CoTech summer gathering at Selgar's Mill.
Update 27/04
Poll extended until Friday 30th as requested by @Autonomic Co-operative. New text in orange, outdated text crossed out.
Update 22/04
Proposal has been updated following discussion below. New text in red, outdated text crossed out.
Poll has been closed and a new one opened :)
Background
@Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) first raised the idea of joining the CoTech gathering together with the Worker Co-op weekend on the forum here and it was discussed further at the CoTech Spring Gathering where we decided to run a poll to gauge interest.
The Worker Co-op Weekend will be running from Friday 22nd July - Sunday 25th July at Selgar's Mill, the space which is now being managed by Stir to Action. The CoTech gathering would be on the Friday during the day, meaning we would need to arrive on Thursday 21st evening, which means extending the booking at Selgar's Mill by a night at a cost of £1500 (inc of 5% VAT). This cost includes accommodation (camping and in rooms) and facilities (cooking, internet etc, washrooms) but not food.
It seems like at least 9 people are interested in attending (the poll was only live for a week), and the majority of respondents to the poll (4/8) felt that we should use the CoTech fund to cover the cost of the extra night at Selgar's Mill, plus food/drink for the Friday night/Thursday day.
The Worker Co-op weekend will continue on from Friday night - Sunday.
Motivation
It would be very nice to see people in person
Selgar's Mill looks amazing and it would be great to support Stir to Action
A more integrated worker co-op movement is a stronger one, this will encourage members to participate in the Worker Co-op weekend and form connections there
-
Covering the cost with the fund means people are more likely to be able to join, particularly after a potentially difficult year. This will also hopefully go some way towards addressing the travel cost/time to Devon.
Proposal
We commit to covering the cost of an extra night at Selgar's Mill (which will be a maximum of £1500) and the cost of food and drink for the Thursday night and Friday day time, estimated at £200 if it is not covered by ticket prices. Tickets will be sold via Co-ops UK at an equivalent price per night to the Worker Co-op weekend, which hasn't been confirmed yet but the prices from the last one were £66 for 2 nights camping, £84 for 2 nights in a room. which is as follows:
Camping (2 nights Fri & Sat) - £60 + VAT for members and £85 for non-members
Dorm (2 nights Fri & Sat) - £80 + VAT for members and £115 for non-members
Private room (2 nights Fri & Sat) - £100 + VAT for members and £145 for non-members
Saturday daytime only - £30 + VAT for members and £43 for non-members
They have agreed to give us a ticket to cover Friday night and Saturday day for the camping option only, at around £45 for members.
Accommodation - both camping and in dorms/rooms. As we will be there first, all the rooms will be available on the Thursday night. However, we don't want to be blocking them all throughout the weekend if people are staying on - so there are some logistics to be managed there.
Food - there are ample cooking facilities at the venue so we can cook throughout the evening/day, with enough willing volunteers. (I would love to hear if people are willing to do this or not. Otherwise, we can order food or go to the pub, but the budget might not totally cover that). Any surplus from ticket sales will go towards the catering costs and we can create another proposal re. how to manage food there. Any surplus beyond that would go back into the CoTech fund.
Timeframe
We need to let Co-ops UK know our decision as they will add it on the their booking form, making it easier for us all. So a short timeframe is necessary, and the poll closes in a week.
Please...
Ask any clarifying questions
Raise any critical concerns
Vote in the poll if you are a contributor of the CoTech fund
Comment below with suggestions/questions/volunteering to cook etc etc.
Lucy King Wed 21 Apr 2021 3:05PM
@Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) the idea was that we would combine our booking form with the Worker Co-op one. To make it easy for people to book for the whole thing, if desired. If that's the case, I need to let them know by next week, and we won't know about these other meetings and therefore final cost at that point. If we don't feel comfortable signing off only knowing the maximum cost, then we can of course organise it independently - just seemed like a nice tidy way of doing it and of hopefully encouraging more attendance at the Worker Co-op weekend too.
Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Wed 21 Apr 2021 3:55PM
That sounds fine to me, I'd also be happy to pay for the additional day at the same rate as the two Workers Co-op days if that is an option.
