 Welcome everyone, thank you for joining us. If you want to start introducing you in yourselves in the chat, please do. You can either join the poll via the link in the chat, or you can go to slido.com and then put the code hashtag PCW2023. Okay, thank you everyone thank you for filling that in so I think you can all see the results as well. A few of you are thinking of setting up a platform co-op, that's really exciting. Some of you are interested from a point of view of research and others are here just to find out a bit more. So welcome everyone. So, if we're running this webinar in webinar format, so unfortunately we're unable to see you, but we will be monitoring the chat so please do use the chat, either to ask questions or comment or also to comment between you. My colleague Jen is with us so she's looking at, she'll be looking at the chat so if you need any help she'll be able to respond even while I'm talking. Thanks Jen for all your support. So what we'll cover today, so my name's Vika Rogers, I work for Cooperatives UK, and I've been focusing on this areas of platform co-ops for quite some years now. And so I'll be going over what we mean by a platform co-op, how to start one and what support is available. I'm followed by two excellent speakers that it's really great to have with us today. So we've got Jennifer Bird, who's the founding member of Sinelize, which is a sign language interpreting services service that uses a digital platform to connect its members who are deaf people, British sign language interpreters and service user organizations. And we have Kaylee Reed, who is a member of Open Food Network, which is a co-op of organizations whose members collectively own and control an innovative software platform that they use to trade food they produce. So I'll be talking more generally about platform co-ops and then we'll get the chance to really talk with the people who are running them, which is really exciting and then we'll have some time for a Q&A at the end. Okay, so I'm going to get started. So, just to make sure that we're on the same page because some of you might be experts and in co-ops others might be the first time you hear about co-ops I just wanted to give a quick definition or description of what we mean by co-op. So first of all, a co-op is a business organization that's owned and controlled by its members to meet their shared needs. The members can be a very different types, it can be customers, employees, residents, suppliers, and they all have a say in how the co-op is run. Corruptors can be in any sector, so here we've listed some, and more than 7,000 co-ops contribute over 40 billion to the UK economy. Members are the foundation of every co-op, and that's the reason they exist and the purpose drives who the member should be and vice versa. Members choose what to do with the profits and they are the owners of the co-op and they can invest to benefit from the co-op but they can't invest just to make money. And members have an equal say in the co-op. So, moving on to what we mean by a platform co-op. To describe what we mean by co-op, I wanted to give a bit more of a description of what we mean by platform. Now, platform is a broad term and there isn't a very specific definition to it, but it's a term that has been used by sort of the tech business sector to describe a phenomenon that was starting in the last decade of new business models determined by the fact that trade was happening on platforms digitally. So, this is a definition that I tend to use, which is a platform, a business is a business that uses a digital platform to trade, connect people and all poor resources and data. Now, we are all probably more and more aware of these types of platforms and they become so much more dominant in our life. They help us to connect with friends, they help us to order food, to book a taxi, etc. And these type of businesses are growing and becoming more dominant in our life. And especially following the COVID crisis, during the COVID crisis, we all realized how important they were to help us continue to deliver our activities and to connect with people. But unfortunately, we've also learned that there are a lot of downsides of these platform businesses. So, I'm just going to go through some of them, you're probably mostly aware, but just to provide some context. So, unfortunately, platforms often, they collect and hold large amounts of user data, but it's not always clear what they do with that data, and they don't always disclose it. And they often use algorithms that might contain bias and that skew the way the platforms operate. So, platforms gain immense power due to the huge amounts of data they hold and the large profits that they make. And the platforms also give the businesses a lot of power over the users and so they can unilaterally introduce changes that can impact users. And also changing our own rates or simply deactivating a user from one day to the other, which can result more or less in firing them. They also have had a strong impact on communities and workers rights. So platforms tend to facilitate dependency on precarious income streams and working conditions. They have often created obstacles or openly opposed collective action, and they can have negative impacts on local communities by introducing disruptive economic practices. And something that I think is not emphasized enough is also that they really are good at exploiting crisis. They definitely benefited from the high unemployment rates and low wages that follow the financial crisis and did again so with the COVID-19 crisis. They tend to have an extractive business model that extracts disproportionate value from other people's assets and labor while offering them limited rights. And they tend to be driven towards exponential growth also due to their