Ed Russell

What a year

2011-01-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of a new year it's always time to reflect on the one that has just passed and 2010 has been a bit of a crazy year for me. It's meant that I haven't posted on here anywhere near the amount that I'd have liked but as with everything there is a list of priorities and you have to figure out where your limited amount of time should be spent.

I'm hoping (it's one of my New Years' Resolutions) that 2011 will see me get back to all of the things that I want to do, and being able to post about all of the things that have happened in 2010 as I think there are a lot of valuable lessons that I've learnt that I'd like to share.

As a quick summary of the main events of 2010:

The long term sickness and death of one of our directors and a key man in Co-operative Web (RIP Emmanuel - we all still miss you)
My election onto Co-operatives West Midlands
My taking of a director post at Co-operative Futures
Taking a three week sabbatical from work and actually trying to take the time without working...
Having two other key knowledge holders within the business leave for unfortunate circumstances
Trying and failing to recruit somebody who can sell technology but not like other technology businesses
Giving my first ever University lecture
Buying another company and merging the staff from PSL into Co-operative Web
Surviving the recession. It's been interesting times!

Anyway as you can see it's been a busy year, and there is a lot which I personally was totally unprepared for. I guess for some things you don't really prepare when you start a co-operative, or for that matter any business but it's definitely opened my eyes to the risks out there and the ways you need to be thinking about the business for the business to actually survive.

So - onwards with 2011. Hopefully it'll be a great year.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Free the (mapping) data…

2009-11-26T08:57:00.001-08:00

On the 17th November 2009 great strides were made towards the delivery of map based solutions to the general public.

In the UK we are in a bit of a weird situation that to access geo-spatial datasets for use on the internet (for example in our webSNAPS product) for things like postcode or ward boundaries has attracted a charge from the data owner.

You may think that this sounds fine and dandy. Why wouldn’t you pay for this kind of data? Or rather you would think that right up to the point where you realise where some of this data has come from.

An example of this are ward boundaries which are collected by local councils, who are funded by us, the taxpayer. We’ve found this particularly odd when dealing with the local councils who then have to fork out money to display this information back onto their website, money which comes again from the taxpayer. So they are in effect paying twice to be able to give the data back to the people who paid for it in the first place!

But this is now set to change: Ordnance Survey Announcement

Hopefully this may also pave the way for Royal Mail to consider releasing postcodes for free, at least to public service or not-for-profit type ventures, and stop threatening people who are providing this kind of service like the people over at http://ernestmarples.com. There is a petition currently doing the rounds for this at: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/ – sign it if you can…

Here’s hoping!

Co-operative Principle 6

2009-07-10T06:54:00.001-07:00

Co-operatives have principles that say how they should work and one of those is Principle 6 or in English the principle is “Co-operation among Co-operatives” (to see a list of all of the principles see here). I’ve always been pretty bad with this one for a few reasons but at the recent UK Co-operative Conference 2009 I vowed to change my ways.

So when I need to source something from outside my business I’m going to look to other businesses that share my values and principles first. Sounds simple doesn’t it? A good idea for both the co-operative movement as a whole and for keeping within our ethics with all that we do… So why don’t we do it more?

I guess the reason I’ve been put off it in the past is because of two things:

Firstly there was a bad experience of “co-operative working”: in a previous co-operative I’ve been viewed as a competitor when trying to sell services to another co-operative; the “we couldn’t possibly buy off you” type response which in turn didn’t make me want to explore working with other co-operatives and you get into a whole vicious circle.
Secondly was more of an internal hurdle to get over. I like working with people geographically quite close to me. This is a bit silly really considering the business that I’m in, but for some reason I liked the idea that if something was going wrong with a piece of work I could turn up at the suppliers’ premises and somehow that would make things better. (I realise that actually this would probably make things worse.)

To be honest I should have got over the second reason pretty quickly. I’ve been banging on a lot about how people should use the best people to deliver a piece of work rather than picking people on some arbitrary thing like physical location, especially when there shouldn’t be such a need to meet in person with all of the communication technology that is now available. I even started thinking about setting up an organisation to put something together to help move this along (I have the domain, and the idea, just not the time….yet). But, in this case, it was more of a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of thing.

