The Phone Co-op 2010

Ed Mayo talking to the Phone Co-op meeting

Yesterday I had the pleasure to be at the Phone Co-ops annual meeting, as those of you who follow me on identi.ca or elsewhere will already know. The proceedings included a speech from Cooperatives-UK Chief Exec Ed Mayo that included the co-op pub in Salford, spurning David Beckham’s gift and this summer’s Co-operatives Fortnight.

As ever, the bits I liked best were the lively question-and-answer sessions, both on Ed’s speech and the annual report. I took notes and reproduce them below, but I didn’t capture every question, or every answer and none of this is verbatim. Questions to Ed about UK cooperation included:

• Can people in the co-op pub smoke? – No, there’s a bit of drinking in meetings, but not smoking. Some heated debates in meetings are defused by a break to go refill the glasses.
• Gordon Brown and Labour are starting to talk about cooperatives more. What should we do? – We need to stand on our own two feet, but expect to be treated equally. A “Mutuals Manifesto” will be out online next month. In regulation, having the telecoms networks opened up to co-ops and not be so limited would help. One interesting possibility is with football co-ops / supporters trusts: it’s been suggested that a fan co-op should have the right to buy a club if supported by 75% of season ticket holders.
• With all the business collapses and Cadburys being bought, what is the temperature of interest in mutuals outside the movement? – Good. The only AAA-rated bank in the world is the Rabobank co-op, but remember that co-ops are not immune to failure. Cadburys is not a co-op and was always vulnerable to the current investor-led rules changing its ownership. People are not necessarily thinking of co-ops, so we need to reach out. It’s a cynical, apocalyptic age, so we need to prove what we’re doing. coops14 is an opportunity. The co-op bank saw a surge in new accounts after it was highlighted in one newspaper as an alternative to excessive banker bonuses. We need to encourage people to act. Reminded of a quote that “the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”. Research shows that Britain today is a brutal and competitive place to grow up in, with only 45% of children trusting their friends. People have heard of cooperatives. We should try to build a more cooperative nation.
• Comment from the floor that the private sector won’t take substantial cooperative competition lightly. We must look behind us and never give them a chance.
• Could the BBC become a co-op? – Yes.

Questions about the annual report asked about:

• What is our target profit %? – No hard target. This year’s reduction was planned and it is still a profit.
• Why are we using UKMail instead of the Royal Mail? – £10k price difference. It was a hard choice, debated by the board, but there is no co-op option and no particular preference for state ownership.
• Why are we considering energy supply? – Telecoms is a deflationary market, so diversification is a wise move and energy supply is a top customer request.
• What is our churn rate? – 1.5%/year, which is unsatisfactory to us, but still low by industry standards.
• Was the Avoco acquisition price too high? – a good price by usual industry measurement (multiple of sales)
• Will we support coops14 Free and Open Source Software events, because there is an overlap? – (I didn’t catch the answer)
• Can we put leaflets in the shops? – Matt Lane is working on this and other opportunities
• Can we encrypt bills and emails if customers want it? – exec will take and deliberate on that
• Can we get some sales materials to Scotland? – details taken to send them out next week

Syndicated 2010-02-07 07:06:49 from Software Cooperative News

Welcome to Koha-Community.org

At last night’s #koha community hand-over meeting, it was felt that the LL/PTFS transfer could easily delay community control of the previous koha website for 3 months, so HLT should register a fan site for community members to put the latest Koha news and information on the web.

So welcome to Koha-community.org which will mainly be about updates about new releases, support listings and the manuals until the previous website reflects the community again. Well done to all involved for getting it online so quickly!

Syndicated 2010-02-03 15:19:43 from Software Cooperative News

World Economic Forum 2010

It still doesn’t seem to be getting the coverage, but this is the sixth year that I’ve written about the World Economic Forum, which is basically where large corporations try to tell governments how to rule their populations, as described in this VIRUS article. This year, it is overshadowed in the UK by war-starting former Prime Minister Blair giving evidence to the Iraq enquiry.

If you have satellite television, you can watch it live on SFinfo at 13e (schedule). There’s more detailed listings on Klack. In previous years, English audio has been on one side of the stereo channels. It looks like almost none of the SFinfo coverage is live this year. Maybe they’ve noticed comments like mine from 2005:

“I am convinced that if more people watched it for themselves, there wouldn’t be any need to publicise against them. Without the soundbiting and polishing of TV news, these people are scary. They’re less slick than the European Social Forum, too.”

If you find live coverage on any other stations, please could you leave me a comment here?
In that vein, BBC News has Ten things you didn’t know about Davos (thanks Policomm). Amongst other things, this isn’t the 40th WEF and Bill Clinton was the first sitting US president to attend, so its influence is a fairly recent mistake.

Once again, there an official programme, as well as @davos which seems to be talking much more than listening… seems appropriate for WEF, no?

To close with a quote that’s also in the VIRUS article:
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’
-Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (Puffin Books, 1946)

Syndicated 2010-01-29 10:41:39 from Software Cooperative News

Critical Eye: Google, China, DNS and an Event

My Google Bugs page started off as a blog post back in 2006, but I’ve moved it to a more permanent home and started to bring it up to date.

Recent additions include the China Controversy updated, a recent search bug added andDNS service added.

In just over a month, BathLitFest will be holding a debate on Is Google Good For You? Sunday 28 Feb, 1pm – 2pm. The key questions are:

“In the data-sharing and database age, how much information are we prepared to give away about ourselves – and who, ultimately, controls that information? Is the price of convenient, high-speed communication an almost total loss of privacy? And is it right that one company knows more about us than our government, or even than we know ourselves?”

Tickets are on sale, priced £7.

That’s pretty much what I was pointing out back in 2006. I don’t hate Google or anything, but we should be realistic: it is a for-profit company, so probably won’t be doing anything truly for free. There’s always a payback and we should recognise it as part of making an informed choice about whether to trade with them. It’s nice to see these questions getting a more mainstream airing.

If you’ve got any updates for the Google Bugs page, please let me have them.

Syndicated 2010-01-25 07:30:07 from Software Cooperative News

In Berkeley or Boston? Want to work for a co-op?

Our four comrades over at Quilted co-op are looking for a new worker-owner, either a project manager, a developer (Drupal, Wordpress, Rails, Perl and/or PHP), or a designer based in Berkeley or Boston. The eventual plan is to all be in one location, probably SF bay.

The job ad mentions encouraging “LGBTQQ people”. Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and … I’ll show my ignorance, but what’s the QQ?

Syndicated 2010-01-21 07:07:55 from Software Cooperative News