The whole of the Thornbridge Outdoors site has been booked so there is loads of accommodation and there might be the possibility of starting a day earlier (via a seperate contract with the venue, see this thread) if people are interested in arriving on the Thursday afternoon and having the whole of Friday for CoTech sessions? If there is enough interest in this, I think it would be a good idea as there is usually so much to discuss and agree and we never seem to have time to get through everything.

@nickgreenhillcoopw thanks for the feedback, what about the idea of seeing if we can get the site for an extra day, we arrive Thursday night, have the whole of Friday just for CoTech stuff and then also have Saturday and Sunday morning for a parallel CoTech and workers co-op sessions, there are loads of meeting rooms on the site we can all use. One other thought, nobody has stepped forward to organise any other CoTech gathering for either later in 2019 or in 202 yet...

Hi Chris, I think that would definitely help. So we did put forward to host another Co-tech in 2019 as BCU were keen to host something on the Co-tech and offered us space to host. Unfortunately as it was June or July (while the students were away) I think the feeling of people I spoke to was it was too soon after the Sheffield meet-up, which is a shame.

Ah, I didn't realise that, shame the students don't have a autumn half term holiday, I guess after they break up in December it would be too close to Christmas for a CoTech gathering? Would you consider modifying your vote to abstain or support on the basis on an extra day and in the absence of other proposed events? There is some really nice accommodation there, no need to bring a tent if you don't want to :slight_smile:.

Changed to Abstain :-)

I have extended the duration of this poll to the Monday after the party at Space4 with the intention of talking to people at the event and encouraging more engagement with this proposal.

Following chats with people at the Space 4 party last night I have extended the duration of this poll to the end of the month to allow co-ops more time to discuss the idea.

There was a discussion about this on the call today and I'd just like to point out, as there seems to be a little confusion, that nobody has suggested that this should be the main annual CoTech gathering, the poll proposal is to "Run **a* CoTech gathering in parallel with the Workers Co-op Weekend"*. If we don't have agreement to do this then I'd strongly urge that we don't organise an event within a month of the Workers Co-op Weekend, as we did this year with the CoTech gathering in Sheffield (this was partly my fault I'm afraid) so people are able to attend both.

Sorry, missed the vote but in favour!

Yes, Agile Collective are in favour as well. We understand that this won't be the only CoTech gathering of 2020.

Sorry we also failed to vote (I was supposed to). We're in favour of a CoTech presence/strand at Worker Co-op weekend but are keen to still have one or more explicitly CoTech meetups.

We're likely to host at least one in Space4 which has, very excitingly, just secured a 10 year lease on a new building. Perhaps now there's twice as much it should be Space8.

Congratulations @harryrobbins on the new lease, that is great news :-)

On the last call we discussed having a Autumn CoTech gathering in Newcastle and hopefully that will happen.

In terms of what next, do we need to first decide, as CoTech, if we are interested in an additional day at Thornbridge at the beginning?

I think having an extra day would be good if we have enough people prepared to help organise and who are prepared to come, so perhaps another poll for this...

Aaron wrote:

I would suggest arrival on Thursday evening so that the Friday could be CoTech only might work?

Yes, that is what I intended to express in the poll! Sorry it wasn't clear.

This poll is closing tomorrow, it would be great is some other people would chime in!

I suggest that all the people who have indicated that they would be willing to help organise this have a quick conference call after the poll has closes to discuss what to do next (at the moment it looks like this might just be me and @aaronhirtenstein ).

Sorry voted none of the above whilst trying to figure out how dot vote works - please ignore

No worries, it probably wasn't the right type of poll in the first place, really fantastic to hear that you would be on for catering for an additional day, I was going to suggest us all going to a chippy in Bakewell, but this would be a load better! The food you did this year was really great :-)

Hi CoTech

I was away and missed the vote. I would collaborate in a Cotech-worker combo coop weekend.

I've not voted because I don't know if I'll participate in the event. If I did decide to participate it's pretty unlikely that I'd have the time to dedicate three or four days to it unless someone was paying me to be there. The decision to participate will be based on the proposed content of the event/s, the cost of participating, and what else I'll have on at that time. Would love to be more enthusiastic, but this is how it works in practice for me.

I'm up for joining your chat @aaronhirtenstein and @chriscroome to discuss how to plan for the event, or multiple events throughout the coming year.

Missed the poll but up for helping if I can.

I have heard from John Atherton at Coops UK that the date of the Worker Coop Weekend has changed to 15th - 17th May to avoid it being on the May Bank Holiday weekend.

At the CoTech gathering in Newcastle there was support for having CoTech sessions at the Workers Co-op Weekend in 2020 and Aaron has committed to discussing what we need to do next at the next Co-operatives UK Workers Council meeting in January 2020.

Photos of the flip charts from Newcastle in December 2019 follow.