After talking to a lot of co-operatives at the conference it became clear that I’m not unique in this view.

As a movement we should be supporting each other wherever we can. Here is a map of most of the worker co-operatives in the UK that are members of Co-operatives UK which shows there are a lot of businesses out there to help with anything you might need so it’s not a lack of options (the map was put together for John Atherton to put on his blog here using our webSNAPS tool).

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So, I’ve made a start. We’ve done some work recently which we’ve used Wave to do the design. It’s worked out really quite well, which is encouraging. I’m going to keep trying wherever possible to continue to use co-operatives, hopefully others will too and that can only lead to a stronger overall movement.

The next step is to make it easier for this collaboration to happen & for me that’s where someone like Co-ops UK should be directing some of their effort - something that I hope to be able to use my new Worker Co-operative Council position to effect. If not, I still have that idea under my hat. It’s just finding the time to do it!

I’m in. I’m officially a member of the Employee Co-operative Council!

2009-06-10T07:39:00.001-07:00

Just writing a quick post to say that I’ve been elected to the Employee Co-operative Council. I’d not expected to get in on my first time of trying but thanks to all of those lovely people for voting me in, hopefully I can live up to the reasons that you have selected me for the post.

Hopefully I can bring my ideas about technology whilst learning more and contributing to the general co-operative debate.

Anyway, that was all I wanted to say for this post. I’ve been a bit quiet of late as work has just been very hectic but I hope to get into a rhythm of blogging more regularly soon.

One last thing – if you want to see what our company is up to: head over to twitter and follow @cooperativeweb where we will be twittering all the things we are up to. And if you fancy reading more blogs from Co-operative Web then head over to http://web.coop/geek where there are a few up now including a new one from one of our junior developers, Nick, who is attempting to write a computer game using Microsoft’s XNA development tools.

Employee Co-operatives Council

2009-05-11T09:49:00.001-07:00

So, even though I’m relatively new to a lot of the Co-operative movement having only been running Co-op Web for the last 3 years with a small stint in Midcounties / OSG for a couple of years before that, I’ve decided to put myself forward for election to the Employee Co-operative Council (ECC). ECC is a group that meets to discuss issues & policy affecting worker co-operatives / employee owned businesses as part of Co-operatives UK which is the apex organisation for Co-operatives in the UK.

I very interested in bringing some new ideas to the council and at the same time I realise that I still have things to learn about the wider Co-operative movement. One of the things that seems simple and obvious to me is that there is a wealth of technology out there that could be used to better connect Co-operatives with their members. Twitter is a great example for getting ideas on opinion, and creating dialogue between people in a fairly instant way. Blogs, wiki’s, facebook, linkedin… The list goes on & from what I’ve seen there is less take-up of these kinds of things within the Co-operative movement than I think there should be.

It’s not just connecting with members either. When we started Co-operative Web it was with the ideals of there being a better & fairer way to run an IT business. Part of doing that was so that I could shout about Co-operatives and the principles to hopefully educate more people about what a co-operative actually is (see my post on how a lot people view us as a Co-operative as an example) and why it is better. Again, technology is a great way of doing this and reaching out to a wide audience. I realise technology isn’t always the answer, but something that can be operated in tandem with other initiatives to get more of the message out there.

I’m not sure I expect to get in on my first attempt as there are a number of names on there which I (and a lot of the general Co-operative movement) will recognise & vote for. Rightly so as some of them have done some really good work for the movement in general as well as their own co-operative endeavours. But it’s a step for me personally in the right direction as I try and get more involved with a movement that I feel passionately about.

If you are a Co-operatives UK member, and would like to vote for me then I thank you for your support. If you have any questions that would help you make up your mind then feel free to email me (ed.russell at web.coop) or find me on twitter (@edrussell).

Twitter jobs

2009-04-29T09:32:00.001-07:00

Twitter. There seems to be loads of talk about how to use it in business and all that jazz, but it wasn’t until recently that I found it a truly useful tool outside of chatting rubbish at/with people, and gathering some useful web links about green issues or something similar.