aggressive funding models which are based on very often on venture capital. And to reach this exponential growth platforms often tend to aim to become a single provider of a service across the globe by destroying or buying out their competitors, but also aggressively lobbying government and attempt to anticipate or regulate a regulation. So this all sounds terrible and very worrying. But what, when I started working on this what really inspired me about the platform car movement was the fact that what was the question that it was posing which was, is it really technology, the root cause of these problems, or is it the business model on which they're built. What would happen if we instead these businesses these platforms were collectively owned by their users by their members and democratically controlled by them. And that's exactly what a co-op is it's a business that's collectively owned and democratically controlled. So, if we go back to what a definition of a platform co-op is, by merging these two definitions that I gave at the beginning we can say that a platform co-op is a democratically owned and controlled business that uses an online platform or mobile app to trade, connect people and or provide people with all the poor resources and data. And so, for example, just imagine if Deliveroo was owned and managed by its riders, or if Spotify was owned and run by its musicians or listeners, or Airbnb by hosts or local communities. And what's really exciting about the platform co-op movement is that it's producing alternatives to these large platforms. So co-op cycle is an international platform for cycle couriers, Resonate is a platform for musicians and listeners, and Airbnb, FairBnB is a community powered tourism platform, and then many more emerging. So, platform co-ops operate according to the cooperative principles that I've listed here I won't go into detail but we've got lots of information on our website about it. And what is interesting for me is that the principles not only define how the business is run but they can shape also the way technology is used and determine how data is collected and processed. I also think that the co-op movement can learn a lot from the potential that platforms can offer. And first of all, technology allows startups costs to be relatively low. It allows direct people-to-people connections are made easier, members can choose how much they want to use or provide a service, and collective participation is more practical, also from the point of view of participating democratically in processes. Barriers for members to join and participate are low and the network effect provided by technology allows us to scale these organizations more rapidly. So here are some examples of UK-based platform co-ops. I won't talk about signalized because we'll hear more about them later. I tend to divide platform co-ops in two types. One is where the platform really allows to connect the providers of a service and the receivers of a service. And I've just put some quotes here from these organizations and I'll just read one of them which is from EcoCare. You want to see a care and support system which puts the relationship between giver and receiver first, shares power and allows care and support to exist in abundance. And what I think is really interesting is that not only is the platform model being challenged by these organizations, but also the power relations between the providers and receivers of the services and how they interact with third parties as well. Another form of platform co-op, I tend to group them under infrastructure co-ops, where the platform really provides infrastructure then to smaller organizations, either internationally or nationally. We'll hear more about the open food network, Lake Turb, but another really good example is Co-op Cycle where the platform is owned internationally by local worker co-ops of riders across Europe. Okay, I'm just going to move on now to how to start a platform co-op. I've provided a lot of information so please, you know, do start typing your questions in the chat if you don't want to forget them, and I'll try to respond to some of your questions at the end of the presentation. So, the information I'm going to provide now is based on the work I've been doing over the last three years of supporting people in starting their platform co-op, but also sort of monitoring the landscape in the past few years. However, every co-op is different, it doesn't always have to go in this way, so this is just really to provide some general guidance in a sense of what the patterns we're seeing, but it doesn't have to be in this way for every co-op. So, we've sort of mapped the journey of a platform co-op startup on the sort of traditional setup precede seed language that is used with digital startups, which is probably actually starting to get a bit old as well. But we can see that there's a really early stage phase that I think often is underestimated how long it can be, in which really there's a lot of time in exploring what the business case is, what the business model could be, finding your founding members. One thing that is really important in a co-op is that you can't start a co-op by yourself, you need to be a group of people, at least two, three to start a co-op because it's all about building something together with other people. And then you get to the phase that you're ready to incorporate, you have your founding members, your purpose, and you're ready to incorporate and register as a co-op. Then there's a phase that probably starts much earlier, a before incorporation that is testing your business idea, starting with your prototypes, building your tech and building the business and understanding all the processes that you need for that. And then you get to the point that you'll need