Tech Coop Network Charter

charter.md

Tech Co-op Network Charter - Draft

• Purpose
  • To build and maintain an association of all interested technology-related worker cooperatives in North America
  • To maintain a website for this association, listing all members
  • To promote and coordinate other activities as it sees fit
• Members
  • Members must
    • Have information technology as their principal area of business
    • Be co-operatives (either worker co-ops according to the USFWC definition, or other co-operative entities demonstrably adhering to the co-op principles)
    • Be based in North America
  • Interested co-ops should email the convener to join.
  • All members will be listed on the website.
  • Any member may be removed from the group by a consensus decision of the group minus the member in question.
• Roles
  • Roles should be listed prominently on the website “about” page.
  • Convener
    • Convenes meetings
    • Facilitates meetings
    • Reviews requests for membership and notifies site maintainer
    • Maintains agenda stack
  • Site Maintainer
    • Solicits semi-annual updates
    • Maintains member accounts
    • Helps members make changes to their info
    • Manages the group's email list
    • Upgrades Drupal, etc., as needed
    • Maintains site issue list
  • Secretary
    • Coordinates handling mailing list subscription requests and moderation
    • Handles emails directed to the Network's contact address
    • Ensures minutes are taken (either by self or by other volunteer)
    • Distributes minutes
  • Roles should be rotated (pending interest) approximately annually at a member meeting
• Member Responsibilities
  • Respond to semi-annual update requests from the Site Maintainer
  • Put forward individuals to fill roles from time to time as needed
  • Send a representative to attend, or contribute written remarks in advance of, at least one meeting per year
  • Any member not meeting the above responsibilies should be politely warned, and is subject to removal from the group should non-participation continue.
• Decision making
  • Meetings should be chiefly conducted via tele- or videoconference
  • Decisions will be made by the standard consensus model (all voting members present must either consent or stand aside for a proposal to be approved).
  • A draft meeting agenda should accompany each meeting announcement.
  • Representatives from at least 3 member co-ops must be present at a meeting for decisions to be made.
  • Meeting minutes should be distributed via the tech-coop email list and placed in the group’s document store within one week after the meeting.
  • Decisions may be made by consensus outside a meeting via Loomio or other such tools if representatives from at least 1/3 of the current membership participate.
  • At least one week's notice should be given via the group's mailing list for meetings or other decision-making processes.
• Email List
  • All members of member co-ops are entitled to join the group's email list.
  • Interested individuals that are not members of co-ops may also join the list, but may be removed from the list at the discretion of the membership.

A few notes:

1. Am I misreading, or is there an assumption here of in-person meetings? If so, I fear this is already getting too far from the as-lightweight-as-possible goal - my initial reaction is "Oh god no, no meetings!" - and will mean most members (too far away from wherever it's located) never attending, or being permanently stuck on the other side of a telecom link, sort of logistically inferior to the physically present members. If I'm mistaken and some form of teleconference for everyone is assumed, that's one concern removed but "at least quarterly" still seems to much to me... my inclination would be more like annual. Of course any teleconferencing makes consensus process difficult to conduct, so our idea previously was to rely entirely on Loomio for virtual decision-making, and possibly avoid the need for any specific scheduled meetings (or at least make them extremely rare). Perhaps that was overly optimistic, but I still have hope.
2. Another role/duty we identified as necessary: Contact person, monitoring and responding to inquiries sent to group's contact address advertised on site (currently turned off), sometimes forwarding as appropriate to the group or to specific members or translating to new agenda items, etc.
3. Is the reference to the existing tech-coop list as the distribution channel for minutes intentional, in the interest of total transparency and sharing? Because that list is open to all, not just members of this network. If intentional, great, but we'd want to be careful about that decision; if not, I would just amend the wording to be more general, like "distributed via the group's listserve".

1. No, no in person meetings stipulated. I can clarify that in the text.
2. Interesting. Perhaps we could combine with this mailing list admin (which I think would be pretty light), and call it "Secretary" or "Agent".
3. I hadn't really considered that, but I would tend toward still distributing via tech-coop since it's good to keep the community informed and I don't expect will be discussing anything super sensitive. Another possibility would be to have a tech-coop-members list or something, but that seems a bit weird to me. How many people from non-coops are on the list anyway? Now I am curious...

I updated the text to add a secretary role and specify remote meetings.

There are A LOT of worker cooperatives in the network. Having 3 coops represented to make a decision does not seem like enough representation to be thorough.

In terms of the roles, a yearly role seems that it will be an opportunity for many to take ownership/leadership rather than 2 term roles or longer.

I see a need for coordinating "haves" and "wants" -- be they co-op members, service providers, computers or free lancers, etc. I personally am new to tech coops, but would like to be part of one that can develop a couple of my current projects ... or start a new one. But I need a bit of coaching on how to do this. Could initiation coaching be a service to provide?

"Any member may be removed..." should add "..and also if they themselves feel like being removed." :) We wouldn't want to coerce anyone into participating heh.