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1. There have been several public presentations of the idea, which have been very well received.

2. We had a stall at a Food & Craft Fair on Fair Green, Diss on 1st July, 2006 at which many people were interested and quite a few signed up. We have a beginning set of members and food providers now.

3. We have put in a funding bid for a pilot project to run for 10 months from Sept. 2006 to Community Chest, and have been told that it is very likely that it will succeed. We will know the results by late July. This will give us about £6,000 to get started.

4. Diss and District Development Partnership are preparing a major funding bid to LEADER+ for £141,0000 of which about £60,000 will be for a full scale version of the Open Food Co-op, and for a community website which will include the software to support it. Again, we have been told that this is very likely to succeed, and will provide us with funding from around January, 2007.

5. We have set up a co-ordinating committee, which has had a first meeting. So far, the following people have agreed to be on it:

Dr. Gary Alexander
Mark Bishop, community development officer, South Norfolk District Council
Nick Saltmarsh, East Anglia Food Link
Jane Taylor, Produced in Norfolk
Josiah Meldrum, Eostre Organics
Michelle Howard, Branch Manager, Norwich & Peterborough Building Society
Petra Barnby, reporter, Diss Mercury



]]> garyalex Sat, 15 Jul 2006 19:52:55 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=10&postId=46
]]> cimurai Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:44:23 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=10&postId=45

climate change talks
]]> Tom Salfield Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:46:50 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=7&postId=44 Gary

---

On 29 Sep 2005, at 16:15, Richard Austin wrote:

Dear Gary,

Here are some reflections on your points:
Hi Richard,
Thanks for spending the time with me yesterday. I found it enjoyable and stimulating. Here is my summary of the key points I can remember, and in no particular order (but please add any more I've missed):

1. Our form of Food Co-op must support rather than compete with local shops. The food clubs using them as depots must draw in enough additional custom to overcome any loss due to their receiving a discount.

And generally reassure retailers that this idea does not threaten their livelihood. They have probably invested years of effort and a fair bit of their money into their project. I like the general feeling of your idea but I think you may underestimate the difficulty of attracting the support of shopkeepers. I am unconvinced that you will be able to deliver 'new' volume to them.

2. The issue of logistics - sharing transport between producers and wholesalers - is important but might not be considered in early pilot projects.

3. The model whereby local shops act as depots for a wider range of goods, pre-ordered by food clubs largely from their existing suppliers, seems sensible.
You would need to consider issues such as loss/damage to goods. Returns, errors and insurances. All of these happen as of course and all need resourcing by someone somewhere.

4. For wholesalers such as Rainbow, electronic ordering is desirable and should not be too difficult, given the state of their existing systems.
For wholesalers, this would be just another order. They may require payment on delivery. They will certainly require someone to sign for the goods. If the retailer pays they accept risk and responsiblity.

5. The Rainbow retail shop in Norwich might be suitable as a testbed for a pilot, if some suitable food club could be recruited in Norwich. You aren't interested in being the organiser of it. Perhaps the Dance Camp community could be a fertile recruiting ground.
In common with most retailers Rainbow offers goods at ???

6. You would like to be kept informed of further developments and could be on a mailing list.
Yes please

7. I was very interested to look around your warehouse and get a sense of the physical size and practical considerations in filling orders.

8. Food buying groups in the past have tended to take on some of the functions of a shop, such as weighing out food, and that can be a burden that stops them.
Food Groups, in contrast to retailers, would probably suspend rules relating to Health and Safety, Soil Association, Weights and Measures and so on. But is this really to the advantage of the end user? In the event of infestation/quality issues etc you will have dismantled the audit trails that the trade has in place.

9. You started out initially quite skeptical and acting as devil's advocate, but seemed much more sympathetic by the end!
It was good to see you Gary, and I am sympathetic to your idea. But I am also skeptical about the viabilility of this idea. I feel protective of wholefood retailers, not just because I am one (because Rainbow is a wholesaler as well it would not be affected by these changes), but because retailers have worked so hard to pioneer and support their communities as well as GM free, Fairtrade, Organic and so on. I really believe that for your idea to work you would need to take a little of their strength. So I think you might be weakening an infrastructure which performs a socially useful role on a local basis.

I suppose what I'm really asking, Gary, is what need Food Groups will fulfil. If your potential members really want to think and act locally they can just stop shopping at J. Sainsbury. I can't help but feel that your proposal is one that would aspire to set up an alternative food distribution system. But the wholefood world already is such an alternative system and we have all had to learn and adopt so many practices over such a long period of time. Eventually you would need to adopt them all (for instance if you became a sizeable distributor of Organic Food you would need to be audited in order to maintain the integrity of the OG system). That sort of dissipation of, and change to, existing energy would only help the multiple and mainstream food traders.

I hope that my comments are useful in some way and apologise that my feelings are not? wholly approving.

