# Greetings, DisCO Published at https://notepad.diglife.coop/s/5FA3niq6-# To **Coops in the DisCOverse - Committed, Dating and Casual** From Mike Hales : 2021 01 21 Via DisCOnauts: Laura, Javier, Caitlin, Lynn & Bob, Guilherme, Sofia, Maro, Cindy, Jill, Lisha, Lara, Silvia, Irene, Sara, Timothy, Ann Marie, Stacco, Natalia. --- Dear Brothers and Sisters I’m reaching out to you as an individual, early-adopter member of [meet.coop](https://www.meet.coop/). Meet.coop is an international coop-of-coops, nine months old; operational contributions in meet.coop come from a network of coops from Spain to Canada. We run a **digital meeting space** service, on a free-libre software base of BigBlueButton [https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/]. I’m one of a posse of members taking steps, at this point, to assemble a Community circle within the governance framework of the coop. We have an invitation for you, below. One of meet.coop's stand-out points is that, as a digital meeting room provider, our aims stretch far beyond the service aims of the default, world-dominating Zoom corporation. They exceed too the aims of admirable organisations in the FLOSS community (Free-libre open-source software) who develop widely appreciated digital tools . . like Jitsi, Framasoft or NextCloud. Like many FLOSS organisations, these are not multi-stakeholder, open-membership, user-accountable **coops** like we are; we aim for an active two-way relationship with our users. And our intentions go beyond the scope of FLOSS platform tool-aggregators like collective.tools, FairApps and Disroot - all of whom we respect and have used. >In what way beyond? Two answers: community. And commons transition. ### Community circle The Community circle is the place where we’re beginning to figure out just what this ‘going beyond’ looks like in practice, as **service** to our member organisations. The service is partly in **the platform** (digital meeting spaces, and user accounts) and partly in the Community circle **programme of gatherings**: see below. The Community circle is where we mean to define what it means in practice to organise **a commons of digital meeting space**, on the way to producing commons transition, viable solidarity economy and powerful civil-society movement organisation, on a regional and global level. Just how do we - I mean the movements, collectively - curate, steward and mobilise a global commons of digital infrastructure? It’s about time? And very specifically . . >how do we establish a commons that is contributed to and mobilised by coops and civil-society movement organisations in both **the global-North and the global-South**, in mutual solidarity, collaborating with one another in mutual aid? In this venture we see ourselves as sharing commitments and energy with infrastructure-oriented coops like **social.coop** (who run a Mastodon micro-blogging instance, running on the ActivityPub protocol, oriented to coop principles and practices) and **May First Movement Technology** (who run a whole platform of tools in support of movement organisations led largely by women and Latino/people of colour in the US and Mexico). MayFirst is a member of meet.coop, social.coop shortly will be. We’re seeking to gather other organisations like these into our member community, and to serve them through a Community circle. As a commoner-activist, I’ve been paying attention to (and in conversation with) DisCO since its launch, and I'm stoked with your current **[presentation](https://elements.disco.coop/)** and **[plans](https://mothership.disco.coop/The_DisCO_Project_Matrix)**. DisCO is clearly an important and well-considered move, towards commons transition, in the era of peer-to-peer digital infrastructure. The foundation of feminist economics and women in leadership is very important and distinctive. It seems to me there’s a natural **synergy** between the expanding DisCO family and the intentions of the Community circle in meet.coop. And so . . ## We invite you . . Individually and collectively, we invite DisCOnauts to any or all of the following: - Join us in the next **preparation meeting** for the Community circle, Jan 26th, 14:00 GMT. - Become **members** of meet.coop [https://www.meet.coop/] and get your own spyware-free, time-unlimited, digital roomspace via a coop provider using renewable energy. - Participate in the circle **work programme** - presenting, convening, engaging. See below. ### Community circle work programme The programme looks like it may have three strands, comprising regular scheduled online presentations and discussions of: - **1 Coop practice and strategy** - This is where we would want to explore DisCO and contribution accounting, for example, along with challenges of livelihood in the coop economy. *As the Community circle develops, this will naturally prompt meet.coop itself to get to grips with contribution accounting in practice. DisCO wisdom would be enormously valuable here.* - **2 Solidarity** - This is where member organisations in the mutual sector, the coop economy and the solidarity economy make presentations, and frame development questions: for meet.coop and for the emerging commons of the meet.coop community. *Voices of organisations led by women, BIPOC and non-English language communities are especially important to us here.* - **3 Digital toolstack** - This is where we survey the state of the art in using BBB video meeting space alongside other elements in the digital infrastructure of mutual- and coop-sector organising. *You’re very familiar with this: this is the DisCO Stack/Deck agenda.* You might get a fuller picture thro looking at these other notes: - First thoughts (Dec 2020): [Community development - A Community circle @ meet.coop?](https://notepad.diglife.coop/s/HyK1q3LjP#) - Jan 12 : [Notes from Community circle preparation meeting](https://notepad.diglife.coop/s/l73cbePVZ#) - Jan 15 : [Notes on Community, solidarity economy and global-South organisations](https://notepad.diglife.coop/s/jFqMEc3CA#) These matters are discussed [in our Forum](https://forum.meet.coop/t/working-as-a-community/416/) ### Next . . Meet.coop is a young coop, grappling with the month-to-month realities of gaining livelihood in the coop sector. As such, sophisticated operational matters like contribution accounting are a bit beyond our reach right now; likewise, commitment to participation in the DisCOverse (though Casual participation is probably a different matter). But when such extensions of our practice come within our scope, the Community circle is where they will get defined or driven. Help us shape this Circle’s practice? Hoping to hear from you, and see you in our BBB rooms. >Let me know if you hope to join **the Jan 26 meeting**. Or any other queries and synergies. Apologies that this arrives a bit close to the meeting date. But there is sure to be a follow-on, not long after, as this emergent Community network opens out and solidifies. Love & solidarity / mike ```michaelhales AT mac DOT com``` ```AT mike_hales AT social DOT coop``` *Designer: College of conviviality. Co-convener: Robin Murray living economy network* *Proudly, the first OpenCollective account holder of meet.coop, August 2020* :smile: