Why a Cooperative Business

In our first year, Web Collective generated a lot of productive energy through the process of co-creating a company.

Co-creation includes consensus-based decision making, working with passionate clients and partners, and having individual owners who value building a democratic workplace, promoting sustainability, developing open source software, and supporting local economies.

We recently had an opportunity to reflect on our first year's progress:

• We worked with 43 clients.  We've had a great year of attracting and supporting organizations that share our values of making positive changes in the world.
• Contributed software and time toward Plone and other Open Source communities.  This includes weekly "Open Source Friday" coding extravaganzas - now including a core group from Web Collective, ONE/Northwest, NPower Seattle and the University of Washington.  Attending the Plone Summit.  Lots of Plone and Zope skill building across the entire team this year. Presentations and support of the monthly Seattle Plone meeting. Adding Django to our repertoire

• Gained a lot of practice in facilitation and consensus!  Running a cooperative business efficiently while also taking in everyone's input and direction is an interesting balancing act. Not all work happens at the company level.  We regularly form and wrap up "Disappearing Strike Forces (DSFs)", which are focused working groups around topics like compensation, health insurance, project management methodology, office improvements, etc.

• Wrangled up our company name, logo and business cards.  Coming up with these as a group is always a good test of our decision making processes!

• Launched health insurance for all 7 owners, 100% covered by company. Implementing a healthcare plan was quite an undertaking! (hmmm, is that the right word to use?)

• Grew the team with Michael Paulsmeyer in a part-time project management position, and happy to have our first new prospective member, Fulvio Casali, on the path to becoming an owner. This process of adding a new owner is important for a cooperative. We currently offer contract work or a path to ownership — we don't have employees.
• Created a compensation system around salary plus our internal system ("What Matters Now") of setting goals company-wide then obtaining bonuses based on individuals meeting those goals.  We now even have sick days and paid time off!  We traveled a long way from a year ago, when we were still being paid hourly according to projects we were working on -- takes time to migrate from our prior consulting methods before forming WC.
• Our weekly staff meeting has undergone changes to keep it interesting and relevant for keeping track of what happening at a high level with all our projects, perspective projects, and Strike Forces.
• The team spent a weekend with Brian Weller who helped build our skills around creative processes, mind maps, digesting large amounts of information, and efficient meetings that keep people tuned in and active.  It's really hard to put a label on this session, except that it was creative, engaging, and gave our group many tools for the challenges ahead!
• Michael Paulsmeyer and Daniel Jenrette did fantastic work with us as part of their Information School's Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program at the University of Washington.  Michael helped us create a formal Project Management methodology, while also working with us part-time managing several WC projects.  Daniel put his Usability expertise to work, and he and Michael worked with a client to dive deep into their needs from the user's perspective.  They were both picked to present their Capstone projects.  The Information Based Program Management poster representing Michael's work and Sherry Palmiter's excellent design skills can be seen below.