Hey, I've been reading/ lurking for a while, but always on my phone where Loomio doesn't work too well... so I just wanted to chime in and say I broadly totally LOVE this idea!

I'm not too sure about all the details/ the fund aspect of it all, but generally am in big support of ANY plan/ project to systematically share good stories about co-ops! (ideally we'd be creating great short video case studies of all these stories and then collaborative/ co-operatively sharing those everywhere on social media to promote long articles on the same story).

Anyways, probably not that clear from this doc, but I've a "systematically share good stories" project and some brainstorm notes for that can be found here:

https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/KrNZfLEChFwehdJiusv50VnCbl10mCzJvHSsuua-KSa

This is a proposed schedule by which I'm working on, I will keep the Loomio group updated:
- September 1st week start the Twitter chat group and invite first 5 people. Have a Loomio poll on this group tomorrow about how many want to volunteer to join the chat group.
- September 2nd week set up the Loomio group.
- September 3rd week set up the Open Collective.
- September 4th week make the payment for GEO collective in exchange of them tweeting every coop article linked in the chat next month.

• October 1st week, post to the online groups listed in our resources page. Add more groups in the resources before that.

• October 2nd week, message every 56 writers in the list. Find more writers before that.

• November 1st week, have the first Loomio poll on which writers to give how much of 25 pounds donated by me.

• November 2nd week, make an evaluation based on how many people have joined the chat group. Use the following metrics:

• How many people have joined the chat group?

• How useful has it been to writers in terms of getting retweets?

• How much has been contributed to the Open Collective?

• How many people voted in the Loomio polls?

• How many writers set up their own Open Collective to receive funding?

• How many people who would have otherwise probably not have been aware of Platform6 are now aware of what we are doing and have joined?

I hope we could find 30 people in the Twitter chat group and there would be voluntary donations to the of total of 10 pounds a month and 1 person joining Platform6 as a result by November.

We would already make £5 every month from the new member and get £10 to the fund, by spending £25. If we reach this, we could consider making another similar monthly donation of £25, with new goals, and reduce funding if the returns (including in terms of positive externalities to cooperative movement as a whole) are not met.

I imagined that the Twitter chat group would include only articles about cooperatives, perhaps defined by at least by mentioning the word "cooperative/co-op/coop" somewhere in the article. A Twitter chat group that would enable wider discussion between the writers could also be set up, and people could choose to belong to both. A 50+ person twitter chat group would probably give too many notifications for many peoples preference if free discussion would be enabled about all the articles.

Regarding "bridge to detached communities"
- Cross-translation into many languages, bridges people who don't speak the articles original language. The English speaking cooperative movement has very little access to lot of the material made by the Indian or Japanese cooperative movement for example.

The Loomio group to use the Open Collective funds members could choose to support writers on many criteria: if they are young, from an underrepresent group, if it's your first article about coops, etc.

Thanks @graham2! Your summary feels like wonderful framing. Love love love riffing on ideas, but a bit more inclined to rough out the clear theory of change first.

Something else to consider -- people who bridge to detached communities are perhaps more valuable to growth in mindshare, so:
- if Canada doesn't have many people of colour in our co-op communities, people who write and participate in communities that share that experience, they are more valuable (presuming we wish co-op movement to bend resources to reach them)
- if someone's primary news beat is something quite detached from co-operatives, their writing about them is maybe more valuable (esp their exploring angles of appeal that people deep in the co-op movement perhaps don't/can't see)
- if someone does english-spanish translation, that brings the best content to new ears, our own or non-english ones (Matt Noyes [?] is seemingly supporting co-author Luis Razeto Migliaro in doing this :tada:)

basically, people brokering messages between separated spaces (or who are structurally more likely to bridge, due to their social capital in various spaces), this feels more important to the spread of the conversation and inclusion of new voices. Some thoughtful way to recognize and value (and so incentivize), that feels maybe interesting to explore with how we apply incentives?

Lastly, inspired by my interest in social physics lately, I've been doing introductions (and trying to know others) through exploring "centrality" and "betweenness". For example, I might make effort to reveal in an early introduction that I'm in the middle of these groups: white, cis, able-bodied, Canadian, neurotypical, extrovert, two-parent household, sighted. And my betweenness aspects could be: Canada-Taiwan regional cultures through travel. tech-gov relations. male-female perspectives (in that I've never felt comfortable in overly masculine culture), biology- and tech-oriented thinking. academia and real-world application. high privilege but periods of personal poverty and homelessness. etc. etc. Someone who knows these things about me knows a whole lot about how I can maybe serve them :)

Perhaps we could do similar thinking on what communities are straddled by certain publishers or writers or topics, and incentivize content creation that crosses boundaries we aspire to move across, rather than general content creation <3

I'm pretty much rephrasing what I say so hope this is clearing uncertainty and not just being repetitive. If I understand correctly what you're saying you have correctly understood what the idea.

We need to offer a tangible economic benefit for participating. The Twitter chat group is this. We pay 20$ to GEO for the first month if they promise to retweet every article shared in the Twitter chat group. So the guaranteed tangible benefit would for joining the Twitter chat would be that their articles about coops would be retweeted by at least GEO. After first month we would see again if we want to continue the 20$/month donation.

Everyone can join the Twitter chat group if they want to share their own articles or retweet others. The 20$ would be donated to an Open Collective account where money would be voted on democratically by anyone contributing at least ?$/month.

We would then see where it would develop but it could start out as very simple and relatively low cost.
- Twitter chat group
- Open Collective account
- Loomio group

Getting my head round the core ideas and goals here, please correct me if I'm missing stuff or plain wrong: the broad goal is to grow the narratives about new/next economy, co-operation and co-operatives, etc, because we know that good strong positive stories are really helpful in shifting consciousness and enabling change. So to encourage this we want to identify and support existing storytellers, and encourage new ones. We do this by enabling them to connect with each other for mutual benefit, and we enable ourselves and others to be aware of the storytellers by publishing a handy list, and presumably by also collating links to their stories so that they are easier to find. And we establish a kitty so that storytellers can be rewarded. Is that right? Anything else I've missed?

What does the skull emoji/icon mean?

heh, sorry, that was me. meant "dead / historical". added to emoji legend. the only person by that specific name who was writing about co-ops seemed to be a historical figure who was long dead :) should have asked @leosammallahti to confirm.

I did a pass at finding them on Twitter, and they're in this list:
https://twitter.com/patconnolly/lists/coops-writers

• :bulb: a google spreadsheet might be more sustainable (connecting list names to twitter accounts in that twitter list is a little tedious and hard to sync)
• :bulb: could manage a list via GSheet => Twitter Zapier integration
  • :bulb: we could add other contact info
  • :heart: I feel ok with using proprietary services so long as there's minimal "vendor lock-in"

@leosammallahti Thanks a lot for sharing your HackMD list.

I've been collating a list of my own and I'll share it in the future once it's ready.

What does the skull emoji/icon mean?

Do you have relevant links (websites, links, emails, etc.) for those in the three lists? If not, I'd be happy to research them and add links to that list, if that's ok with you.