Who are we? Say hello and introduce yourself

Hi all,

I just realised that i've been having conversations here for a while, but i forgot to introduce myself. 😆

My name is Billy Smith. I'm a London-based engineer from Scotland.

I work on Open-Source HardWare designs, mostly for the primary industry sectors. :D

I'm currently helping out with a long-tail medical prototyping project that's a nice crossover between hardware design and game dev. :D

I lived in Housing Co-op's for 10+ years, and i'm looking for people to start a worker's co-op.

Looking at the world from an ecology-of-energy perspective, and I've found a number of profitable ecological-niche's where an SME run as a worker's co-op should be more effective. :D

I already have access to a workshop space in West London, so the tooling is available, but some more people to bounce idea's off and jam with would be great. :D

Shout me via here, or gossip via Mastodon: https://social.coop/@BillySmith/

@Nicholas Frealand Thanks Nick! The new forum for workers.coop is at https://forum.workers.coop/

@Nathan Brown (Co-op Culture) @irenap

Also, Blake House film co-op.

https://www.blake.house/about-blake-house

They run Clapham International Film Festival, so would be worth talking with. :D

@Irena P Might be worth making sure they know about Not Nowhere another film maker/artist run co-op in London. Potential for collaboration and mutual support etc https://not-nowhere.org/

Introducing Thamesmead Texas https://thamesmeadtexas.com/ who I'm sure will sign up to the Worker Co-op forum very soon. Vanessa and Liam set up this worker co-op (a nod to Paris Texas movie) to unite the community of artists who moved to Thamesmead in 2018. Anchored by an art bar 😁 Thamesmead Texas have hosted 13 exhibitions at 3 sites in Thamesmead in their first 12 months. As well as being film makers and artists, the development of a 'travelling cinema' has heightened their interests in self-build housing too. See more on that here. Welcome Vanessa and Liam when they show up!

And anyone who hasn't already met Irena (which is highly recommended to do), can do so at Ways Forward this Friday, there are still bursaries available for solidarity fund members. Apply for a bursary by emailing [email protected] or just book at https://waysforward.coop/register/

I'm Irena working as member co-ordinator at Co-operatives UK. Had to learn about co-ops the 'long' way after many years (I'm quite old) of freelance, corporate or charity work. I finally feel I've come home (to work) and am thanking God (really am) for co-ops everywhere and the hearts behind them. Now just working out how to invite the rest of the world to my house warming party. Here's one! You're all invited to the fab Stretford Hall, M32 0LG, for the next Gtr Manchester Co-ops Connections meet up on Thur 11 April. 5:30pm. Bring crisps if you like! https://www.uk.coop/Coop_Connections_Mcr :hugging:

@Alex Worrad-Andrews 

Just an FYI.

The Radical Engineers website went offline between May and July 2024. It's now a template website used for affiliate link-spam.

Hi Simon.

The business model is clearly a diffcult one. At the moment our current thinking is subscription, following a pretty standard SAAS model and we have decent evidence there is an appetite for this, both from our own research and parallel products.

I'm a developer by trade so finding this isn't too hard. Connecting people on the basis of skills is something we have considered and is a potential onboarding pathway to to platform aspect, but needs more work. We found that people radically underrate their skills or alternatively do not see their professional skills as actionable within an activist context.

But in terms of Radical Engineers exist to connect volunteer engineers with political projects in the UK. Internationally there is ProgCode.