more capital to grow or to stabilise the co-op. And what we've seen happen in the UK is co-ops going for what we call community shares, which is a form of capital that is very unique to the UK. And it's a form of very patient capital. But also, it doesn't matter how many shares one holds in a company, they only have one vote. So it's a really good way of sort of attracting big investors but without having to give away too much decision power. And then obviously then there are a series of cycles of growth and cycling. There's a link that we've just put in the chat that you will see a much more in detailed journey that you can just scroll through. Again, this is very sort of patterns of what we've seen up to now. So don't take it too literally. So from the point of view of funding, what we've observed is that in that pre-year before you actually become a company, often founders are able to attract either through crowdfunding or in fellowships or grants around £15,000. Once you incorporate and they are able to accept grants from institutions and we see sort of co-ops attracting around £75,000 in grants. And then when you get, you're ready to launch community share offer, there's a huge jump and we see co-ops raising between £200,000 and £350,000. I'm not going to go into detail with regards to community shares. We have a lot of information on our website, but happy to answer any questions later in the Q&A of media. And this is just some examples of community share investments. You can see the first ones were really from the more media platform co-ops, but then in the most recent years we've seen more infrastructure co-ops and provider and service provider co-ops as well. What is also interesting is what I mentioned was that you can attract large investors as well. And what we've seen is that some, not many, but some grant funders are also interested in investing in community shares and providing match funding to what you're able to raise from the community. So I'm just going to quickly go through the support that's available for platform co-ops before I hand it over to the other speakers. So the main program that we have to support platform co-ops is called Unfound. I currently run this program so you can get in touch with me and Unfound at uk.coop. The main, the program is run from Corruptives UK and supported by the Corruptive Bank. The main activities of the program is really business support, but we also do awareness raising around not only platform co-ops but also tech and co-ops more broadly. We spent time trying to see which funding streams could come to the sector and a little bit of time on policy, but that's probably the least work we've done in this area at this point. What we are doing is business support is an accelerator program. We run it once a year and we are actually accepting applications now until the 5th of March for the next accelerator. It's a 10 week business support program for a cohort of up to 8 to 12 teams which are at the really, really early stage of setting up their platform co-op. And the business support concludes with a pitch event where teams get a chance to pitch their business idea to access funding and support towards which the Corruptive Bank has contributed a 10,000 prize fund. So, to access the, to be eligible for the program, you need to have a team of at least two members that are the early stage of setting up their platform co-op. You have to believe that the co-op model is the right for your form for your business, but also you need to be at a stage that you're really looking to register in the UK by the end of 2023. And we have to have at least one member in the UK. It can't be a platform co-op being set up abroad. So the deadline, as I mentioned, is the 5th of March. These are the dates of the accelerator. We will also have two specific webinars that are really just specific to the accelerator where you can ask any questions about the accelerator. I think I've put the dates right, but we've, I think we've got them in the chat as well the 30th, 23rd of January and the 21st of February. So to keep up to date with anything related to unfound, to register with our newsletter. I also provide information about funding opportunities and events around tech and co-ops. So that's really a useful place to register. And then we're going to put in the chat a few more links related to where you can find more information about unfound. But what is really interesting, oh, sorry, but before I go into that, we also have other support available, which isn't targeted specifically a platform co-op, but it is available all year round while the accelerator is only in certain times of the year. And then there's this step-by-step tool that is really useful in helping you go through the various steps needed before you're ready to register your co-op. And then there's also support available for you to register and incorporate your business. We have other support programs. So we have a business support for co-op's program that will offer up to six days of bespoke one-to-one business support and peer mentoring from other co-ops. This isn't live yet on our website, but we'll be live in the next two weeks probably. So, you know, if you're interested, do look back on our website in relation to that. Our advice team is always available. They provide a lot of services, but also a lot of training sessions. So it's a really good way to sort of just get to learn some aspects at your own pace. And then as I mentioned, we do a lot of work around community shares and we have a community shares unit with their own area on our website where you can find a lot of information about the support available, the funding available, information about how community shares work. But what is also very exciting about the co-op movement in general and platform