 Okay, hello and welcome to this high webinar. Thanks very much for joining us this afternoon. My name is Petra Morris, and I'm here from the Corbettis UK. If you're just joining us for this webinar you'll see on your screen hopefully that we've just popped a little poll there. So before we start doing introductions and getting into the presentations, I'd be grateful if you could just complete the poll and that will give us an idea of who's online and what your interests are and where you're up to in your journey, potentially of becoming a platform cooperative. So I don't know how many we've got online at the moment, and people might still be joining us if they're with us. So while you're just doing that poll, I think we'll just wait to see who's answered. It looks like there's some still joining us. So if you're still joining us, so please do take a minute to just complete the poll. And then we'll share the results of that. There's more to join so I'll just give it a few more minutes if that's okay. And so while you're doing that, I'll just do a quick introduction of who I am and why we're doing this, this webinar today. My name is Petra Morris. I work for cooperatives UK. We're based in Manchester but we cover the whole of the country, and we support cooperatives and membership organization. And we, this high webinar is part of a series of five webinars that we're delivering. There will be others going into the new year that you can also attend. And it's delivered as part of our high business support program, which is funded in partnership with the cooperative bank. We're delighted that they have supported us over the last six years. And we've supported over 1000 cooperatives during that time. So I thought it would be introducing our speakers today we've got a great line of speakers, including my colleague, who will be talking about platform cooperatives as well as a couple of cooperatives that we have supported and our existing platform cooperatives. So I think there's people still answering the poll as they're coming in so thank you for that for just completing that poll. And we'll, we'll share the results of that in the moment, and then I'll start introducing our speakers. In terms of housekeeping this is a webinar we are recording. It does mean as a webinar that you can't share your pictures, your camera, and we have muted everyone. While we have the presentations please take the time to use the chat at the bottom hopefully everyone's familiar now with zoom, and they know how to pose questions in the chat. And then we'll try and answer those questions, hopefully at the before the end of the session, if not in the chat itself. As well as the presentations on platform cooperatives will also share where you can get further support if you are looking to set up by the platform cooperative or a cooperative more generally. So I hope that's all right. I don't know if any more are joining us. So I think we can end the poll now and share the results and see what what that gives us. So I think. So that's that kind of says to me that not many people know very much about platform cooperatives and hence you joined us today so that's good to know. And hopefully you'll have a better understanding after the presentations today. And yeah, and so that that's kind of what we were expecting in terms of the results. So there might still be others joining us but I think we'll we'll get started and I'll introduce our first speaker. And so if we can stop sharing those results if that's okay please. Okay, so thanks for again for joining us so I'm delighted to introduce our first speaker and Vika is Rogers works with me at corporatives UK and she's our program manager on one of our programs called unfound. And we've been working very closely by the high business support program to support new platform cooperatives. So Vika is going to hopefully give you no overview of what they are, and also will talk tell you a little bit more about what support might be available towards the end so over to you Vika thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you, Petra. Thank you everyone for filling in the poll is really useful just for us to have an understanding of like who attends these webinars and how we can shape them to support you in the best way. And so yes my name is Vika Rogers, I work for corporatives UK I'm a program manager for new car ventures, and I run the program called unfound, which is a program set up to facilitate the development of the platform corporative sector in the UK. It's delivered by us a corrupted UK in partnership with stir to action, which is very interesting organization that organizes trainings and has a quarterly magazine on the democratic economy, and is supported by the corporate bank. We do a variety of activities but our main focus is providing business support to platform cops but we also do work around awareness raising trying to channel funding towards platform cops and somewhere around policy. Before we dive into platform coops. I just wanted to sort of start from what we understand what we define as a platform business so that we're just sort of like on the same page as we move through the presentation. There's no specific definition of what a platform business is there lots of different words that are used to describe it I've just put together this definition because I find it useful, and useful for sort of framing what platform coops are. But a platform business is a business that uses a digital platform to trade connect people and or pull resources and data. And what we've seen in the past decade is really the rise of these type of businesses, and the rise of the so called platform economy. The, you know, digital platforms are sort of penetrating all aspects of our life, often making it much easier for us to do things be it order food meet our friends connect with loved ones, etc, etc. Unfortunately, they're there also a lot of quite negative consequences that are being generated by it by these platforms so I'm sure you're aware of most of them but I've just to summarize some of the main issues in the next slides. So, data is becoming more and more a crucial, you know, topic of debate and data ethics, etc. And unfortunately, you know, currently platforms collect and hold large amounts of user data and do not always disclose what they do with it or do not necessarily use ethical practices. They often have algorithms that contain bias that might skew the way the platforms operate. And they're very centralized as well and this means both a lot of control in society due to how much data they control and how much profits they're making and how big these