This May we celebrated our 5 year anniversary! On May 16, 2019 we registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority. While we have been organized unofficially since our July 2017 kickoff meeting, the May 16th date marks when we started taking this endeavor seriously as a business.
And serious business we have done! We’ve worked with over 100 super rad clients in 12 different countries. We’re part of 7 different federations/alliances including one (Co-op Cloud) which we spun out from an internal project in April of 2023. In May of last year we launched our first hosted tools offering for individuals, Cooperative Computer.
And we’ve done all of this as ~10 people working remotely across a 12-13 hour time difference. One thing that has made this possible is collectively deciding in December of 2021 to state all times in UTC. And then in February of 2022 we decided to make all meetings start on the hour and end at least 10 minutes before the hour to give people time to get to their next thing.
We are not always remote though. In the spring of 2022 we had our first big meetup where many of us met in-person for the first time. Sadly still not every member has met every other member in person.
While our Founding Principles still stand, we have made some modifications to how we operate. In November 2022 we collectively agreed to operate more Sociocratically and organize our internal and client projects as circles. This has worked wonderfully for us.
So far we have collectively voted to increase our wage three times (and voted to decrease it one time). We did not have sick pay until May 2023 when we created the Welfare Fund. Now, £16 per member per month is added to the Welfare Fund. Any full member at any time may request any amount of money from the welfare fund and it is paid out as soon as possible without discussion. The Welfare Fund has been a huge help and so far never run out.
We are really proud of everything we’ve been able to achieve in these 5 years and we’re looking forward to the next 5. We are always looking for clients so if you are so inclined don’t be afraid to shoot a message to our collective inbox, boop@autonomic.zone
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