I'd be very interested to hear Jon's view of these aspects of your project.

with best wishes to you
Richard

============================

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments to my email. Some are direct and practical, and we will have to think how best to take them into account.

As to your broader comments, I appreciate that they come from a sympathetic position, so I am thinking very hard about them! (And copying this to Jon and Angela for their thoughts too.)

Firstly, I appreciate the struggles that have gone into the present organic/local/wholefood area, including producers, distributers and retailers and also feel very protective of them. My aim is to strengthen them and I don't want to do anything that would inadvertently weaken them. They are generally people who are committed to the real issues - healthy food of high quality and local where possible, but who are struggling against a food industry where the logic of money takes priority over those issues. And of course, they need to survive financially if they are to continue.

I am trying to create a new approach to the economy in which those real issues take priority over financial issues. That is the underlying point of this project. I see the way to do this as creating a different relationship between the various players. Not just seller/customer but one of trust and mutual support, so that there is an ongoing commitment to each other that transcends getting the lowest price (for consumers) or making the most money (for the supply chain). I recognise that that is already there to a fair extent in the existing trade, but it is not very explicit. I want to build upon it, strengthen it, make it explicit so that it can affect more than the small, somewhat precarious market niche now held by that sector.

So, that is why I am proposing food clubs with a commitment to various producers, distributers and retailers. It is also why I am stressing the communication channel: for quality ratings from consumers, so that quality becomes explicit and appreciated. That is why I am trying to blur the distinction, with food clubs also playing a part in the distribution, organisation and perhaps the field work.

Given that basic motivation, I consider that the details of how this is organised are open and need to suit the existing sector. I am working to make sense of that at present, through talking to people like you, Eostre, Tastes of Anglia, etc, and am wide open to better ways of doing it than those I have already come up with. (for example. the food club wasn't part of my original plan, but actually came out of talks with Eostre and Mark Bishop of SNDC, who were already promoting similar ideas.)

So, let's keep talking. This is an issue that we all care strongly about and needs to be approached as sensibly and practically as possible.

With best regards,
Gary


]]> garyalex Sat, 01 Oct 2005 16:17:09 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=7&postId=40
It is now becoming clear that a pilot version of the Open Food Co-op will be started in East Anglia, centred around Diss in Norfolk. There are several organisations that support this, including the East Anglia Food Link, the Diss Town Council, the Diss and District Development Partnership, the Waveney Valley Food Group and the Waveney Valley Slow Food Convivium. Some producer groups are interested including Eostre Organics, Tastes of Anglia, as well as some local shops.

There may also be a pilot in London, where Francesca Giordano and James McGuigan are very interested in organising it, and have a wide range of excellent contacts.

In the Yorkshire region, we have Jon Walker and Angela Espinosa, who have been involved from the start, and who are now ready to become more active.

I have been making good contacts with the Plunkett Foundation, FARMA and the New Economics Foundation. Watch this space for developments on those fronts.

Gary
]]> garyalex Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:31:32 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=9&postId=39
I'm a guy that stumbled upon Open Co-Op not long ago. This is my second blog in the blogosphere. Let's see if I can make it a pleasant one.

I am quite new to the whole blogging idea, I sort of started blogging making a random photo blog at StumbleUpon last January, which was, and still is a success among the fellow stumblers. I made many friends and noticed quite quickly the possibilities in that kind of `social networking' environment.

In StumbleUpon, the users have a nifty little tool, a Firefox extension that integrates into the users StumbleUpon account, and helps to quickly rate sites either `thumbs up' or `thumbs down'. You can also create reviews on the sites you like / don't like, so that other stumblers visiting on your blog know what you really think about the site reviewed. The system also allows a channel surfing environment for likeminded people networking. It creates profiles for the users, and by comparing the stumblers reviews, it offers pages that most likely would suit a particular users review profile. So whenever a user wants to find something new, (s)he presses the Stumble-button on the browsers toolbar, which depending by the users likes and dislikes sends the user right away to the next `randomly' selected web page.

...page...
The SU system is funded both by sponsored stumbles and paid useraccounts with extra functionality.

The benefits of such system are obvious, people find likeminded soulmates and home pages of people and organizations they would have not found by traditional search engines. The system is bringing people together in ways that revolutionate the way people interact.

Anyway, I happen to think that the SU system lacks some key ingredients that would easily make it a killer app of this decade. One of these is the fact that isn't really a blogging system. It hasn't got a possibility to comment on someones reviews, or to build a discussion around a review. It however has discussion groups and forums for those who are interested. Secondly, it lacks a working content management, where one could search and edit older comments in a fluent fashion. It also lacks an archive for older reviews and messages. Whenever a user sends another one a message, the older messages strangely disappear from the cue. You also can not edit your message history efficiently.