co-ops is that the movement is international and so there's quite a strong international movement around platform co-ops. And so do visit the website platform dot co-op, which is run by one of the founders, Trevor Schultz from the New School of New York. They run events, courses, opportunities to connect with people, founders of platforms in other countries, exchange skills, exchange knowledge, they also have a newsletter which is worth subscribing to. And also some interesting international lists where you can be kept up to date and participate in the discussions if you're interested. That's all from me. I'll put this slide up at the end as well where just to remind people of where you can find some more information. But I think now it would be really nice to hear from the other platform co-ops and I'll stop talking at last. So I'll hand it over to you, to you, Jen, if that's okay. So Jen Byrd from Sinalise, it's great to have you here. Thanks. Thanks Vika and good afternoon everyone. So I'll just start sharing my slides. So yeah, I'm Jen Byrd from Sinalise co-op. We're a platform co-op where a multi stakeholder cooperative of deaf users and sign language interpreters and we also have investor members. So I'll just talk you through that. The reason why we were set up is because the sign language interpreting profession has come across a lot of problems, especially since around 2010. It was a very austerity era after the financial crash. This is one of the all too common stories that we tend to hear about at least once a month where family members are used as interpreters in hospitals because either the staff don't know who holds the contract or there is no contract. It could be a variety of reasons. So these are as an explanation of some of those parts of the problem. And those large private agencies, they could be sign language specialists, or they could be large spoken language agencies on national charities. Quite often the larger the agency, the worse the problem. So there's more and more distance from the users that are involved, whether that's the workers or the end users, the receivers of the service, so the deaf people. And because those agencies are very profit driven, it's what Vika was explaining about the extractive model. That profit is not seen again by the community. It's taken out of the, the interrupting booking process and it tends to either fund other services, or it lines shareholders profits. So I'll go on to talk about what we do as a co-op to mitigate against that. But quite often with there's layers of the process with interpreting and the bookings process where in one particular region, there could be many providers of interpreting. And the users aren't aware of who holds the contract for their GP or their hospital or the community service which provides many community services such as physio or podiatry. It can be held by many, many different providers and this leaves users in a state of not knowing who they should contact if there's a problem. Quite often they can't contact anyone other than the medical service who then sometimes don't even know who to contact or who holds the service. So there's too many layers of administration and not enough connection with the community that causes a lot of these problems. And often users have an appointment and even when they're on the way to their appointment, they don't know who's coming. There's no communication with the user at all. It's more of a bums on seats approach or a tick box exercise in providing interpreting where perhaps a trust has a contract that the user never gets to know who's going to be arriving on the day, which according to research by sign health causes a lot of anxiety and it also can cost up to 30 million a year in NHS funds in wasted appointments on misdiagnosis. So it's a really big problem. So for us as a platform cooperative, how we mitigate against these problems are by doing it in a different way. So not doing the extractive model but using profits. We're not actually making a profit yet because we're investing so much into our tech, but the plan in the future is to invest those profits back into the service by working with users or by working with interpreters to improve standards or by reinvesting in the business itself. As we are community owned as well, we have that unique way of tapping into our communities with the members themselves to ask them if there's any problems with the service. So we get that immediate feedback either via our quarterly meetings with both service user with both groups of members or at any point at all by them being able to feedback to staff. As experts in delivering or receiving the service, we know best we're directly involved and we have the, we have the answers and if there are problems in service delivery, we can come together and talk about those and solve them amongst ourselves. So this is just a bit about our journey which very much reflects on what beaker was saying. We started in March 2019 as a small group of interpreters and deaf users and did our community shares raise in June 2021. In August 2021 only two months later we were awarded the place as a sole provider on a large framework agreement on Merseyside. So that was for up to 19 NHS trusts and we're now on contract number seven as of December. So hopefully we'll be gaining a few more this year. And we see that we fit very much into the post COVID economy where social value is placed very highly, or certainly more highly than it has been before. So there's been the in 2012 the public services social value act, and also many more commissioning guidelines whether locally or nationally for interpreting or otherwise. So the framework that we were successful in actually had social value embedded quite highly throughout the questions on that tender so we were able