This is a follow-up from a post from a few days ago, concerning collectives and cooperatives, and the implementation of that idea.

The next cooperative, and the first intended to be run in a formal fashion, is going to be a collective running computer servers.  Why?  Well, I know several people who run hobby servers for email, web-hosting, blogs and so on who are also keen on DIY/privacy/control of their own lives – so there’s a ready-made group there.  The services providing this in New Zealand aren’t that great, and we’d like to have more control over our systems, plus maybe save some money – although that’s not so important.

The Auckland Creative Space and the community food project I mentioned in an earlier post are already going along similar lines, although less formally, and the community gardens is on hold while the mess that is the ‘Super City’ settles down – that should start again sometime next year.  From there?  I’d like to think these projects will inspire others to start more groups along similar lines, and there are plenty of areas I’d like to do this in.

Invitations have gone out to various individuals and mailing lists, and there are around 10 of us interested.  The first meet will be after University of Auckland exams, so probably around 15th November.  We’ve already had offers of time, and donations of hardware.  We’ll get together, discuss what we’d like, and then go from there.  More to come.

Part of the inspiration for this is the ‘Tech Co-op‘ in Canada (not USA as I originally put- thanks for the correction Abhishek).