corporations are becoming, but also control on the users themselves to the point that you know they can deactivate an account from one day to the other effectively firing workers. So they're really undermining some basic worker rights and they're facilitating dependency on precarious income streams and working conditions and have been fighting quite hard against any form of collective actions. They've also, you know, in some cases really created problems for local communities, Airbnb is a typical example of this, how local communities have really suffered from the expansion of Airbnb. But also something that I think isn't said enough is the success of these companies is really based on very, you know, the problems that we have in our society. And so they wouldn't be so successful if unemployment rates weren't high if there wasn't such high inequality. And they have really benefit from both the financial crisis and the current COVID crisis they have exponentially really grown in the last two years and it's really horrifying. And, you know, many of us think that it's, it's, there's very much is tied to their business model that is extracted in nature so it's based on the fact of like extracting disproportionate value from other people's assets and labor while offering limited rights or even value in return. So this is also driven by their financing model so many of these platforms are funded by venture capital that expects very high returns and expects a seat at the table and control over the organization as well. And so to maximize profits and growth for VC funded funders, there's a tendency to create to create other national global monopolies by destroying competition or buying it up, and also very aggressive lobbying of governments and or attempts to anticipate and circumvent regulation. So this is all quite scary and horrifying, I know. Um, but one of the points that you know we make in the platform called movement is, is asking the question, is it really the technology that's the root cause of these problems, or if we change the business model with that actually solve some of the problems or keep in check some of these problems. So what if platforms were collectively owned and democratically controlled, what kind of businesses and platforms would we see emerge. What would we see, you know, how would delivery be run if it was actually running controlled by its writers, how would Spotify run if it was controlled and run by musicians or listeners. How would Airbnb run if it was actually reinvesting in its local community. And what's really exciting is that the cooperative movement is providing alternatives to to these models. There's a platform called cycle that is a platform called for writers, we have resonate which is a platform called owned by musicians and listeners. We have fair BNB, which is a platform called for travel rental that reinvest any surplus in the community. So it's really exciting to see that we can do things in a different way. But let's dive a bit more deeper into what platform co-ops are. So, basically, if we use you know a similar definition to the one that I started with a platform co-op is a democratically owned and controlled business that uses an online platform or a mobile app to trade connect people and all resources and data. This is really quite broad and we can, you know, think of a lot of different types of businesses that could be part of this. But the main point is that platform co-ops operate according to cooperative principles and values. And what I find interesting is that you know this can impact both this impacts both the business model, but also can impact the way that we use technology and data. We're going to go into detail of all the principles. You know there's lots of information on our website and other webinars where you can find out more but I hope that just like reading through the principles you can see how how this can really impact the way we build digital businesses. The other thing that I find really interesting is like how can we harness the power of technology that has allowed the existing platforms to be so successful for co-ops. And what can we learn from that. So, you know, one of the main, you know, aspects of these platforms is that they eliminate the middlemen. And so there's a direct connection between people or between businesses and people or between our business to business. And there's really something value in that that we can build from. There's a real push for autonomy, both in how we, you know, workers how many hours we want to work how we want to be contracted but also as users and the possibility to choose between different services. Technology allows people to collectively participate more easily in democratic decisions and the barriers to access to certain services can be reduced. Also technology allows us because of the easy access and the way the internet works to grow businesses more easily because of the network effect. And though platform cops do have, you know, high startup costs costs, they're not astronomical compared to if we compare them to other businesses that aim to scale rapidly. And so you can actually start start with quite, you know, without needing large assets, obviously, as you want to grow you need, you need more and more finance etc. But to start off, you can start experimenting immediately without needing to large assets. But I think there's extreme potential in this model. And so let's start with some examples and it's great, you know, we've got signalized here, who's going to talk a bit more of their experience later. Here I've put like four platform cops that really focus on this relationship between the providers and receivers of the service and eliminating the middleman. In some cases, both providers and receivers become members of the cooperative, and it's really part of the purpose of the, of the corporatives to sort of work on on this, these relationships and transforming the power dynamics between the relationships. They are set up as a worker co-op so in the case of red, the red brick language school which is an online school for English teachers. For now it's set up as a worker co-op because they have a much more transitional interaction with students that you know might take on courses for one or two years maximum but the relationship doesn't continue over time. Yeah, it's very interesting how not only it's changing the business model but also the dynamics and the power relations between the providers and receivers of a service. There I've put these other three examples to describe also a different type of model of platform car and I'll start with open food network and co-op