2019-08-08 Hypha Worker Co-op: Hellooooo Camba Co-op

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Time: Thurs, Aug 8 @ noon ET
Location: https://meet.jit.si/hyphacoop
Attending:

• dc - Hypha
• patcon - Hypha Co-op, Toronto, Canada
• neto - Camba Co-op, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Contents [TOC]

Notes

• Neta from Camba.coop
• dc. hypha.coop. toronto. researcher. phd. conf organizing. https://ournetworks.ca
• patcon. hypha.coop. community organizing. civic tech toronto. civictech.ca
• neto: hyph members? 9 ppl
  • patcon: yes, but various capacities. some full-time elsewhere. some have own agencies. some want to be 80% capacity now, while others wanna ramp up to 25% capacity in a year.
• hypha co-op
  • in process of getting legal entity up
• argentina. (AR) country has special entity for “worker co-ops”, diff from regular co-op.
• 26 ppl in camba.
• #ask how onboarding?
• office! office tour!! really nice office. (company started with meeting in neto’s living room.) office tour: dining room. meeting room. big and cheap location. some working remotely, but not often. university near office, and co-run hacklab with the university.
• onboarding: co-ops in AR have promise to add new members [sic?]. developers well-paid in argentina. many of them. people added through friends. lots of university activity for recruitment. one camba member is a professor. economy in AR means co-ops are better option. more solidarity and stability.
• Camba model for starting might be hard to export to other countries.
• TWO important bits
  • 1. working together in same place was first thing. was important. can’t build relationships between members. lunch. trust relationships are basis. being in same place.
  • 2. projects to do!
  • [name=patcon] civic tech toronto lives/dies on same criteria fwiw
• neto’s home was first office. in beginning, felt it was not good idea to work from afar. needed to be together. but now can take one day a week to home office. depends on personal style and circumstances.
• hypha: hard for us to meet in person. faraway. other FT work. roots happening elsewhere.
  • suggestion for Toronto folks: weekly meeting in person.
• camba is stable now. that was hard, but done.
• difficult when ppl have other shops/gigs and divided attention. need a couple ppl really dedicated fulltime.
• started as many working freelancers. first thing was pooling clients/projects from personal gigs. that helped.
• beginning: all members do everything. really bad.
• at 10 members. 1 member did admin. 2 members in business. neto: programmer => business.
  • patcon: was this a desire, or a need?
    • was a need of the collective. started working better when used roles. started to add new members. now have several teams.
• they have a CTO. the university prof. relatively permanent position, not a hat that’s worn/passed. very connected, well-known, lots of experience. (might be eventually be a passed role, when others climb to his expertise)
• dc: how do project teams work? what degree are they working together.
  • camba not all working together. 7 projects.
  • beginning: used to do one-person projects. not good. because don’t have experience working together.
  • decided a few years ago to only have two developers on team. 4 devs on team now. some variations on that.
  • at beginning, took every job that came their way. but now starting to decide and be selective. tell clients that they work in team of two developers. no less than 3 months time. only came to that when started to have choice.
  • no good or bad way. important thing is that the project survives. if you can survive 10 years, that’s what you want. need to focus on survival.
  • we need to work every day. has to be productive.
  • getting in touch with other tech coops.
    • AR: FACTTIC. legal entity. federation. just one or 2 other co-ops. learned a ton.
  • other tech co-ops local: brierwood, moss.digital. tech activist co-ops shut down.
  • good idea to talk to other tech co-ops early. they can help with navigating admin challenges, like banking and bookkeeping and how to work together.
• neto: visited cotech in UK
  • learned that same sort of networks exist, but other side of world
  • do diff kinds of projects. get different sorts of projects. We have an important difference between our hourly rate and UK, USA and Europe.
  • AR had tons of low-cost high-skill developers. Developers become project managers. UK seems to have more project managers, but developers were scarce due to companies taking them.
  • seems can’t easily share dev projects across boundaries with rate diffs. but maybe easier to split roles for intercooperative projects.
  • FACTTIC has FIT. space to share projects within network. want to be really transparent and clear with money.
    • presentation slides: https://patcon.github.io/FIT-talk-en
  • FACTTIC doesn’t act like an agency. distrib jobs by who needs it most. like working with friends of friends, but companies.
  • CoTech inspired by FIT. experimenting with similar models.
  • FIT members sync hourly rates by working together.
  • Despite low rates, FACTTIC doesn’t want to break market for friends in UK (or Canada). want to work between market. Lack of devs in CoTech, due to really good conditions in companies. UK: lots of project managers, but lacking devs.
  • FACTTIC building projects where they don’t have decision-making. feels opportunity to work across borders and be more collaborative.
  • perhaps can work on big projects from diff parts of world. we can choose what we do with profit from working across countries.
    • neta: dream scenario other countries doing local project management, working collab and democratically with high-skill Argentinian developers. Extra rates from that relationship being used to fund solidarity networks and co-op infra.
      • [name=patcon] did i capture this well, neto?
• how we can help one another? really good developers, but not great at managing. meetings over distance with clients is hard. language sometimes hard. (patcon had to speak slower)
  • sharing projects = highest level.
    • but lots of other small things to start collab on.
  • dc: already working on bringing in projects that are not local. hypha not specifically focussing on local anyhow, so working across distance will be a thing already
  • show&tells: getting to know one another: https://patio.ica.coop/t/tech-co-ops-lets-do-a-show-tell/245
  • starting to build trust between, like exist already in FACTTIC. for example, when travelling to UK, FACTTIC folks explicitly stayed in homes of CoTech members.
  • difference in price between regions can be used to fund networks and solidarity economy building.
  • AR is in neat place strategically, re: privacy, worker, labour, self-sufficienciecy. need to give advice to social economy.
    • patcon: Taiwan is similar strategically. spent time there, and know folks interested in tech co-ops, but simply not a vibrant scene there. Worth connecting.

Follow Up

Actionable Items

• hypha: invite members to Show & Tell’s
• patcon: invite g0v.tw co-operators into discussion spaces (CoTech, Patio, matrix, etc.)
• neto: schedule followup convo, re: civictech

Upcoming Discussions

• Camba members guest-speaking at CivicTechTO

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