to score quite highly on those. The interpreting market is hugely competitive so we're really up against it, whether it's from the video interpreting companies which are pretty much all American owned now, or whether it's those large spoken language agencies. Often sign language as a provision is lumped in against many other spoken languages whether that's Russian Hindi or so forth. So, which is why those that specialist knowledge is being lost by those providers, but as a platform cooperative we can retain that knowledge and retain that expertise and prove we're the best at delivering the service. But as a platform cooperative what we're really investing in is the tech side, whether that's our video service that we've created, or whether it's the platform itself which the NHS are using at present and we want to expand the use of that in future. So that's a little preview of our booking platform, it's still in beta, but the majority of the interpreters that work in the Merseyside area and the surrounding areas where interpreters come into Merseyside to work are on the platform. The percentage of members in certain parts of Merseyside we have 100% of interpreters that are available are members of the co op in some other areas, it's around 70 or 80 so we're working hard to try and get to that 100% in all areas of Merseyside. So, the benefit to users is deaf users is that they can log onto the platform and state their preferences. So they can, you can see I think Karen's got one heart there. So users can actually go and click and tell us who their favorite interpreters are and in future we'll be building a list where people can say who they don't want to work with because some people have some strong views about who they don't want to turn up at their appointments which is fair enough for something so personal. So, these profiles were live and it's one of the first times the interpreting professionals had this kind of technology, it's, it's failed in the past, partly, well mainly because it didn't get buy in from the interpreters or the deaf users necessarily. So, as a co op we're building it ourselves so we're gaining direct feedback from the interpreters as to the features that they require or what the features that the deaf users require so we're very flexible in that sense. And when a deaf user has an appointment that's been confirmed so for example if Mr blogs has an appointment at 10am tomorrow and it's been the bookings been made on the platform. The staff have facilitated some of the back end stuff that they do manually at the minute which is more and more automation is coming. The deaf user gets a text message with a link to the interpreters profile so for the very first time in the history of interpreting the user directly has a confirmation of the date and the time of their appointment appointment and who is coming and a link to further information. So, some users in the past have been told by hospitals as to who's coming but there's no further information given. So, in that direct we in built into our service that direct ability to talk to the user and ensure that we take those preferences and we confirm it. And we've had great feedback from our members and also the wider deaf community that aren't yet members about how reassuring So, in the early days of this last year we had an interpreter arrive at an appointment and a deaf user said, Oh, your face flashed up on my phone yesterday. And I didn't I didn't quite realized was it from the doctor and the interpreter was like can I see that message please. And the deaf user showed them the message and it was the text message from us. And because it was a smartphone their face actually flashed up because the link was to their profile online. So this is one of our USPs it's one of our success stories. Private companies don't necessarily do this because it's something that's not going to bring them extra profit necessarily. So this is these kind of initiatives are being born out of a community driven business which we're very proud of. And we built a video interpreting service. It's not American owned it's community owned. It's very much in its early stages. It's a lot of hard work, but users also benefit greatly from this. So, for example, deaf users can now call their GP during COVID especially and prior to then deaf users were having to physically go to their GP surgery, perhaps right on a piece of paper to ask them to book an appointment. So you or I might pick up a phone and excuse me just call the surgery and book in an appointment. There's been no facility, partly due to information and governance. National national directives by NHS England deaf users aren't allowed to text or email GP surgeries, according to their governance so they actually have to physically go into those surgeries. So what we do now with us is use the video interpreting service to directly call those GPs that we have a contract with on Merseyside in order to and the interpreter on the. So you can see on the second box there there's only two people on that call but if a deaf user on the call that'd be three. There's you can see it right at the bottom there's the interpreter view and then there's two other people so it's a three way video call where somebody can be connected to a GP surgery and make their appointment. It's also been really useful to use in out of hours. So, more recently, a deaf user was on hospital ward and rather than waiting for an interpreter to turn up in the middle of the night was able to access an urgent scan immediately because they were connected to the video service and interpreter facilitated that communication. So for us, it's about reviewing our strategy next, making sure our existing strategies still fit for purpose and increasing in business for us this is now the time to grow and scale and