Anyone want to be interviewed about Social.Coop's governance as a research object ?

Can you tell us a little bit more about the project? Is there a project webpage or IRB?

Hi Caitlin!

Thanks a lot for sharing this. As governance is an interesting area for me, yes I would like to. I'm sure we will both learn something. :)

Thanks again...

This meeting has been set for Friday, November 15th, 2-3 pm eastern US time (NYC time zone). Would you be interested in joining this meeting? ... It might be on MS Teams; she will send the link.

The researcher is named Mathilde Sanders, Utrecht University. Below is the information that she sent me.

PublicSpaces, a coalition of Dutch public organizations (more specifically libraries and a cloud provider for universities), want to use PeerTube (alternative to YouTube) as a channel for its members. PublicSpaces is investigating what kind of organization should be rigged behind this PeerTube instance. 

I am mapping a number of cases of existing public organizations for PublicSpaces to compare the pros and cons of different forms of ownership and organizational models (association, steward ownership, foundation, cooperative of organizations and cooperative of individuals).

Social.Coop is our case study of a cooperative with individuals as members. Some of the questions I have:

-Why was this cooperative form chosen?

-How does safeguarding public values play a role in this choice?

-Have other choices been made to safeguard public values in the organization (e.g. bylaws or special advisory boards etc.)?

-What problems do you encounter with the governance of this cooperative?

-How do you overcome them?

-What are the advantages of the cooperative?

-How do you arrange the control of your members?

-Would a cooperative like Social.coop be appropriate for a PeerTube instance?

-Why yes/no?

Here is the information that I gave her by email:

Social.coop has information about our governance structure at this wiki: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Main_Page 

We use Open Collective app for our finances, as you found us. 

We use the Loomio app for governance decision-making: https://www.loomio.com 

We also use Matrix.  We use Meet.Coop (over Big Blue Button) for video meetings online. 

Sociocracy for All has influenced many people within the coop, as has "platform cooperativism," and worker-owned cooperatives. 

@Eduardo Mercovich @Kathe TB Perhaps tag others who might want to attend... or to schedule a new meeting...

UPDATE: @Matt Noyes, Mathilde, and I spoke for over an hour. It was fruitful. Matt was able to recommend to recommend a new contact for Mathilde's work, who is a member of Social.Coop and Public Spaces (related to her work).

To answer earlier questions, Mathilde's research is an informal case study of cooperatives. She took notes. She recorded us, but did not intend to use any direct quotes. Her work is not directly funded; there is no webpage or IRB approval related specifically to her study.

For any relevant updates coming out of her work, I invited her to post on Social.Coop and to tag me and Matt.