It all started with us needing a new developer to help out with our webSNAPS product. Usually this would involve us going to an agency or posting an advert on job site. Most agencies are money grabbing evil companies, we’ve spent ages using a number of them before we found our current favourite called “Big Red” who are generally nice people and actually do some work for the money. They still cost money though, as do most job sites, which in the current climate spending money is something that everyone is worried about.

So I tried a different approach. I created an advert on our site, and then twittered the link to people who follow me on the site. This was then sent on (retweeted) by a number of these people so spread to a wider range of people. We didn’t get a huge response which is understandable as it is still a smallish pool of people and we were needing a very specific skill set. But the people who did come back were all within circles of friends who we trusted so the quality was much higher than I’ve been used to when recruiting. We met with a few of these and hired Dan Squire – someone who we had previously worked in the pandaNET days.

All in all a fairly painless process which cost nowt and got us a developer we know we can trust. My first “real” commercial use of Twitter.

Hi, my name is...

2009-03-18T10:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve just subscribed to a new service that one of my friends alerted me to via the world of twitter (thanks stef) called Unhub. It’s a service that allows you to bring together your entire web presence and put it all on one page. And nowadays that web presence is getting larger. Most people I know who have anything to do with computers have twitter, facebook, linkedin, a blog or ten and maybe a handful of websites. Add in profiles on digg, delicious, youtube, flickr, myspace and all the other social sites that spring up on a daily basis and you end up with a lot of “personal” content that it’s right should be collected in one place so people can find you when they are interested.

One thing a lot of these sites do is allow you to define who you are and to create a profile page. As part of this you will create your own name for your online identity. So for example when you want to see my own twitter page you can go to http://www.twitter.com/edrussell.

Great! So I’ll use edrussell for everything. As part of my day job I deal with several advertising agencies so the idea of branding is pretty stuck in my head, and so the idea of having one “brand” or rather “brand name” for me sound like a good idea. The problem is that there is more than one Ed Russell. Much as there will be more than one any name you care to think of, which is why Dave Gorman was able to make an entire series out of finding other people called Dave Gorman.

So for example I wanted to use http://edrussell.com for this blog, but unfortunately that domain is already taken by another Ed Russell who does glass blowing the other side of the pond. Or when I discovered that LinkedIn were allowing custom addresses I was unable to get http://linkedin.com/in/edrussell as this is an engineer in San Francisco.

So, does this matter? Or is it all just rubbish that I’m talking? But while I’d like to say it doesn’t matter to me it does and when I can’t get edrussell on something then it narks me… Sites like unhub make this situation better as you can collect you presence into one place but it still would be better if there was a way to identify you as you on all sites. One way that people do this is to create a new name that hopefully will be unique across all domains. As an example one of the staff here (Dan Maharry) goes under the name hmobius which is obviously much less likely to clash with anyone else. Maybe this is the best way to solve this problem, but I’ve been historically rubbish at naming things (E:Vo-9, Naked Electric, Petras-t0i for my musical exploits for example) so I thought I’d stick with my name. I’m not sure if I regret this decision now but I’ve made it so for me I just need to make sure I’m first onto all new services so I can get what I want. If I was starting out now, I’d have to think about how to approach this and whether it was important to me… Then again maybe having unconnected different names to reflect the different functions that you perform on all of the different platforms may actually be beneficial.

Something to consider anyway, for a bit of a Wednesday afternoon ramble!

For reference I can be found at these places:

http://unhub.com/edrussell
http://twitter.com/edussell
http://www.edrussell.coop (or you will when I get it working)
http://linkedin.com/in/edrussellcoop

Profit: for who’s sake?

2009-02-18T08:40:00.001-08:00

You can’t escape the news. It’s all doom and gloom as the stock-market and companies fail; and many people had invested money in shares as a sure way to make money. But this is making money from… err… money. Which doesn’t really sound right – does it? Surely money was really meant to be a way of valuing your real goods & services so that they could be traded for other goods & services, or it was in the beginning.

But say you have some money, and it’s reasonable to assume that you want to grow that money so you take some advice and you invest it in a particular company or group of companies on the stock market (advice probably circa a couple of years ago anyway, now I think people would be more careful about shares). Now really what is happening is that you are becoming a shareholder in the company and therefore are technically in control of a part of that company. What do you actually want from this relationship? I’d say in a lot of cases you probably weren’t really that bothered about the company itself, but just in it’s bottom line. More money for you is the company making more money. So you end up with this company’s controlling interest (i.e. it’s shareholders) are really only interested in the company making money. Does this sound screwy to you like it does to me?