continue to evolve the platform and the video service both of which are incredibly important for us. We're also doing more outreach work so we have an outreach worker who is going out into the community and basically helping users understand the platform. On Merseyside as around the country, many deaf users don't even have a smartphone or a laptop or a device so we're trying really hard to work with users who do have devices and to help users who don't talk to access the service as well. We've also got a lot of work to do on our co-op development side on the government's governance and the membership just to keep, make sure that as we're scaling and increasing our membership that all members can access the co-op and know how to input into it. So, we have a lot of work to do over the next few years but this is basically where we're up to. So if you do want to contact us, I'm happy to answer any questions as I haven't seen any come through I don't think in the chat but I'm happy to answer any questions at the end. And if you do want to contact us there's our contact details. Thanks Jen. I do encourage people to use the chat, even from now for questions because I realized that we're getting very quickly through the hour. So yeah, do use the chat if you have questions now and we'll be trying to respond to them while Katie's also talking. I'm going to hand it over now to Kaylee from Open Food Network. Thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for inviting us. I'm just going to share my screen and get my slides up in a second. Cool. Okay, so I'm from the Open Food Network UK, we're a global collaboration of essentially people all around the world who are driven by creating systemic change in our food systems. And the Open Food Network was founded in 2012 in Australia and now it's an international community, but it's locally led. So even though you can kind of see this as being like a network of networks around the world, or a co-op of co-ops. And then each local instance in each country is kind of organized on a local level, but then also that kind of feeds into like our global vision as a wider community as well. And also all of the resources that we create on a local level is then also accessible to the whole global community. We operate in just over 20 countries and more join us every year, which is really exciting. So we're always growing. And essentially we're working together to develop shared resources, knowledge, and software to support better food system. Our software is actually a flagship project, but it's not the only thing that we do. And it's an open source software platform that can be used for food enterprises to set up an online shop. But it's designed specifically to enable collaboration between food enterprises and food producers, etc. And lots of people have used the power of this feature to create food collectives, food hubs, and to take farmers markets online. And then also independent food producers have also used it to be able to put their produce online as well. But we're more than just a software. We're a co-learning community that focuses on innovative solutions to solving food system problems. And also we're a community, not just a business, so we're a co-operate sociocratically. So I'm going to talk a bit about the Open Food Network UK, but just also one of the great things about being an open source technology is that it's not owned by anyone. Everyone can contribute and you can build a community around the software. And also being open source tackle some of the problems that you can see and that Vika explained earlier on around the problems with intellectual property rights, what happens to people's data, and also capitalism. And so our vision is the Open Food Network K, and this is also maybe a shared vision for all of us is a world in which every person has sufficient access to high quality food that's produced in a way that regenerates the planet. Because some of the problems that we're seeing in the way that the current food system operates, we're seeing massive social and economic inequalities, environmental devastation, with the use of pesticides and more issues of carbon production around the really long, complex supply chains in the current food system and transportation costs. Also the production of fertilizers, the production of nitrate food fertilizers constitutes a massive carbon output. And also these long fragile supply chains are quite fragile. So we saw in COVID empty shelves in the supermarkets, which just shows that when, you know, if they're increasing as we might be seeing more kind of global issues that these fragile supply chains can break down when if a supply chain is owned on a local level, it's a lot more solid. So there's a lot of issues around food waste and producers struggling to be able to continue to produce food with the margins that they're given, for example, by the supermarkets. And so the Open Food Network UK, we are going to talk a bit about a founder's journey, but I'm not a founder I joined the I found about three years ago so I might not do it as much justice. I was founded by Sarah Nick and Lynn, and they all came together to improve software that they were using for food enterprises at the time. So actually bring it. And then they knew about software that was that was being created by the Open Food Network in Australia and then brought that to the UK. The Open Food Network UK was founded by people who were embedded in the movement towards better local food systems and have been working in that area for about, you know, I think each of them for like decades. So really embedded in the movement towards better food systems. First of all, when we launched we gained funding from Esmue Fairburn for the first three years. And then the pandemic hit a few years ago so things were