Funding the CoTech newsletter with the CoTech fund
Autonomic Co-operative
Public
Seen by 83
Background
The CoTech newsletter was an initiative which came out of some enlightened self-organisation which I can't quite remember who was driving but it was essentially an unmitigated success on all accounts. People loved this thing!
3 editions were published over at the all singing all dancing new category in the forum: https://community.coops.tech/c/newsletter/16 and tools and sources were setup on git.coop: https://git.coop/cotech/newsletter. We also setup a way to accept submissions from the network.
The purpose of the newsletter is to highlight inspiring examples of cooperation in the network, lay out "entrypoints" for how to get involved and try to bring all that juicy actually existing motivation and solidarity that is going on all the time in CoTech but it is not as visible as it could be.
The reason it stopped happening is that it is a commitment of 3-5 hours or so each month and that involves quite a bit of manual work, trawling around the internet hangouts of various coops and trying to put an editorial angle on the newsletter itself and then get the text peer reviewed and polished.
AFAIK, the community animation group targetted the newsletter as a good way to spark energy in the network and there was a thread to bring it back: https://community.coops.tech/t/the-return-of-the-cotech-newsletter/2223/28. Following a discussion on the latest community call, it seemed like a good idea to toss this into a proposal for the CoTech fund and get the thing going again.
Proposal
The CoTech fund will support up to a maximum of 5 hours a month of work by the newsletter team in order to publish the newsletter. The team is yet to be formalised but probably it will contain some of these people: https://git.coop/cotech/newsletter/-/graphs/master. I (Luke) can commit to it one my own in any case. The newsletter will appear at the end of each month. The proposed pay rate is £15 and hour. This brings the maximum funding amount to £75 a month. The newsletter team will setup clear ways to receive feedback from the network and will publish their work transparently and use open source licenses for their software tooling.
Autonomic Co-operative Mon 8 Feb 2021 11:25AM
Thanks! I've set a week deadline on the proposal and proposed an hourly rate and set the max money per month needed to get this done. If anything is still unclear, please let me know.
Poll Created Mon 8 Feb 2021 11:24AM
Funding the CoTech newsletter with the CoTech fund Closed Sun 28 Feb 2021 9:04AM
Background
The CoTech newsletter was an initiative which came out of some enlightened self-organisation which I can't quite remember who was driving but it was essentially an unmitigated success on all accounts. People loved this thing!
3 editions were published over at the all singing all dancing new category in the forum: https://community.coops.tech/c/newsletter/16 and tools and sources were setup on git.coop: https://git.coop/cotech/newsletter. We also setup a way to accept submissions from the network.
The purpose of the newsletter is to highlight inspiring examples of cooperation in the network, lay out "entrypoints" for how to get involved and try to bring all that juicy actually existing motivation and solidarity that is going on all the time in CoTech but it is not as visible as it could be.
The reason it stopped happening is that it is a commitment of 3-5 hours or so each month and that involves quite a bit of manual work, trawling around the internet hangouts of various coops and trying to put an editorial angle on the newsletter itself and then get the text peer reviewed and polished.
AFAIK, the community animation group targetted the newsletter as a good way to spark energy in the network and there was a thread to bring it back: https://community.coops.tech/t/the-return-of-the-cotech-newsletter/2223/28. Following a discussion on the latest community call, it seemed like a good idea to toss this into a proposal for the CoTech fund and get the thing going again.
Proposal
The CoTech fund will support up to a maximum of 5 hours a month of work by the newsletter team in order to publish the newsletter. The team is yet to be formalised but probably it will contain some of these people: https://git.coop/cotech/newsletter/-/graphs/master. I (Luke) can commit to it one my own in any case. The newsletter will appear at the end of each month. The proposed pay rate is £15 and hour. This brings the maximum funding amount to £75 a month. The newsletter team will setup clear ways to receive feedback from the network and will publish their work transparently and use open source licenses for their software tooling.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 100.0% | 6 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 0 |
6 of 6 people have participated (100%)
Animorph Co-op
Wed 10 Feb 2021 4:07PM
Discussed it at Animorph GM, everyone was supportive of the initiative, thank you for putting the effort and looking forward to seeing it take off with the support from CoTech Fund!
Code-Operative
Sat 13 Feb 2021 11:25AM
I think it's a great way to keep co-ops connected and alligned with each others work and hopefully get the presence and interests in things they might need.
Autonomic Co-operative
Mon 8 Feb 2021 11:24AM
Good motivation booster for the network. It helps keep the engines on for more cooperation.
Chris Lowis (Go Free Range)
Mon 15 Feb 2021 9:42AM
On behalf of Go Free Range.
PollyRobbinsOutlandish
Mon 22 Feb 2021 11:14AM
I think it would be great to get the newsletter up and running again, and if what that takes is using some money from the fund then that's all good. We're not using the money for anything else right now. I think there's a conversation to be had about what work is paid for by the central fund and what work is paid for by people's coops, but that's a bigger and more complicated debate so for now would fully support this.
Lucy King Wed 10 Feb 2021 4:31PM
I am all for this in principle and thank you for bringing the proposal, Luke :)
A couple of questions/thoughts:
- is this including or excluding VAT? (if relevant for you @Autonomic Co-operative )
- is monthly the best frequency? I might have my numbers wrong, but it looks like our annual income atm is £3755, and our annual fixed expenses (for subscriptions, hosting etc) are ~£2120. So our actual distributable income is around £1635, and the newsletter (at its max cost, this would be more if there is VAT on top) would be £900/year if we did it monthly, so 55% of our available funds. If this is all wrong, somebody please do correct me!
Having said that, we're clearly not spending it on anything else right now, and I assume we could easily change this expense going forwards. Or @Autonomic Co-operative would you like to stipulate a minimum commitment period? I might err on the side of thinking that a newsletter every 2 months would be just as good, and half the cost - but it's not a critical concern.
Autonomic Co-operative Sun 14 Feb 2021 11:59AM
Thanks for engaging on this @Lucy King! Good points. So, I estimated a high 3-5 hour because I didn't want to be doing unpaid work but it could indeed be much less for certain months. I think going for every 2 months could be a good start. I can bill on the hourly and then after some months we can see how much it is really taking to do it and see if we want to do more or less. I would be happy to amend the proposal. Not sure what is best to do in this interface?
Animorph Co-op · Mon 8 Feb 2021 10:06AM
Hi @Autonomic Co-operative Luke
Thanks for setting the thread, great idea!
Would you mind creating a proposal with a deadline of a week so everyone can get a sense of urgency when it comes to responding? It would also be very helpful to put an exact number on what you are requesting!