It’s a perfectly reasonable business model for companies, it allows their founders to realise their investment much more easily, it allows an amount of capital to be generated for the business to grow and in some cases it adds weight to the business so other businesses are more willing to trade with them. But to get to a situation where people more interested in profit than anything else are controlling a business just doesn’t sound right to me.

I think it’s an advantage to the Co-operative system that there are rules to prevent this kind of behaviour. It means that in a Co-operative like ours then shares can only go to workers within the company, and for a consumer Co-operative, like Midcounties which runs a huge number of supermarkets & other stores in the UK, shares can only go to the people that buy their goods & services. This I think then guarantees that it’s not only profit that is being thought about… But also the best way to retain jobs, services, skills in the local area and other things that maybe aren’t quite as profitable but are very necessary such as development of ethics, other models business or new but risky products.

We still have to make money, and we still do, but there are other motives behind it and when the profit isn’t as high as maybe it could be then rather than a load of shareholders pulling money out of a company in it’s time of need there are a group of members to rally round and support the business the best they can. It almost sounds like a strategy for making it through a recession…

Picture courtesy of borman818

Broadband Communities

2009-01-30T05:09:00.001-08:00

Yesterday there was an announcement of a recommendation for all UK homes to have access to 2Mbps broadband by 2012. It’s part of Lord Carters “Digital Britain” report and it’s got me thinking about how this is going to be delivered and how to get community involvement.

Yes, I agree it’s a noble aim and that we need to make sure that the digital divide is reduced with currently about 60% of homes having broadband access, but what isn’t clear as yet is how they are going to fund the delivery of it and how they are going to encourage people to actually take up their right to have the access.

It got me thinking about a project that was launched in 2004 in Nuenen (near Eindhoven). Ons Net (our net) was a community broadband project which took a local community which a commercial company said it would be too expensive to give broadband and setup a scheme where local residents all paid a small amount which meant they could get connected. Because there was no profit motive for the venture (rather it was a co-operative designed to get the community on-line) they needed about 35% of people to sign up to 15 Euros a month to make the installation viable. In fact they got closer to 85% and made over £1 million profit in the first year. What is really interesting though is not that they managed to make it work and install next generation 100Mbps fibre into most homes in the town but that the town demographic was mostly retired elderly people. Instead of just focusing on speeds or anything technological they focused on community services such as supporting security, home care, the local TV channel and improving the community as a whole. Building communities like this and using the technology as a tool to help aspects of everyone’s daily life deliver surely has to be a focus in the new digital Britain in order to gain inclusion of the community as a whole rather than just the people who are used to the internet and can see it’s benefit.

If you want to read some more on Ons Net take a look here. There is a UK based Co-operative following the same type of approaches and they can be found here.

Community Matters

2009-01-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

It's 2009 and like plenty of people around the world I've descended into another year with a set of resolutions to try and be a better person in the coming year.

One of the things I've resolved to get more involved in my local community... By that I don't just mean Moseley (where I live) but actually the digital community which comes without the same geographic boundaries.

This is something I've been giving a bit of thought to as it's an interesting take on the 7 principles that govern co-operatives in which the last one states:

"Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members." (see more at Co-operatives Uk)

So - when you work in an Internet company does this mean that you follow the historical local geographic community definition or is it more applicable to do something on a wider digital scale?I think it is but it would be interesting to hear anyone else's thoughts on the matter - it's not something I've seen raised in Co-operative circles. I guess it's like many things within Co-operatives in that it's a framework for good decent behaviour but there is a little room for your own (or your members) interpretation.

Anyway, I've started doing a few bits and pieces to start off the year in the right fashion - hopefully there will be lots more to follow!

Wi-Fi in Birmingham is an attempt to construct an accurate map of all wi-fi hotspots across the UK, one area/city at a time - this is obviously the Birmingham version so if you live there or know anyone there then get on it and update the map! If you don't live in Birmingham then there might be one near you - check out Wi-Fi in the UK which is the founding site setup by the person behind the idea - Neil Cocker - and if there isn't then contact him via the site and setup your own.