quite kind of very small scale for the Open Food Network in the initial six or seven years. And then when the pandemic hit we saw a massive growth over 1000% growth over a few weeks which was quite intense. It also led to more funding. So since then we've really expanded the team and we've grown now I think there's about 12 of us, which is really exciting for us in the coordination circle. So, outside of that we also consider part of our cooperative, the food enterprises that use our software as well. So, but we have a central coordination team of which we have 12 members that are doing kind of things like software support, so we have a lot of our friends creating resources for our community, and lots of different things as well. And all of the funding opportunities that we gained since COVID has really helped us to to grow and build our reputation in the movement. This is what our software platform opening page looks like, and you can use it to, so if you're a shopper for local food. If you're an enterprise you can use it to set up your own enterprise and it's free at the point of use we only start charging if you trade over 500 pounds per month. So it's a really great way for food enterprises to get online at no cost. And we also have the ability for shoppers to start to the local area what food enterprises around them so you can see here on map. One is for more diverse food systems, agroecological production of food and healthy communities, and wanted to talk a bit about, I've mentioned before that we're not just software platform. One of the things that I joined your friend to do was to create more resources for our community. So I did a lot of kind of one to one consultations with food enterprises individually and then whatever was learned from that was then rolled out in resources for the community. And then also that's something that's happening on a global level so in each of the different instances around the world if we're creating resources or that could be resources anything from marketing how to use through to accounting has pretty much anything that would help local food enterprise to thrive. That's kind of bounced back into the community for anyone to be able to use. So everything that we do is essentially used to help or support all the members of our community but it's all free to access so even if you're not part of the open food network you can use and access our resources as well. And so something I wanted to just say about what's great about being a platform cooperative is that what we're doing is grown from the real needs of food hub and food hubs and farmers across the UK and globally because it's been created by people who are most of the people in the open food network are have been or are running food enterprises themselves. And also building software social aims are sometimes difficult to fund but our funding models spreads the cost a nice example of this is that we've identified recently that we really need to improve our subscriptions offering. For example, making it easier for our software users to set up a veg box subscription option on the platform. And now that we've identified that we've been able to talk to the whole global community and pull our resources together to create an action plan to apply for funding for that software feature. So that if one instant identifies the need, then we can pull and if it is useful for the rest of global community can kind of pull their resources and work together to gain funding to to improve improve what we're offering. So what we're doing is in our FN UK each instance around the world organizes, maybe slightly differently, but all based on sociocratic and cooperative principles, but for us in the FN UK we're non hierarchical we're a sociocracy, a holocracy. All of our decisions are made by consent. And we prioritize transparency, operating like a sociocracy means that we have we operate as a circle structure. So the coordination circle of all 12 of us is the main circle. But then within that we have different circles that essentially have not ownership is the wrong way but like empowered to work in their sphere of zone of genius, I guess, without me. I could explain a bit more about that, but I'm just aware of the time. We've been on a bit of a journey over the last year of really working on our governance structure together and how we operate as a sociocracy, what that means and it's been a really interesting process for every member of the team. I think that's it. Yeah. That's it for me. Thank you Kaley for that. Really interesting as well. I'm just going to leave a bit of time if anyone wants to add any questions in the chat, please do. I'm really sorry not to be able to see you all. It's just a webinar format is what it is. Yeah, do please. Put some questions if you have them. There's a question about how do platform cops in general later open source software so I'll just give a general response and then maybe Kaley you can expand on that as well from the point of view open food network. So, so when I in the unfound accelerator what I tend to distinguish but of the platform called business is sort of three layers. One is the business. One is the tech infrastructure and what what it's built and one is the data that is collated and managed and so on. And it's really up to each platform co-op how they manage those things and how open all three of them are or how managed the membership and the use of them is. And also how true to their values they can be with all three. So, it might be that you can be like okay 100% co-op values from the point of view of the business but at the start you might need to start using preparatory software just to test your business case. The idea would be that you can build all your own software, but some might just need to be using, you know even