event as possible" will be driven by whether they see the event as being relevant. Right now I'd say that's a tough challenge.