Enhancing cooperation around the new technologies in cooperatives

Article by Barış Taşkın, Albatros Tech Cooperative, Turkey

The COODING (COOperatives Digital Improvement & Networking Growth) event was held in Bologna on 29 and 30 September 2023. The event was organised by the Fondazione Centro Studi Doc, CECOP, Fondazione PICO and AlmaVicoo. The purpose of this event was to create a space for cooperatives that create, develop, and customize the technologies and the cooperatives that have the vision to increase the digitalization in their organizations to benefit from the improvements that the technology brings.

We, as Albatros Tech Cooperative, were really excited about this event and started to work on the ways to attend this great opportunity and be present in the first international event for tech cooperatives. We selected Barış Taşkın – one of our worker&owners and Project Manager – to represent us at the event. There was a pitch section at the event and we were lucky enough to be a part of it and had a chance to talk about the two projects we did over the years. Also, we thought there would be a great opportunity to build a network and improve as well.

We attended the event with the Patio members. Patio (patio.coop) is a community of international tech cooperatives. We were 6 from Argentina, 1 from Bulgaria and 1 from Turkey. We found our space at the fair area and started to meet more attendees. Most of the guests were from Europe however we met people from Brazil, Argentina, United States and Bangladesh. Not only cooperative members but journalists, researchers, educators, business owners, and NGOs were present at the event.

On the first day of the event, we listened to the sessions, we presented our cooperatives and products, we had a chance to have deeper discussions with the participants, and made connections with cooperatives and businesses. On the second day, it was an interactive workshop of open discussion of the common problems and possible collective solutions to those.

We did not know what to expect from the event since this was our first international digital cooperation focused event but we are highly satisfied with the outcomes. The space created for the cooperatives enabled us to meet organizations with different structures, governance and finance models that really improved our vision. After this busy one-and-a-half-day event, we felt more connected to the cooperative movement. Also since Albatros Tech Coop is the only tech coop in Turkey, we felt honored to represent our country at this unique event.