cycle and it's great we've also got K here from open food network so we'll hear more about their experience. But in the case of open food network and co-op cycle what I find really interesting is that the platform provides an infrastructure for more traditional cooperative businesses. And so in the case of co-op cycle you have a platform that then local groups in different countries just set up their local worker co-op that uses that platform. In open food network it connects existing businesses they might be co-ops they might not be co-ops, but it really shows how the internet technology can support also existing and more traditional forms of co-operatives, and I think that that's really powerful. And finally co-cars is another type I would say it's where, so co-cars is basically a platform for hiring electric cars and it's really an example where a community comes together by some assets, electric cards for their community and then the platform is what allows the community to manage that resource between them. And I'm expecting we're going to see more and more of these, maybe even in the energy sector for example, but also a new sort of space that is developing that we don't have really examples in the UK is how this could work around data for example. And we can go more in detail in that if anyone's interested in the Q&A. So hopefully I still have a little bit more time just to tell you like how you know how we've seen platform co-ops being set up so this is really sort of observing how things have happened and also I'll give you a bit more guidance on how aware and how you can find support. So this is mapping on mapping the journey of a platform co-op startup on the sort of more traditional startup language, which is actually changing really rapidly so I wouldn't get too stuck on these pre-seed and seed words because it's just changing very rapidly. But the main point that I want to get across is like I've tried to divide the stages up into three stages. So there's a lot of work that goes in even before you incorporate and I call this a setup phase and this is when you're testing your business case, you're finding your team, you're working out is a co-op right for me, which is the most appropriate structure. So this might take at least a year unless you've already got a team and you can move really rapidly. There's maybe actually a journey if you haven't done so yet because I can't see the chat, there's a link to a more detailed sort of founder journey of everything that's contained in these steps. After incorporation is when you can start finally attracting funding and you can start trading. What we see in this phase is not necessarily a final version of the platform, but a lot of experimentation going on and trying out with prototypes understanding what do our members need, what do our new users need, how should we, you know, modify the business model and a business plan around what we're learning as we're going through this. Within one or two years usually but you know this will change immensely from platform to platform co-op. There's usually a phase in which a platform co-op decides that it's the moment to grow that they're really ready to launch or they might actually need funding to develop the platform to a stage that they feel that they can launch it more publicly. And so they will look for external funding and then there's so there's then a phase and depending on the type of the co-op it might decide to grow sort of in a slow sustainable way or it might decide to want to scale really rapidly because if they don't take a part of the market then that the business won't be able to sustain itself over the long term. And if we look at like funding. So before you incorporate you can't really accept grants as an organization. So what we've seen is that platform co-ops have been able to obtain for example found a ground grant so ground grants that are just for the individual who's exploring a pioneer idea for people or we also encourage to use crowdfunding. It's not you don't do crowdfunding for the money if you get very little money but it's a really important step to start testing your business case identifying if there are people out there that believe in your idea who are going to be you know your potential users. So it forces you to define your purpose so there's it's more it's not really necessary about how much you raise but all the learning that comes from that. Once you incorporate we've seen platform co-ops raise in the first year even before they have a functioning platform around 75 80 K, 80,000 K. And when you're thinking of this, if you're a platform co-op founder, it's very unlikely that you'll find grant funders that will fund you just because you're a platform co-op. We're not really at the stage that grant funders are like oh yeah platform co-ops the solution to everything. So my advice is really think about your sector and the grant funders that are allowed aligned with your purpose and approach them and as part of your mission you're also describing why your governance structure has you know an important role in defining and making sure you deliver on your mission, but it's not enough just to say you're a co-op. And then year one or two when when co-ops you know have a team that they're ready to launch a share offer they've got, you know, clarity on what they need the money for etc we've seen on average sort of around 300 them raising around 50,000, 375,000 in community shares which I'll talk a little bit about. So you can see how the equity which is a form of equity investment so you can see how that creates a real jump in the form of financing. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep on looking for grants as well in the following years. So this is just a chart for anyone who really likes numbers. But I just wanted to share just a few of the details. So community shares are a very specific type of equity that is using cooperatives by cooperatives. I'm not going to go into the details of how they work but I provide some links for further information. But just to give you a sense of how much is being raised up to now. There's been a total of around 3 million investment in platform co-ops through from the community but also from institutional investors who match the amount of funds raised from the community and on average we've seen share profits of around 373k. The first to really use this form of capital. So this capital is mainly used for local businesses. Sorry local communities reclaiming local assets for example be a community hall or community cinema, but is slowly being adopted also by platform co-ops. The first to really adopt it