GOAT SESSION NOTES
Session: Coop Breakout (Cafe) Session
Facilitation: Greg, Samuel
Notes: Samuel
Google doc
Executive Summary
The Coop breakout was a follow-up to the Coop Session. Building on the enthusiasm from the formal session this second convening happened in the CAFE. The group planned to work on a matrix to explore different models and structures of organizations to see what might fit well for specific projects and initiatives. Ie) if you are starting a new marketing platform would it fit better into a COOP, a DAO or some other structure. What are the pros and cons? The session began with a go around where people shared what they knew of coops or coop like structures. The group looked at types of coops (workers, solidarity, consumer, producer, housing, tech, etc) and reviewed the Coop principles.
- voluntary and open membership
- democratic membership member controled
- member economic participation
- Members contribute equitably and democratically control the capital of their coop
- autonomy and independence - controlled by members
- education training and information
- cooperation among coops
- concern for community
Building on the momentum of the afternoon coop session the discussion turned to shared needs within the group and how a coop might facilitate resource sharing. Such as sharing accounting, sharing employee hours, bookkeeping, etc.
This pop-corn style go around inspired a deeper question about the future of GOAT and the possibility of forming a coop to facilitate the work of GOAT. The question of what is GOAT was posed. Goat is more than just a conference. It is a community that is activated both in person and through the forum. There are GOAT adjacent events and happenings. And GOAT aspires to be more - possibly through regional sessions, meetups, and other shared projects. But there are challenges with this ad-hoc approach which relies on a great deal of volunteer energy and dedication. A lot of organizational knowledge is held by several generous and dedicated individuals which is precarious for the long term sustainability.
The session then moved into a more visionary and aspirational discussion for what a GOAT might be. The group listed some of the possible benefits and values a coop could offer. Again, there were ideas of shared labour or employees, marketing, grant writers, international events, spinoffs… Focus came back to a minimum project for a GOAT coop: planning a conference and events that compensates organizers for their time and has a legal structure, principles and vision for membership. Are we putting the GOAT before the cart? It was suggested that it makes more sense to come up with what we do and then decide on the legal structure rather than focus on the structure and then what we do. Two themes seemed to have emerged:
- What can this group do to collaborate and work together - what are the synergies?
- What is the mission of GOAT and how can it facilitate this?
From here it was suggested that the session close with everyone answering two questions:
- What do you need?
- what can you give?
Responses are as follows:
Person 1 (didn’t catch name)
- It is really hard to do something well if you are doing multiple things -
- we had a program that did grant writing
- focus is a huge thing- if it is a specific thing I can do it
- I would use a grant writer - some replicable models for that
Mike
- Developer worker coop
- bookkeeping
- contract management
- things that take me away from other things that I am better at
- Skills in development and our dues into those other skills
Markus
- Agreed on talent pool and ability -
- Would love some west coast energy - and networking stuff
- more intimate things -
- Give grant writing skills
- Mentorship - things I could to help
- boring things that can be enablers
Becca
- GOAT gatherings feel really good
- It would be awesome to use the network that exist already to drum up more interest
- Mentorship from different field and another space
- For profit space - offer ecosystem - using our skills from regen
Ankita
- Book keeping - would love help with this
- community - big part of being engaged in this and I want it throughout the year
- Give design support - a lot of what we do is design research -
- can help write grants whatever structure that exists can interact with institutions.
- Talent pool - we have students and looking for developers
Person 2 (didn’t catch name)
- How could I host a GOAT vent somewhere else
Elizabeth
- I really like the network and that is what think is important
- I can contribute to connecting projects
- regional gatherings are right on
Greg
- SHare marketing resource = individual doing this that could be shared
- would love for all of us to share and rep each others stuff
- Talk about each others stuff
- Share accounting and bookkeeping help
- All the the community stuff
- We can offer functional banking stuff because we have it
- UI UX that I can share I have them to offer
Michael
- I have a bunch of ideas I don’t know if they suck or are good
- you are all smart and good people
- you are some of the people that I want to be able to run these by
- I am wanting to participate because I am product point dweeb
- A forum for this to skewer each others ideas
- I would give funds
- governance support
- What I want back is the trust that we can lean on for accounting, marketing, ux, legal
- Conference
- Grant opportunities
Laurie
- I need a team - it is so horrible for me to be a solo person
- ONe of the things a coop can do is to gather people to build teams to do the work
- I can pitch in a little money
- I am connected to a global community that is international
- From a personal standpoint I like doing care and organization work
- I am a good editor
Jennifer
- COnnecting people seeing big things
- idea of doing a community of practice with sum app and kumo map
- playing and hanging out together
Jamie
- I would take the team aspect of things
- I would echo the bookkeeping and admin things
- Happy to put in dues
- but also put in my time and volunteering a way that is more accountable
- Is there a mechanism for being accountable
Kevin
- Young organizations tend to be very brittle
- We have team imbalance
- THere are a lot of things that I want there is a timing mismatch
- sometimes we need designers and dont have them or
- SHared resource - outreach people
- Bookkeepers
- Looking to make the project more appealing - creating the environment the culture
- Community of maintainer
- There are certain niches that make you more qualified for funding - the legal structure of litefarm
- Can we have a US partner that can strategically align
Rohan
- INdividual as a part of this community - there are two things
- there examples of these shared pool organizations - ie in belgium Smart - shares health freelancers union
- KNowledge exchange
- my capacity to contribute must be aligned
- institutional level - I think there are opportunities to work
- using Farm OS and can invest in it. We are planning to invest through the open source community
John
- I enjoy the networking and learning - expanding knowledge base right now
- Hoping to involve more farmers as a contribution to the project
- finding ways to build bridges with farmers - ie Farmer to FArmer conference in Maine
- People that want to have more info and would engage
- Networking - looking for opportunities to engage and contribute
Ned
- Giving and getting - both community
- Being an active community member and having access to it
- Regenerative practice building - finding ways to bridge those
- INterest in building ways to coordinating and communicating with GLObal SOuth
Juliet
- Regular opportunities to contribute
- Opportunities to do this regularly
- GOAT org to sit down and work together - would like to have a culture of doing that with regularly
- Would like to know what people are doing - what is their status , what are they trying to achieve where are they in that path - into integrating with other goat people in the community
- THe org provides that as a service -
- HUMAN resource Mapping
- I would organize another event
- Like to do editing
- GOod feedback
- Organize ideas
- talk about communicate between stakeholder groups
- Making connections
Samuel
- I feel like this org has legs
- want to see it commit to something in a shared vision mission
- org that committed to values and find ways to hold us accountable
- events like this
- even if they fall a little outside of what I do
- I want to see more representation of farmers and land workers and people that are doing agriculture here
- dance party
- Offer: synthesizing committing ideas and visualize and communicate things
- organize events
- intense passion for agroecology and tech sovereignty
- commit to defined terms that exist out there that holds us accountable and capacity to make a stance
