Each month we host an event at Industry Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss cooperative work and culture. Our events are usually an informal pot luck gathering.
We meet to help one another explore, form, join, or improve businesses without bosses. Members of worker cooperatives and collectives frequently share our experiences, our challenges, and the processes that are working for us. Sometimes we have guest speakers from successful cooperatives who share stories of how they started their business and how they organize and structure the business. The meetup also engages people that are not yet a part of a worker owned cooperative, but have interest and questions.
At our first meetup we were lucky to have Gonzalo Chomón of Evovelo, a company creating solar powered vehicles, visiting from Spain. He gave detailed information on cooperative law and the cooperative movement in his country. Spain is the home of Mondragon, the world's largest cooperative organization.
Another evening gathering featured A Yard & A Half Landscaping, a successful local cooperative of more than 30 members created by a transition from a single-owner business. Member Carolyn Edsell-Vetter related A Yard & A Half's impressive history and current challenges as its worker-owners grow the cooperative.
At the end of 2014 we were honored to host a holiday party for WORC'N. For our first meetup of 2015, Yochai Gal and Matt Gabrenya from the Boston TechCollective gave an in-depth look into their cooperative beginnings (a still-going San Francisco TechCollective) and how they have attained excellence in the computer repair business. People were actively engaged in a discussion about the roles and duties that exist in a thriving cooperative, and how we can best go about integrating new members.
Our meetups are held at the Industry Lab at 288 Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The venue is an eclectic environment with a mix of product based companies, inventors, artists and us, the only web developers to date. The Boston/Cambridge Worker Cooperative group on meetup.com has 60 members after just a few months of existence, and each gathering usually has at least a dozen people coming. We invite you to join us at a meetup: sign up at the Meetup group or contact us to be alerted to the next event!
