Loomio
Tue 8 May 2018 12:25PM

Membership of Platform 6 and Loomio Group(s)

MSC Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Public Seen by 32

Once we are incorporated (any day now), we'll be able to accept membership applications from co-operators and co-operatives. Basically anyone who contributes funds and supports the objects becoming a member of the new co-operative.

There are various options around how we engage with our new membership, this existing working group and the rest of the world. Do we open up this Loomio to anyone? Do we create a sub-group for members only? Where do we make decisions around fund allocations? Please add to the discussion.

AW

A Waterhouse Tue 8 May 2018 12:40PM

More information needed, what type of incorpration, will this be based on a subscribed fund, one presumes a revolving fund. Or will it be based on investments, perhaps a mix of both types. Is what is being set up a first step which will lead to further developments? How will it interact with already operative cooperative finance? How can new w coops and others be brought to investment readyness. Looks promising and interesting, bw aw

JD

Josef Davies-Coates Tue 8 May 2018 12:43PM

AFAIK the plan was to quickly incorporate as a CLG to get the ball rolling and then to perhaps convert to Co-op or Community Benefit Society in future....

MSC

Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Tue 8 May 2018 1:31PM

To start with will just be disbursement of donations - probably best to read the business plan we put together for the Unfound application.

G

Graham Tue 8 May 2018 1:45PM

The Loomio limits are as follows: the 'Gold' level account that we use currently (albeit at a subsidised level) allows for up to 100 users. My sense is that for the time being this is OK, but it probably won't be too long before we start pushing at that limit.
The next level up would give us a 1000 user limit, but the price is $1490 per annum. Whether there is a subsidised rate available on that I don't know, and wouldn't want to bank on there being one that we could access. So we will need to budget to upgrade in the not too distant future, or consider alternative mechanisms as we scale up. Loomio is open source, so we could consider self-hosting. I've no idea of the complxity of that or the costs, but we'd probably be looking at maybe £1000 a year for that? @chriscroome might be able to offer some input on that point. I've also been looking at other participatory decision systems, na dthough that Decidim looked really interesting as an option. (And given the discussion in the meeting about the potential for working with cities this might be worth considering as a valuable tool in that regard also).

CCC

Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Tue 8 May 2018 8:38PM

Self hosting Loomio looks a lot easier now that it was a while back when I last looked at this. I'd estimate that it would take a day or so to knock together an Ansible playbook to spin up Loomio servers, this is something that we could potentially sell a few of, so could probably develop in our spare time, if there isn't a rush. It sounds like 2GB to 4GB of RAM might be needed, our VPS prices are here.

G

Graham Wed 9 May 2018 7:38AM

Which would cost around £80-120 ish per month (£800 - £1200 ish per annum) plus any sysadmin costs for updates, etc., but would provide some flexibility over and above what's on offer for the hosted service from Loomio.