Ratify the (Initial) Constitution

I just extended the deadline until 12th as I don't think I set it to a week sorry!

Should the manifesto at https://www.coops.tech/manifesto, or at least the opening statement, not be included in the constitution?

@graham2 I believe the plan is to keep the Manifesto (an outwards facing mission statement) and also create a Constitution (an internal facing 'bill of rights' for members). I think the plan was that the Constitution would replace the About page potentially.

We (GFR) also worked on this at WH and chatted to quite a few people about it. I think we've all done a good job of capturing the implicit ways the CoTech works and making them explicit - even if that has highlighted some obvious things we'd like to change.

I know this stuff can be a bit dry but I think it's important that everyone has a quick read to make sure it all makes sense.

I agree with @chriscroome - I'm pretty sure we've refused membership to non-UK co-ops before so I think this implicit "rule" should be captured. We can think about changing it when we have a simple system in place to do so.

I think it has been very clear that we have only been allowing UK based co-ops to join and if we are to ratify the existing custom and practice in the form of a document then I think that this aspect of our organisation should be included (irrespective of whether we agree with limiting CoTech to UK based co-ops).

References I have found from a quick search to CoTech being UK based:

Organisations that have not been allowed to join so far include:
* Protozoa - based in New Zealand (an Enspiral venture) - we'll notify them if we go international

https://www.loomio.org/d/gI1Ts8i5/membership-admission-decisions

And:

1) (Create) a UK-based coalition of tech-focused co-operatives that pool their resources to achieve their shared aims – making the world better and fairer with technology

https://www.loomio.org/d/93Kolm4U/co-op-sprint-retreat

And:

Allow DTC innovation co-op to join CoTech

The co-op is legally based in France, but he is based in London and one of the other members is soon to be based in Canada… Are we basing 'UK co-ops' as registered address, or the workers? He has offered to set up a UK address if we ask him to, but this seems long winded and not bureaucratic.

Chris Lowis: I think DTC have strong enough ties to the UK to be allowed to join

Chris Croome: We don't have a legal structure or (as far as I'm aware) a formal agreement that we are only open to UK based legal entities / co-operatives (though perhaps we should?)

https://www.loomio.org/p/9zZAoSBi/allow-dtc-innovation-co-op-to-join-cotech

There is more on the contact list archives and I'm sure I had a conversation about with with @alexwa in Slack, examples from the list:

• https://www.fountstudio.com/ — pointed at the North America based network as they are not UK based by me.
• http://agaric.coop/ — gently turned away by @finnlewis as "Agaric is a distributed co-operative, but mainly based in US / Nicaragua"

Are more examples need to justify including UK based in the document?

Why UK-only? That's not in the draft and I can't see any good reason to be national except language and currency issues. However agree that although imperfect the draft is where we've got to

Sorry if you thought I was defending the existing UK-only custom and practice — that wasn't my intention, I don't think that the UK is a political entity that we should feel a need to defend or support — I was just suggesting that since we have only been allowing UK based co-ops to join that the attempt to document our existing custom and practice should reflect this fact.

@sionwhellens @peteburden There has been a high-expectation of accessibility for CoTech - e.g. where events are located, subsidies for attending, etc.

These challenges would be much greater if this was a Europe or worldwide organisation. I suggest we wait until all the co-ops can afford to get to the Midlands before we start organising events across Europe and arranging for multilingual facilitators.

The About Us page currently states that CoTech "aims to create a better technology sector in the UK"

Would obviously be good to collaborate with people outside the UK (and EU) though.

I agree with Chris "I don't think that the UK is a political entity that we should feel a need to defend or support"
Without slowing anything down I think we need to revisit allowing worldwide OR UK based co-ops to join. I note that the discussions CHris referred were ambiguous in the subtle difference between:

" UK-based coalition of tech-focused co-operatives..." and

"coalition of UK-based tech-focussed cooperatives..."

I think I'd prefer the 1st one, allowing non-UK members

The reference to the New Zealand co-op being refused membership - seems a shame - it was the only one in a list of 4 refused on that basis, the rest weren't co-ops (Harry "Outlandish" Robbins · 4 months ago - https://www.loomio.org/d/gI1Ts8i5/membership-admission-decisions said "Protozoa - based in New Zealand (an Enspiral venture) - we'll notify them if we go international" )
I suppose I'm advocating for "going international" AS a UK-based network.

Clearly Webarchitects needs to have an internal discussion about this — I don't believe that @jonathan31 has understood the point I was trying to make…

This thread was opened with this text:

What is this thread?

This thread's purpose is to agree that the constitution outlined below is an accurate representation of the current situation.

What is this thread not?

This thread is not the thread to try and devise a perfect and all-encompassing constitution. That can and will be done gradually over the course of CoTech's life. Once we have agreed the starting constitution then we can start amending it as we see fit.

So:

If you have any critical concerns that the constitution below a.) is materially inaccurate or b.) absolutely requires something which is missing, please let us know.

So this isn't the place to have a debate about whether CoTech should or shouldn't be restricted to UK co-ops — it is a place to agree what the existing situation is.

I'm afraid we didn't have a discussion at the Webarchitects Committee Meeting about this before I used the Webarchitects vote (perhaps there wasn't time) and in hindsight I think I'd argue that we should have blocked this, rather than abstaining, for the simple reason that the text from Wortley Hall is "materially inaccurate" and it is the case that it "absolutely requires something which is missing" — the fact that in practice we have been and are a UK based network of Tech Co-ops, not an International network.

The point of the exercise was to agree what we currently have in place in order to provide a baseline from where we can start to move on, but as this thread shows we might have failed to achieve this since the vote was on a document that doesn't mention if we are or are not a UK based network.