were media co-ops that were already operating as a worker co-op. So for example new internationalist, positive news, and decided then to transition to a model in which they included their membership as part of the co-op. It was then followed by co-ops like Sinelize and Equal Care in the care sector and then more recently we've seen one of the biggest raises was with co-cars that they raised around 600k in community shares. So just to conclude, I'll just go through a bit of the support that is available for platform co-ops. Let me just check on time. So we are about to announce a new accelerator program that will be running next year from April to June. The accelerator program is a business support program of 10 weeks for a cohort of up to 8 to 12 teams that are really at that early stage of setting up their platform co-ops. So it's really before they incorporate or maybe they've just incorporated and they really need support in setting the foundations of their business. And it ends with a pitch event where towards which the cooperative bank has contributed 10,000 pound price fund. So it's really for teams at the start of their journey and that are looking to register in the UK by the end of next year. Deadline, so the 6th of March is the deadline for applications and the accelerator, as I said, will run from April to June. And here are just a few links for the, I think if Jen, if you could paste some of these links into the chat. If you have any information about the accelerator will be running webinars about the accelerator on the 18th of January and the 15th of February. Do register to our newsletter. There should be a link in the chat for that. And, you know, that's where we communicate about any, any news, any events, any programs that we're launching. And do visit our website while you'll find much more details about the founder journey, how to finance your platform cop and case studies. But also my broadly and Petra might refer to this again at the end of the webinar to visit our coops UK website more broadly where we have a step to step tool that can really help you through the stages of like what you need before and also explore the other support programs that we have that are not necessarily specifically tailored for platform cobs but can support you in some aspects of developing your business. So the hive, which is, you know, promoting these webinars can provide up to 10 days of bespoke one business support. It's an advice team that can provide support in a lot of different areas, and we also run a lot of training sessions. So do visit our website for that. And do visit also the community shares unit where, though it's more, it's not specific to platform cobs you can find out a lot more detail about how community shares work. Yeah. And finally, it's not only us that copters UK working on platform cobs as an amazing international network of platform cobs. We've just had a conference in November in Berlin, all the videos will be online shortly. So do visit platform.co is the website. The platform cooperative consortium which is run from the new school in New York also runs an international course once a year called platform cop now course. That is really good, especially for researchers I would say because it really gives a good framing of what platform cobs are. And then there are a lot of there are a few international lists that it's really worth being on. And that's it. These are my contact details if anyone needs to get in touch and I'll hand it over to Petra. Thank you. Thanks very much Vika that's a really great overview of platform corporates and it's exciting to see the alternatives that we already have set up and and you know some of those platform corporates that are already in existence and I'll shortly introduce our first couple of speakers who can talk from their own experience of setting up their own corporates. And it was great to see as well that there's lots of support there for anyone who's looking at starting their journey to be a platform corporates including the accelerator course and we've posted lots of links in in the chat. I haven't seen too many questions yet so I guess you're all holding on to your questions at the end in the chat but I did. I did pick up a quick question and I don't know if there's a quick answer to this Vika if you want to do that now but I think somebody asked when you were talking about funders and match funding and institutions funding community shares. Someone asked what type of institutions generally have funded when when and so I don't know if there's a quick answer to that already want to hold that onto that to the end but that's one question I did pick up. Should we maybe I'll answer at the end. Okay, that's fine then. Okay, but just it obviously people were listening so that's good. So without further to do then I'll introduce our first second speaker of this session. This is the founder member of Sinolize and she's also the business and development manager of Sinolize. I've been delighted to work with Jen over the last I don't know how long it's been now but we were able to support Sinolize through the high business port program and I think also through unfound. So it's great to have an example of a platform cognitive that's been on this journey and Sinolize as we said mentioned before they're there for deaf interpreters and also the community they serve. And then a great example of alternative co-op model to what generally is happening out there so I'll I'll hand over to Jen and and hopefully she can share her slides and talk to you about her experience so thank you Jen. Thank you Petra. Good morning. I'm sorry good afternoon everyone. I'm Jen Smith from Sinolize co-op. So let's just find my slides. Can everyone see that okay. So as Petra mentioned we're a multi stakeholder cooperative of sign language interpreters and deaf users. So we have actually three user groups we have our investor members from the community share offer as well. And this is sums up why we were set up because this is the kind of story that happens about once or twice a month in the community where an interpreter isn't provided and the family have to step in which is actually against the NHS accessible information standards that are in place. And this is a shocking and these are the stories that get in the media quite often there are more more stories out there that we just don't hear. Now there are many reasons for these stories happening. And usually it's to do with many of the reasons that because already stated that agencies are acting as the middlemen quite often with no knowledge of the community or it could be that the staff just don't know