Lucy King Thu 22 Apr 2021 9:40AM
Sorry @Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) , which bit sounds fine to you? :)
Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Thu 22 Apr 2021 2:23PM
Everything in this post sound fine to me, I hope we can reach an agreement that enables the gathering to take place.
An option I'd have picked in the poll on the Discourse forum, if it had been available, would have been something like this:
Tickets for the CoTech event to be sold alongside the Workers Co-op Weekend tickets, at a comparable price per night. If there is any shortfall this will be covered by the CoTech fund (the maximum this could potentially be is £1,500 if there are no tickets sold for the CoTech event or any other events taking place on the same day).
I wonder if we need another poll in this thread to list various different options?
Lucy King Thu 22 Apr 2021 2:53PM
I'd be happy to change the proposal to this, and nobody's spoken up in defence of CoTech paying for everything soo 🤷🏻♀️We could start a separate proposal re. covering catering costs, since that doesn't need to be decided yet. We could also run a proposal to provide some bursaries out of the fund if needed.
Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Thu 22 Apr 2021 3:06PM
I agree that we can probably leave the catering costs out of the equation for the moment -- if the two other events @Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) mentioned do proceed then there is a chance that the simplest thing to do is to include food in the ticket prices and have the same price for the day of CoTech event as for each day of the Workers Co-op Weekend -- this would be the simplest solution for us if it is an option.
Nick Greenhill (Co-op Web) Mon 26 Apr 2021 4:34PM
Hi Lucy, I've voted to abstain but wanted to explain a bit more why. I tried to write a full response in my vote but then loomio had a bit of a moan at me about it being too long!
First of all, thank you for putting the proposal together, I know proposals can be a massive pain at the best of times, so people like me chipping in with awkward questions can sometimes be frustrating. I appreciate you taking the time to answer and also thank you for @Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) for responding too.
Fundamentally I'm not against the fund being used to support get togethers to help grow and strengthen the CoTech. I admit, there is a concern our side of the CoTech fund not just being a party fund, which is where some of my nervousness of the proposal came from. But appreciate that's not what was being asked here and that's more about how I perceived the question rather than the reality of the request
While I think this proposal was difficult for us to get behind from the start, it's not that it's not right or a good proposal. I think the short timeframe for the decision, and the QA being over loomio probably didn't help me making the decision personally. I think if there was a lesson learned to take away from this for me it'd be that next time I'd probably request those of us with questions or not quite understanding arrange a call to go through the proposal in more detail - if that would be feasible? I'm not sure if that would have helped others, but certainly something I would have appreciated in hindsight (which is a wonderful thing!)
Anyway, as I said in my vote - keen to hear feedback from those that attend as always looking at how I can help make these decisions smoother in the long term :-)
Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) Mon 26 Apr 2021 5:05PM
Thanks @Nick Greenhill (Co-op Web), we had an hour of discussion on this at the Spring Break event on 9th April 2021, but I realise that your co-op (and others) were not represented at that, @Autonomic Co-operative have suggested extending the deadline of the vote to Friday, if this is done would you have time for a call about this between now and then?
Poll Created Thu 22 Apr 2021 4:28PM
CoTech to make up any shortfall between ticket sales and cost of venue hire (max £1500) Closed Fri 30 Apr 2021 4:03PM
Sadly we haven't found a way to move ahead with this for now. However the Worker Coop weekend will still be going ahead and fingers crossed we can have some CoTech presence there. Hopefully we will also come up with another option for a summer gathering of sorts - if anyone is interested in collaborating on organising this, I'd be up for it so do get in touch :)
See full description above, only members of the CoTech fund can vote in this proposal.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 64.3% | 9 |
|
| Abstain | 21.4% | 3 |
|
|
| Disagree | 7.1% | 1 |
|
|
| Block | 7.1% | 1 |
|
|
| Undecided | 0% | 120 |
|
14 of 134 people have participated (10%)
Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) · Wed 21 Apr 2021 12:52PM
We don't yet know what the cost will be, as @Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) pointed out:
If neither of these other possible meetings happen and 30 CoTech people attend then around £50 per head would cover the £1,500, if they do take place then this would be less.
I'd suggest that when we know what the cost will roughly be we could come up with some ticket prices which could include different prices for different circumstances, as we have for past events and we could then propose that the fund covers any shortfall in ticket sales?