Programme & presenters

Here we introduce the rationale of the programme.

The programme has three phases, shown in the panel below. Phase 1 involves a presentation and discussion of the approach of the commons.hour programme. Phase 2 is a series of discussions, each of which branches out from an initial presentation by an organisation in the meet.coop community. More on this below. Phase 3 draws things together, focusing on a handbook, a constitution (leading to incorporation as a coop) and a general assembly (leading to the initial general assembly of meet.coop).

Sessions, presenters and rationale

Everything pivots around an evolving draft of a handbook, describing the protocols of practice in meet.coop. The primary aim of each session in the programme is to identify protocols: of various kinds, in various areas. The three concluding sessions will draw on the draft and generate the initial working version of the handbook, which in turn will be the basis of the constitution. The core purpose of the initial General Assembly is to ratify these, and agree a way forward for stewarding meet.coop (including the future contribution of commons.hour as a venue for regular open exchanges around stewarding and steering, across the entire membership).

The entire commons.hour programme is a practice of design and prototyping, of an ecosystem of spaces that will eventually form parts of the stewarding practice of the coop. See collaborating & prototyping.

We are organising the handbook in three sections, derived from the basic elements of practice in a commons. See What meet.coop does. We’ve invited presenters to open each session with thoughts about their learning, priorities and principles in their field of activity, and we’ve matched presenters roughly with the three areas of the handbook: see the colour coding in the slide above and What meet.coop does . This can only be a rough match because organisations naturally cross-over all these areas (just as meet.coop does). But in this way we mean to draw on our members’ deep expertise, cover the diverse span of their engagement in social, political and economic change and, at the same time, finish up with points that we can log as key practical concerns of the coop, in the handbook. Regarding the scope of the expertise and commitments in our community, see What meet.coop is for.

For more on the presenters and topics, see Running list of sessions. For basic links on commons.hour, see Basic links.