Wouldn't cotech.coop be better than coops.tech?

I'm abstaining as I wouldn't be willing to pay for a .coop in addition to the .tech, but would be happy to setup a .coop if someone else is prepared to pay for it indefinitely and would suggest that people voting for a .coop should consider if they are willing to pay for it.

There are 109 people in this Loomio group (and the website says 34 co-ops and 264+ staff ) - frankly if we can't Cobudget the cost of .coop domain what are we playing at? :P

Even assuming the more expensive uk.domains.coop price of £96/ year (£80 + VAT) and only the 109 people on here (I wonder how many are so far in Cobudget...) that would be less than £1/ year each. Or less than £3 a year per co-op.

Personally I quite strongly feel that ALL co-ops within the CoTech network should systematically contribute something towards/ pool resources within the CoTech network (because if we don't we'll never achieve our potential) and we'd be VERY happy to pay say an absolute minimum of £5/ year to be a member (which would more than cover the cost of a .coop domain! :P )

More medium term I think realistically we should be looking at pooling %s of revenues and profits into a collective pot (e.g. members of the Valley Alliance of Worker Co-ops in the states pay dues of 0.00125% of their revenue to cover the association’s operating expenses and pool 5% of their profits into a co-operative development fund - I'd LOVE to see CoTech co-ops do something similar. Note: within the Enspiral network which inspired the creation of CoTech ventures pool much MUCH more than this, more like 5% of revenues on average, last I read)

I agree in theory but in practice things are not working like that.

From a pure brand perspective - assuming of course CoTech is, first & foremost, about growing coops in the tech space and developing an awareness of cooperative technologists as a viable alternative in the world beyond beyond coops - then a .coop address is a no brainer. (And, for an identifier that shouts 'we're a cooperative' from the get go, ridiculously cheap.... Probably the cheapest marketing one can buy in fact!)

But, if CoTech is first and foremost about 'tech' then maybe not so...

And ditto:
'There are 109 people in this Loomio group (and the website says 34 co-ops and 264+ staff ) - frankly if we can't Cobudget the cost of .coop domain what are we playing at?'

As someone with a long affiliation to the .coop TLD, and aware of the enormous achievement to actually bring it into being as one of the earliest TLDs of this type I am heavily in favour of the idea that all cooperative organisations, and I include CoTech in that (as do the registry rules about .coop eligibility) should use a .coop domain. It was conceived as a trusted and trustworthy space on the internet and although I have always disagreed with the registry's pricing strategy it remians a valuable asset to our movement that we should be proud to support and adopt.

I was chatting briefly with @chriscroome on this yesterday, and the use of the .tech TLD was pursued simply becuase it was quick, cheap and available at the time. Yes, I get all the stuff about brand and migration and all that, and this is all do-able stuff. My co-op would be willing to controbute equitably towards costs, and I would be personally happy to get stuck into organising the nitty gritty of setting up an annual membership subscription to create the common pool, as a positive step towards deeper cooperation among CoTech organisations.

Just to mention to all incl. @jamestimbrell (you probably saw) that http://tech.coop/ most recent news is from April 2011 "Due to a lack of Directors, The Tech Co-op is no longer in operation. Please contact Chris Palecek at 604-729-8536 if you require technical support." so maybe it would be possible to persuade them to part with the domain name...

Also looks like it expires in March next year, which isn't an awful
amount of time to wait for a coop network decision, assuming we can
snipe it :-)

Aptivate could stump up the first year of domain costs if that
helps!