how to book. So there's quite frequently the contracts change hands, and it's quite difficult to communicate with frontline staff about who they should be calling to book an interpreter. And there's also one of the biggest problems is a complete disconnect from the deaf community. So quite often the deaf person who has an appointment might not know whether an interpreter has been booked on that day or not, which causes quite a lot of worry for the deaf user. And one of the reports was that it's really important is the sign health sick of it report, which says this actually causes a lot of a loss of value for the public sector when interpreters aren't provided. So if you then have go on to have misdiagnosis or poor treatments, it actually costs quite a lot of money. So that's that's the background to why we were set up. And so my background is actually as an interpreter of 16 years, having seen these issues on the front line, and also having deaf family members seeing that from a user point of view, and being part of interpreter organizations where everybody's talking about the same thing So our ethos and what we offer is that we're the experts in delivery because we are the end users and the end suppliers, they are our user groups. And also we are bringing specialist knowledge there are other specialist providers out there but we're the most direct form of specialist knowledge if you like because we're a community owned business as a cooperative. And we have that built in access to our communities via our membership meetings so we had a recent one on Monday with our communication professionals are interpreters. So we have this constant consultation with the community so that we can find out exactly what's going on on the ground. So this is just a brief overview of our journey so around about March 2019 which I think was when I first met you Petra on one of the workshops that coops UK had run where I was sort of knew that the co-op was probably the answer to some of the issues that we were having. But I wasn't exactly sure about, you know even reading through all of the wonderful resources on coops UK I think I needed to be in that face to face meeting with Petra or a webinar online to actually get a grip on what we could do and I think I came away from that workshop with about 10 pages of notes and actions about what we had to do afterwards so I got together a couple of other interpreters that I knew understood that would all be part of the union my colleagues set that up. So we've been we've been reading documents for for public sector tenders for years before before that and picking out the holes in the lack of standards around interpreting and what perhaps private businesses were allowed to get away with because the standards weren't there. And we've been doing a lot of representation central and local government and statutory organizations about this. So, moving on a couple of months we applied for the hive pretty much straight away and got lots of support from coops UK that was absolutely fundamental in our journey I think that put us on a real springboard to development. And then we quickly got some other funds that the type that the crowd mentioned for, say, pioneers, somebody with an idea or a group of people with an idea. So we very quickly got some financing in place incorporated with the FCA assigned code.io, which looking back at it is a terrible name and I held my hands up for that. And we've been very quickly around the start of the pandemic launched a crowdfunding at the time we were like who who launches a crowdfunding at the start of the pandemic, it was crazy but we've been planning it for months so we just had to roll with it. And luckily that was. And again as we have said, part of that was actually about raising our profile and not about the money that we received but also the money that we received was really fundamental in paying for some of the earlier business costs that we had. And then rolling on to June 2020 we rebranded and then September 2020 around about then we did the community shares launch which took a long time to prepare for. So it wasn't an easy thing to do buying these stretch but it's put us in a really good place now. We had a really big win in August 2021 which where we gained a place as a sole supplier on a very large NHS framework in Merseyside where the whole of the cooperative membership is based. And that has been an absolutely phenomenal success which we wouldn't have been able to do I don't believe without having done the community shares raise because that has brought in the working capital that we needed to show that we can be a viable business and also raised our profile immensely to show what we actually meant business we were here to stay and we knew what we were doing, and we were the experts in delivery. And that's just completely set us apart from other people in the market. I'm not going to talk too much about this slide but I wanted to leave it in just because I think that we're now part of the post COVID economy and I think part of the reason for getting a place on that framework is we really stood out. We've been told the feedback that we had from the commissioners is that we stood out in comparison to anybody else because of our USP as not just being the experts in delivery. But the way that we were a community business, and we were lucky that that particular procurement exercise had quite a high. It placed quite a lot of importance on social value and had because of that in the tender I think that's why we really shown through. And I think that some of the changes that we're now seeing, and that have been in place for a while to do with public services social value local commissioning guidelines. We're really trying to piggyback on on that and try to be the alternative that's out there in the market so for us it's being in the right place at the right time. And covids actually as much as it probably set us back by three to six months in our development at the time. It's also brought a lot of positivity. And I think we're on quite a rapid trajectory of growth now because of it. So how do we compete with everybody else that's out there sign language interpreting as an incredibly competitive market with a lot of big players, a lot of the people that have the contracts out there are actually spoken language businesses that have tacked on sign language. And that's where we come in saying but your, your, your providers are not experts in what they're doing and this is why the deaf community are suffering and interpreters aren't getting paid sustainable fees. So we compete by being the alternative by being the specialist but also by being community owned and putting ourselves as an opposite as an alternative to the gig economy platforms. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about where to start with all of this. And I think for us it was about I've talked to a lot of founders and we've been part of some social entrepreneur programs and business programs. I've talked to a lot of startups over the last two years. And what we've found is that we had the right people right at the very start to push us forward. I think had it just been one or two people doing it, it would have been much more difficult and a much slower way of growing the business, but also finding our USP and our market segment. I mean the majority of this is normal business planning. So it was vital for us to be a multi stakeholder model rather than a worker cooperative. And that's just that just reflects how much the community we feel that the community needs to be involved as end users and how they can be involved because they're actually accessible to us. And then I think when we started looking back at it we were doing quite a lot with things like Google spreadsheets and just we just got started and and in fact looking back at it we probably could have started earlier but we wanted to get more things in place. And then we just got the business, the business basics in place, such as endurance our communications and the website, and our existing landing page is actually been tweaked from the very first landing page that we have. And we've actually got a platform in beta at the moment that's not really publicly available. And that's still being piloted at the moment along with the video relay service or a video interpreting service. So, the other thing that we did was we got users involved quite early on in the process, especially because there's tech involved. And looking back there was there were a couple of things that we probably, well, we did get I hold my hand up we did get wrong, because we didn't have the opportunity to validate and part of that was around not having access to NHS staff on the frontline and asking how they might book interpreters. I think we validated a lot with the deaf community. We validated a lot with our interpreting users as well. But we it was very difficult because around that time, it was also the start of the pandemic, and obviously the whole of the NHS went into crisis mode. So we, we were on the verge of trying to approach people and then we just had to go we can't do this right now the NHS is not in a place where they're going to want to talk to us. So we didn't we didn't have a chance to validate some of our assumptions which we're having to go back a bit on now, but that it's not the end of the world I think some of the, some of the assumptions that we did make were luckily right and the others were fixing now. And so that's just a sneak preview not many people get to see that but that's the interpreters on the platform. I hope they don't mind me showing you. And we haven't onboarded the entire interpreting community because I think there's still some reticence about the tech and what people are going to be able to see or not so we're on, we're on a quite a long journey of working with especially the deaf community actually because there's a lot of digital exclusion. So having a few outreach events and it's shocking, you know we we had eight new deaf user members the other day from an outreach session that we did, and five of them don't have email addresses. So that's a particular subsection of the community but that's something that we have to be really mindful of about how we gain, because this what you're seeing is the view of the interpreters but for deaf people they can also log on to the platform and state that because you can see the hearts there they can state who their preferred interpreters are or not. And what we're trying to do is get deaf people on boarded onto the platform so that we use that information in the bookings process. And that's quite difficult to do at the moment also with the pandemic so we're on quite a long term journey with some of the platform and some of the parts of the tech and reaching out to deaf users but also on the interpreting side working with people who don't want to be on the platform and finding out why and doing a lot of reassurance. So what deaf users get when they have an appointment is they get a text message saying who their interpreter is on the day with a link to their profile. We had some really good feedback over the last couple of months since we started the NHS contracts and started trialling with this, where deaf people interpreters will arrive and the deaf person would say, oh I knew it was you coming look I can see your face on my phone. And, you know, like with a little preview and the interpreter going oh that's brilliant and how did you how did you get that and then the deaf person going, I don't know I think the GP sent it to me and the interpreter having to say no no no signal. So we've had some really nice moments and really nice feedback and nobody in the country does that or takes the time to do it so this is the value. The primary value at the moment of the platform is that level of communication with deaf users and the interpreters and having visibility of deaf users likes and dislikes as well. So that's that. So what's next for us. Basically, we need to keep testing the platform keep adding features and functionality. We've also got the video service in the pilot phase. We are trialling that with some GP practices. We, we believe that several GPs are now trying to move their appointments from face to face to telephone appointments. So this is where the video service is going to come into play over the next couple of months. So we'll see if the take up increases with the deaf community and also the NHS. And then we need to do more outreach and community work if anyone knows of any funding out there for that kind of thing please do let me know because we need to fund that first. We also want to really increase our membership which is difficult in the time of a pandemic as well this is more on the deaf user side but we're doing we're starting that kind of work now. We're also recruiting for more administrators to do more of the background work. And what we need to do is gain even more contracts and increase the amount of business that we do. And just keep investing in the platform and tech which is what the community shares funding has been able the community shares raises enabled us to do so we're, we're talking to several developers at the moment doing a lot of background work on that. So that's where we're at in