Google phones at the start or things like that to just test your to your business case. And so it's really up to the co-op then to decide how much they want for example that software to be open, how much they want their data to be open, how much do they want their membership to be to be open or how much they wanted to remain controlled so they can manage it in a different way. And so from the point of view of software we've seen different cases we've got open food network that is mostly open source. And correct me if I'm wrong but Kaylee I'll hand it over to you afterwards but I think it's the brand that it's licensed rather than the software but I'll let you fill that talk more about that. We've seen others like co-op cycle where the software is only can only be used by other co-ops and they won't allow other people to use it. And then we have the mobility factory which is actually for electric cars. And there it's a network of local organizations that you can use to rent cars and for them the software is preparatory and only for the members of that platform co-op to be able to use it. So everyone approaches it in a slightly different way and their advantages and disadvantages of both aspects. But Kaylee I'll pass it over to you if you want to just comment a bit more on the case of open food network which is really fascinating and interesting. I can comment on it from my perspective. I'm not a technical person but the way that I understand it is some of the issues around the food system that we're seeing are access to land. And so I think from a philosophical point of view, believing in the commons is a belief that I think many of the open food networks share so it kind of translates that open source technology being almost like a digital commons that having that as part of our business or organizational ethos is important to us. But obviously that can come sometimes cause issues. I think there's been a case of the software being used in the US by a big tech took the software but I don't know all the details of that case but it means that it's not that the software is essentially open for anyone to use. And yet the in terms of our brand that open food network where we have a global team that's involved if any if any country wants to set up a new instance, then that's a process that's kind of held by the global team as a whole. So our brand is, is yes, it's licensed to couldn't just set up an open food network without kind of engaging with the whole community. But yeah, I don't know if that's been an interesting answer or not. And also I would say you've got a lot of information on your website as well and there's a community handbook as well where you can find out more more about that so. And then I don't know if you want to comment on this particular aspect or if you want to comment more generally on the tech side of the challenges of tech. It's an open source but we did actually use an off the shelf. SAS system so software as a service service. To do ours and we've got future plans to move away from that potentially in future, but it's quite a costly process for us as a relatively small platform co-op at the minute so when we scale the challenges will be quite different. There's a lot of potential for us in the future. I always love hearing about open food network because there's a lot of potential for scaling across whether we do it as more of a federated co-op structure with lots of smaller co-ops or whether, especially globally or whether it's not but in terms of open source we'd like to collaborate a bit more in future and we have actually got some funding to look at something around that as well in the future. So I think those opportunities will become more apparent to help us in the future. That's exciting. Thanks, Tim. And there's one more question that I just wanted to take before we wrap up this. Do you know of platform co-ops that use token blockchain to manage ownership and governance. And so, excitingly on the last unfound accelerator, last year's fund accelerator that was a platform co-op that does use blockchain and they're called the platform DAO. And it's a publishing platform. I won't go into detail because it's quite complex. What is interesting that's coming out of that is that we are developing articles of association that can be used by DAOs which distributed autonomous organizations. So there's been a lot of learning through that process and so as soon as we've got the template for the articles of association will be putting them online. There is a growing interest from the DAO community towards co-ops because there is such an overlap. So I'm accepting to see more and more examples. We internally at co-ops UK don't have experience and knowledge of DAOs but what we can do is provide what sort of articles of association can be mapped onto a DAO. I hope that answers your question. Just let me see. I don't know if they have, just as just asking for details. I don't know if they have an active website yet. Let me just see. Any other questions before we end? Just if I find the website I can email it to you as soon as I find it. Okay, any final questions before we wrap up? Great. So just to conclude, I'm just going to share my screen again and I also just wanted to say if you hear of anyone who wants to set up a platform call, please let them know that the accelerator will be starting in April and the applications are open until the 5th of March. And do put them in touch with me. I'm always happy to have a chat with anyone who's interested in starting. And do check out, sign allies and open food network. The websites, the platforms are really useful for anyone. Great. Okay. Thank you everyone and thank you very much to our hosts, to our speakers and to Jen for helping with all the tech in the background. Thank you very much to everyone.