Kwad Co-op - Small group of drone hobbyists starting a coop to rent equipment and teach each other

Here is the video, its 2 weeks old, the project is very new.

I joined their discord and asked them about the project.

Here are some quotes from our discord discussion:

"(the idea for the coop) really started with snster. He's apart of a bike coop.
We love this hobby to death but were finding it hard to get others involved or to stay involved because of the fairly rigorous research involved and the moderate funds needed to stay in the air. Me and him do our best to teach all that we know; give parts where we can. There's about 15 active members in this channel that do what they can. I know we all have the tools needed but nothing extra, so only able to help one at a time. We're also working on getting parts donated for a short of workshop. Have extra frames, motors, chips, cameras, etc.... The idea is to have participants either pay yearly dues or to volunteer themselves for a credit. Participants would have access to the parts donated at highly discounted rates and to the knowledge of everyone. ( honestly the knowledge part alone is quite a bit) this way they can get what they need from one source other than scouring thousands of websites and videos to answer a simple question.

bluelinefpv (username) has something similar thing going with his community. He's a police officer and he gets youth groups together that come from difficult homes. He teaches them what the hobby is and helps them build their own crafts. Gives them something great to do to keep them out of trouble. His project has been pretty successful so far."

"We're thinking of making a chapter community. In this early of the stage we have discord, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook contact points for the knowledge part. We've so far have put together several meet and greets for the physical parts"

They have a gofundme here. Things Platform6 could offer them:
- Membership fee collection through Open Collective
- ? Hosting their own Loomio
- ? Hosting their own Mastodon
- ? Building and hosting their website
- ?? Building their platform for renting equipment and volunteering that we can then easily replicate to help new, similar coops in other places. Could it make sense to use ShareTribe? The founder Juho Makkonen is a big fan of platform coops.
- We and other Platform6 coops could use their drone footage free in our videos in exchange

Let me know if you have thoughts about what Platform6 could offer, or if we shouldnt offer some things in the list above.

I could make a 50 dollar donation to them on behalf of Platform6 - using our Open Collective to also test how its working out. I would donate to our Open Collective and there would be a Loomio vote on giving it to Kwad Co-op.

Perhaps we could see if it would be a nice exercise for us to help people outside the typical coop "hobbyist" circles and approach people who just find the model practical for their own hobbies. Projects like these are hard to find!

I was imagining having a call with them later this month, with a short presentation of things we can offer (OpenCollective, Loomio, etc.) and then general discussion. Would be great if some other folks from Platform6 could participate :)!