...page...
I will also have to make the notion that StumbleUpon is a proprietary system, with no sources available, it doesn't have the same evolutionary aspect that Free Software and OS software have. Noone can tacle these issues but the guys behind the system. And as far as I know they are not going to open up StumbleUpon. I don't blame them, though, it is generating them a good revenue, more power to them. But I still think we need an open solution, preferably a distributed p2p system that lacks any central point of defect, and that can evolve according to the developers and users needs. A system that was like a distributed wiki, perhaps (?).

This was my first entry to the Open Co-Op blog, Voice of Ambience. I apologise for any mistakes in my text as I am from Finland with ESL.
]]> Ambience Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:44:27 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=37
1. This morning I met with Nick Saltmarsh, who works for East Anglia Food Link and Eostre Organics and is in close touch with other local food initiatives such as Eat Anglia and Big Barn.

Our discussion had a lot of similarities to my earlier discussions with Jon Walker and Angela Espinosa, (who I told him about) about the practicalities of starting local food co-ops. There are clearly many initiatives around now promoting local food and organic food. What we would add is the community dimension: bring the consumers into the organisation so that they are more than just customers. Another important dimension that both Nick and Jon highlight is the need for an effective local distribution system. Diss, or perhaps more widely, East Anglia (including Cambridge) is looking very promising as a starting point for this because of all the organisations already here.

We talked about, as a starting point, getting an online discussion going with all the relevant people and organisations (which includes many of you) so that the organisational structure(?) we go for emerges from the people concerned. (See Food Co-op Proposal as a kick-off point for this discussion.) Initially we will build on what already exists rather than set up new systems.

We will put together a funding proposal for people to act as organisers/co-ordinators and to pay developers. One good prospect is the Esmee Fairburn foundation.

2. Software development: As the basis for the initial group development there are several good prospects. I have asked Jamie to help set up GroupServer on the Baldrick server at the OU, and we should soon have our new improved Tikiwiki set up on Damian's server. I am really hoping that both of these will be ready when I return from Portugal! Longer term there is the possibility of collaboration with Tav on Kollab and Plex.

As to the specific support for the local food trading and distribution, Richard Page is nearing completion of his software. I have had several good discussions with him about this. I am hoping that once we have our local food discussion group up and running we can examine his software and see how it could fit in.

3. Organisational development: I had a good meeting with James Moore and Rahul Handy last week in London. They have agreed to help me set up a financial control system and a temporary LLP agreement, while we wait for Chris Cook to develop a more innovative version that suits our needs better.
]]> garyalex Thu, 31 Mar 2005 14:49:28 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=7&postId=35
This group is a very good prospect for one of our first pioneer groups. We can try out some of our prototype software, work with them on their needs and interests.

They may be the centre of a funding bid for us. We would ask for funds for a co-ordinator of their group, plus some for development and hosting of the tools.

There was also good talk by a local brewer followed by a tasting session.
]]> garyalex Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:16:26 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=33
Community banking, mostly credit unions and extensions of them, seems to have been growing rapidly over the past decade, marking a reincarnation of local banking, using ideas similar to those in the 19th century. NEF has a big new project on this, with six pilot areas.

Afterwards, Pat and I had lunch together. We turn out to have a lot in common: both ex-pat Americans living in the UK for decades with Brisith wives and grown children.

The main outcomes of the visit were:

• For the 6 pilot community banking groups we will explore the possibility of jointly setting up a communication infrastructure to link the groups separately and together.
• We thought there might be a lot of synergy between community banking and local food groups, as a core for a local sustainable economy, and could explore grants from the Adventure Capital Fund in their next round to support this.
• Pat will arrange a meeting at NEF at which we will discuss this and other possibilities with Stewart, Andrea, Ray and possibly others.
• We discussed the possibility of a conference at the Open University, on the subject of a sustainable, collaborative economy. It would be held in 2006 in Milton Keynes (free rooms, my secretary to administer it.) I will prepare a brief proposal to start the discussion.
• Pat suggested that for core funding we might look at the Treasury's Invest to Save program, and also two trusts: Esme Fairburn Foundation and Tudor Trust.
• Talking to David Boyle about Time Banks was interesting, but didn't yield any immediate useful prospects for collaboration.

Later I met Moeen Yaseen again, and we again discussed possible collaboration. He would like me to speak at his conference in May. Also, we might help with his website. I explained that this would be a consultancy and suggested he write to us with what he had in mind and the sort of budget he was thinking about.


]]> garyalex Thu, 24 Feb 2005 22:29:00 +0100 http://open.coop/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=1&postId=32
We need to sort our wiki out with a month+ of damo development. We want to start using automagic tiki projects stuff, open money code and rateable trackers. We also need to fix bugs and improve design.

I think we should prob have latest blog entries

Co-ordinating Group membership requirements.

1. Read our purpose and principles, and if you agree
2. Register on http://open.coop
3. Configure preferences and add basic info to My Open
4. Click on
]]> Josef Davies-Coates Sun, 20 Feb 2005 14:37:15 +0100