I've also voted, and generally annoyed other people by asking them to vote, for Created in Birmingham to win best blog at the 2008 weblog awards. It's local to me, great, and has the chance of beating some more well known names which can't be bad for this city...

Anyway - there are the first steps... Hopefully this won't be like the annual gym resolution which starts off well but then fades after the first month.

How much is enough? (or can you have too much)

2008-12-24T03:22:00.000-08:00

Buy now: this deca-core-mega-machine will make your life better enabling you to work faster, get a better job and attract members of the opposite sex"

Is your computer old? New is better... You NEED new!"

Have a flick through any computer magazine advertising sections you will see many computers with adverts such as the above; obviously not exactly the above as I'm paraphrasing (though I've seen a few that are perilously close).

Whilst I can be a bit of a sucker for advertising (I'm trying to be better - it will be on my New Years resolution list) when I was playing with a brand new toy yesterday (a Samsung NC-10 netbook) I asked myself a question - "how much computer do you actually need?"

Netbooks - for the non-technically aware - are small cut-down laptops that are "under-powered" but should be enough for browsing the internet. I've read lots of information about them on the internet before we bought them and there are many comments such as "they aren't quick enough" and "why not get yourself a proper laptop".

I tend to use my machine for a bit of web browsing, sending and recieving emails, and editing a few documents or spreadsheets. None of it is really that intensive work so why exactly do I need a really powerful machine? Personally I own quite a range of machines (yes, yes, consumerism is bad - again it's on the New Years list) ranging from a Quad-core desktop beast* right down to the little Samsung netbook. Using my desktop to perform the daily tasks of emailing and document processing is overkill, it's a little like using a rocket launcher to open a tin can but without the mess and danger of serious injury... I'd hazard a guess that most computer users are in the same position and yet when they walk into a store (or go online) to buy a new computer they will be pointed towards machines that are capable of a lot more...

There are a number of things that feed into the desire to own the more powerful machines - some are engineered for us to spend money, some are down to naivity and some are because people just don't understand the technology.

Advertising - The key fact is that advertising (as described above) is always going to focus on the new technology as it generates more money. The more expensive kit will be made to look more expensive and increase the draw to the people that don't understand the technology. I've never seen advertising that really says "if you want to just read documents and surf the web then this is all you need" - except maybe for the product that prompted all of this in my head which is my little netbook.

Reviewers - people who review machines are always going to point out it's inadequacies - and that is their job so I think "fair play to them". But what I have come to realise is that actually these comments may actually not matter and should not neccessarily persuade me into one piece of technology over another. Fitness for purpose is a really important key indicator and it's hard to guage when a reviewer is pointing out that a hard disk access time might be slower than the norm but when loading my 100K word documents it may actually make a few milliseconds of difference so I wouldn't notice. Reviews on buying sites aren't much better as I usually find that it's the geeks or someone who wants to demonstrate their level of understanding pointing out the same flaws in a piece of technology when actually it would perfectly suit use by the masses...

Speed - A common reason for wanting a new computer is to "speed up" simple things like browsing the internet or writing a document. Browsing the internet is generally constrained by the speed of your internet connection rather than your computer. The speed of the computer in general is partly to do with the speed of the processor, but also it's the speed of the disks, RAM and a whole heap of other factors all too often I find that the biggest single drain on the speed of your machine is the programs that are running**. A new computer may simply seem faster as when you first fire it up there are less programs running - most people don't know the half of what computer is doing "in the background" because of all of those things that you've installed (or installed themselves for legimate or illegitamate reasons). Keeping a machine working and running smoothly requires maintenance and while there are lots of programs out there that say they clean up the machine for you I've found nothing that works well for me apart from being careful about what I install and making sure that I don't visit sites that I'm not sure of...

Modern Software (or software bloat) - the next generation of your favourite operating system or program always seem to need more processor or memory or something to enable them to run. As a (retired) programmer I get a little frustrated at the amount of bloat (extra stuff in programs that are not neccessary for the tasks you are using it for) that seem to crop up in some of these packages. Sometimes it seems like the reason that a piece of software can do x is because the programmer has figured out how to do x and wants to put it in rather than it would actually help the majority of the users - in many cases it hinders the majority of the users as it means that the software runs slower... It's why my netbook came with XP which was released way back in 2001 rather than the new Vista operating system.