our journey, two years on. And that's what we're doing. And that's how to contact us and I'm happy to answer any questions later. Thank you very much. That's great Jen and I hadn't realized it was all the way back in 2019 that we first were able to help you through cops UK and the high business program so it's great to see how much progress you've made in that time and one thing you never mentioned. That was how great you are on social media and, you know if you want to see how, how to do it well. And, Jen's the person to speak to. And I also heard, you know how much difference it made to the procurement and getting your contract to being a cooperative and it's really, you know, positive to hear that that that was a USP for you so that's really positive. I'm just aware of the time and I don't want to lose that time for our last speaker in this session. And so I'm delighted to introduce our next platform cooperative. So K read is going to talk to you about their cooperative called the open food network, which allows food growers and food retail to essentially get to their customers more effectively through through that platform so hopefully while I'm speaking case got a slides up and it's ready to go. And so we will listen to Kay thanks very much for joining us and then hopefully there'll be some questions and some time at the end to answer and ask questions so thanks very much Kay. Thank you. And thanks for inviting us to come and share today. And so I'm Kay, I'm a member of the food network UK admin team. I have joined the team about two years ago so I don't, I wouldn't really give the kind of founders generally justice I'm afraid so I can say that we were founded by two members of the admin team. And then Davis and Nick where and they were part of the grassroots food movements they're very much kind of that often has kind of blossomed from from the food movement. I'm also a global collaboration, building open source software and resources to support community food enterprises. The software we create supports innovations in food systems that enable producers and communities to create food systems that serve them. And so our goal has always been that the community of food enterprises using the open food network are co owners, designers and creators of the platform. We work with food enterprises that are driven by communities who have social and ecological values at the core of what they do. So our vision is for an interconnected food system of food enterprises which exist and thrive in a food economy which is much more diverse, vibrant and inclusive, celebrating both provenance and culture. We also want to see improved markets for ecologically produced food to encourage more producers to adopt ecologically sustainable food producing practices, building topsoil and biodiversity in our ecosystem. And we also want healthy communities where community food enterprises produces and local institutions collaborate together to enable communities to have better access to better food. And so our easy to use software platform, and which offers online shop fronts to our users and with lots of tools and features that help them to run their community food enterprise and just make the whole process a lot more easy for them. And we also offer lots of learning resources. And that's one of the kind of major benefits what we do is that we don't just offer the software platform but also like a wealth of different resources and knowledge and expertise that is shared among our members. And that's where some of the work that I've been doing kind of things that I've been helping food and marketing, and also kind of facilitating events and webinars that food enterprises can get to know each other and the members can get to know each other and share their own expertise, and then from each other so that we're stronger together. And some of the benefits for having for running a platform platform as a cooperative is that what we do and what we create is grown from the real needs of food hubs and farmers across the UK and globally. And basically through clovered it really showed how vital digital infrastructure can be, but without the cooperative economy the gains are private so one of the main benefits of running up in this way is that all of the, all of the benefits and all of the games are then kind of plug back into the community to the community benefits from, from successes. So building software and social answers difficult fund and our funding model works by spreading the costs and building the collective. And we pull our funds globally to pay for our software and delivery team. So just a little bit about the often UK admin team so we had our first gathering together face to face as we're completely remote working organization, a couple of weeks ago. We were kind of in the process of collaborating together of how, how we run things in the UK. And so some of the ethos that we have as a team is that we're non hierarchical, we operate as a sociocracy. And that means that all of our decision making is made by consent, and we operate with kind of complete transparency. And, and Bucky's a kind of done aside silos, we really kind of foster each member of the team or the community to have as much knowledge as possible about different things going on with the community. It's so great. Nothing else in my notes that won't stay. And also just that our team mustn't be expanded during COVID. So that's why over the last couple of years we're looking at collaborating much more together as a team of how we operate together. exciting process for us. So that's kind of all I have prepared for my slides today, but I'm open for questions in the Q&A, but here's all the different ways you can get to know more about us. I just want to say we're also recruiting at the moment as well for some new positions within our team, so I might share a link in the chat if that's okay just to our recruitment page so you can see what opportunities are available with the OFEN team. And also we're always looking for new food enterprises to join our community. Sorry. Great, Kay, that was... Sorry, yep. Thanks so much for that, Kay. A great overview, a very quick overview of what we do. I didn't catch how long has the open food network been running now as a cooperative? As a cooperative I think it started as a kind of a cooperative in Australia, so it's been running globally for quite a long time, Kay, I think since 2015 was one and also one of our food enterprises, the team of IE Food Hub, so also started the OFEN together in 2015 I think. That's great. Thanks so much, Kay, for joining us today and giving us that overview that was really