So, back to the original question - how much computer do you need? It's obvious that no one size fits all and that it depends on what you use the computer for but the one thing I think is important is to really think about what you do and have that as a context when you are reading the review of a machine.

Me? I'd quite happily use the netbook for most days as it has many advantages; it's small, and because of it's lack of computational power it takes less battery to keep it running which makes it cheaper to charge and last longer when I'm away from a socket. It's new technology as well, and I like new (until I've managed to remove my consumerist ways) so until the next thing comes along it's top of my list!

As this is my last post for 2008 - Happy holidays and have a great New Year!

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* Which I use for writing music - that's my excuse for needing the power...

** I'd like to point out that I'm really only talking about your standard, non-gaming type machines here - just to be clear!

New and shiney.... Is it really always the best way?

2008-11-25T03:32:00.000-08:00

With the way the world is at the moment many companies seem to be putting off buying that new expensive replacement system and focusing attention on what value can be gained from their current systems/data. I think this is a really good thing, and maybe it will make people think when we are out of this downturn about whether a new system is really worth it.

The usual scenario is that you have a current computer system that works in the main but maybe you need some more functionality, or that the support contract is up and the company doesn't want to renew on the current platform so a sales person comes in and sells you a brand new shiney system.

And all might be well.

In a lot of cases what can end up happening is that you lose functionality or the knowledge that went with the previous system (or even the data in the migration) and the brand new shiney box that you were sold maybe doesn't work as well as you had hoped. In any case it will have cost you a lot of money and do you always get value for that?

We've been banging the drum of late (and plan to bang louder over the next year) that while we will sell you a brand new shiney system if that is what you NEED we will also look at what can be done/taken from your current systems to get the most value for money. All developers, us included, would love to start from a clean slate each time and write some perfect code but in a lot of cases it isn't cost effective and you lose knowledge and familiarity with systems that currently just work.

To that end we've developed a range of products and services to support this; from 3rd line application support to keep your current applications running to WebSNAPS to take the data and present it as a web application or reports to allow distribution of the data from your application all of which we hope will have even more significance in an economic downturn...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Why can't that apply to computer software as well?

A Co-operative, a normal business or both

2008-10-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

I've just been reading an article on the Register about Co-op outsourcing of financial services to India... You can read the article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/29/steria_staff_strike/. Aside from the usual "the co-op is one great big business" assumption that winds me up there is something else that deserves consideration.

How much should Co-ops behave like normal businesses?

Co-operatives have different motives to normal business, or so people say, and there are those Co-operatives out there which genuinely do. Some, in my opinion, don't really behave any different but I've heard people talk and say "first we have to make the money and then we do the good with it" as a justification for it.... Does that make sense to Co-operatives? I'm undecided, the purist in me says no, the realist says maybe.

Co-operatives have to survive in the environment that they find themselves in. That is the fact of the matter... But should that really be done at the expense of the values and principles? That just devalues the brand in my opinion and by doing that you end up not providing the consumer with a choice or at the very least limiting their choice to a value/service decision rather than including ethics which I think can be a major differentiator...

The trouble with investment...

2008-10-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has been difficult during the two years of Co-operative Web is allowing another company to have a stake in the business because of our status as a Worker Co-operative. It’s not a massive problem as the business model we have adopted is to only spend what we have made to try and grow slowly and organically to avoid getting ourselves into any sticky positions – I guess from a purely personal perspective I’m keen not to have it all go wrong and have to go and work for someone else so cautious progress seems to be the best way forward! However there has been one incident of this; and it has proven to be a little bit of a headache.

The history of this is that we used to be part of a much larger company – this was the retail Co-operative called the Midcounties Co-operative”. When they formed from the merger between Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester and West Midlands they made the decision to concentrate on core business; this meant that the team I ran which provided IT development services to outside companies was no longer required. Due to the fact that they are nice people and that they didn’t want to cause the relationships with the client base that we had built up to turn sour we hatched a plan for us to take the business and form it into something on its own. Co-operative Web was born.