helpful. So we've seen, we've heard today from Vika's, given us an overview of what Platform Cog Tizarre and Jen has talked about to her is it finalized or signalized, whatever they want to be called. Co-operative and the open food network. I think there was a couple of questions in the chat. We still have a few more minutes left before the end of this session, so I'll pick those up now. So I think one of the questions I'd already mentioned to Vika was around institutional funding for Platform Cog Tizarre, so Vika, do you want to pick that up? Yeah, more than happy to. So you can find from our website and from some of the links we posted in the chat. I referenced the Community Shares Unit. The Community Shares Unit also runs a booster fund which provides both grant funding for people who want to do a community share issue and match funding in the form of institutional investment. However, this is really tailored to businesses that are place-based. So it's not really tailored, you know, for Platform Cogs. So it's not sort of like necessarily granted that you can access that type of funding. But I would definitely explore the website and also if you're looking for support on how to do a community share offer, it's really the place to go. But what I would say is we're really interested in connecting with grant funders that could potentially invest in community shares with Platform Cogs. So, you know, if you start having conversations with grant funders and you need our support and sort of like how do we translate community shares in a way that a grant funder will understand et cetera, you know, do get in touch. We're looking to identify what type of grant funders would be interested in providing institutional investment. But again, I think at this stage of the development of the sector, it's very sector-specific rather than just, oh, it's a platform co-op business. What I am going to paste in the chat is this is two years old, unfortunately, but I did do some work two years ago on mapping out the tech for good funders. So I'm going to put this is a public document that we've shared before. I'm just going to put that in the chat and it's just a spreadsheet with a list of potential tech for good funders that you can use. Yeah, thanks for that. If I can just add that through our Community Shares Booster Programme that Co-operatives UK, we ourselves are institutional investors and we've much funded quite a lot of community share offers and societies out there. And I know quite often, particularly when it's linked to assets and communities, but I think there's also a general question I don't know whether to pick it up here on the Preston Model. I did put a link in the chat if you want to find out more but I think the Preston Model is really around community wealth building and better procurement and it's backed by Preston City Council and we've been working with the council over the years to put Co-operatives on the agenda as a way to better model for delivery of certain services particularly in the community. But there is a link in the chat and I'm happy to pick that up outside of this webinar if anyone wants to know more about that. I think there was a question for Jen specifically on Signalize and I guess around your governance and decision making is that right? I think I saw that. That's probably not a quick and easy question to answer in this session I imagine but I don't know if you want to say anything at this point about that Jen. We use consensus decision we use sociocracy for our decision making in meetings we haven't yet come across a big vote that we had an issue with where there were different sets of views we've taken votes at general members meetings we also have our deaf members meetings and our communication professional or interpreters meetings our voting is as a multi-stakeholder cooperative is 45% waiting to interpreters 45% waiting to deaf users and 10% to investor members we haven't had an issue yet where there was a vote where there was where we had to calculate waiting or there was an issue with a disagreement yet so we haven't come across that yet at all. I don't foresee that we are all quite well aligned in what we're doing at the moment so I think that's why we haven't had any issues yet but if we do then we have that voting criteria that we can use It's probably worth mentioning that the corporates UK the kind of support and advice we give is often around governance and we have training and lots of resources to help corporates to think about that it takes a little bit more thinking about but when it works it makes the cooperative more successful so but that's kind of where our area of expertise is at corporates UK and it is support that we can also provide to existing corporates through the highly business support program so I don't know if there's any other questions we have a couple more minutes left check if we've missed anything I think there was there was a comment from somebody I think based in Canada so it's nice to know we're going out internationally that's great to hear that there's participants internationally just yes so and I think Fika did mention that there's lots happening around the world around this area not just in the UK so we are part of that wider community so welcome all the way from across the water thank you for attending today so if any last questions or observations from our speakers or anything else that I've missed if anyone wants to prompt me so I'll just close the webinar at this point just to mention again that we have recorded it we will make it available online and we'll share the link with everyone that's registered after the session we have more webinars coming up I will be delivering a webinar in a couple of weeks time which is more general about corporatives and how to start them not specific platform corporatives and that we some in the new year as well and you'll see on the screen that we have our main website at corporatives UK with lots of information about how to start your cooperative and the different funded programs that are available so do pop along to that page and say I manage the high business support program so I would be your point of contact for any queries around that and Vika would be your point of contact for unfound and anything to do with platform corporatives so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our speakers thanks very much for joining us today I hope everybody found this a really great introduction and overview and I hope you're inspired to take the next step and come back to us if you have more support questions or we can help you on your journey so we'll finish it there thanks very much