During the discussion process when we were setting up two key facts to this story emerge. Firstly, us (the workers) were keen on the Co-operative model and the principles behind it so we setup as a Worker Co-operative, and secondly Midcounties very reasonably wanted to keep a stake in the business so that if we did make our millions from it then they would have the reward of helping start the whole thing. We agreed a 20% stake, drew up the relevant contracts, registered the company and I thought that was that. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be that simple.

According to our first set of Memorandums and Articles of Association (the documents that get lodged with companies house to register yourself as a company) that are the standard issue from Co-operatives UK we had two different sets of shares: investment and worker. Worker shares are designed only to be issued to workers, a maximum of one per worker in accordance with the basic principles of Worker Co-operatives, the investment shares are there to help you get money in. But if you read them carefully investment shares in the way they are defined don’t really equate to a stake in the company, and can be bought back out at face value by the Co-operative at any time. On recommendations from Co-operatives UK we are actually writing the 20% stake directly into our Memorandum and Articles... Which while it may be fine for our friends at the Midcounties I wouldn't consider it as a solution for a less known or unknown investor...

The history involved in the worker co-operative movement has shaped this as a problem - the whole idea is that it is self-financing sustainable business for the workers by the workers. I, however, think there must be a better way out there as raising capital investment is key in so many businesses for success and I personally hate the thought that the good ideals of Co-operative principles would need to get abandoned in order to build a business (though it has to said at this point that there might be other ways I haven’t yet found as it has not been so much of a problem with Co-operative Web).

If anyone has any solutions then please get in touch as I’d love to hear about them!

So – are you part of the supermarket or something?

2008-10-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Through the course of selling the products and services of Co-operative Web to new customers one of the things I most encounter is an ignorance of what a Co-operative actually is. I'm sure that even some of our current customers think of us as being part of some massive company called the Co-operative and to be honest due to some of the complications of retail sales this image is being propagated out in the advertising by retail Co-operatives in this country - but I am getting ahead of myself...

A Co-operative is a way of running a business, with a set of rules which need to be adhered to in order to call itself one. The basic premise is one of self-help, joint ownership and democratic control. Unfortunately it then gets a bit more complicated as there are a number of different variants; including Consumer Co-operatives (which include groups of supermarkets that you see on the high street) and Worker Co-operatives (which is what Co-operative Web are).

Consumer Co-operatives are a business that is owned by the people who use the service that they provide. I think it helps to think about where it all came from: in 19th century Britain items which were vital for survival such as flour and sugar were really expensive to purchase for oneself but by clubbing together and buying in bulk the price could be brought down. So that is what they did - and through this cooperation items could be bought and the savings enjoyed by everybody. So, when you go to your local supermarket and they ask you to join for a £1 contribution what you are actually doing is taking ownership of part of the business (it has to be noted that you are owning part of a business that isn’t all of the supermarkets called “the Co-operative” as they are actually organised in regional groups but that is something I will, no doubt, come back to later).

A worker Co-operative is a different proposition but following a similar “let’s all get together and help each other” principle. So instead of needing to buy something we we switch it for all need to work - i.e. a group of individuals get together and perform a task. The company that is formed to do this work is still owned and controlled by members but in this case the members are the workers of the company. The fruits of the company can then be shared out between these workers in an equal and fair way; benefiting those who actually do the work rather than those who sit at the top with the money to open the companies in the first place. This was done for many different reasons, I guess the main one back in the early history of the Co-operative movement was to give work to people in an area/industry which wasn’t considered that profitable for a company to make much out of but the workers wanted employment and it made them enough... I think in the world of today being a Worker Co-operative has a huge amount of relevance and potential to shake up the way companies work – but for now I will save that rant for another day!

I’ve tried to give an impression of what Co-operatives are here, and the kinds of things that they can stand for. There is a lot more (including the rules, ethics & values involved with Co-operative business), stuff I will touch on as this blog evolves but if you are keen to know more – or the actual history that I’ve paraphrased above then check out “What is a Co-operative” on the Co-operatives UK site (Co-operatives UK is the apex organisation for Co-operatives in the UK