blogginess

— Don Kreis, Hanover Con­sumer Coop­er­a­tive Soci­ety & Erbin Crow­ell, Coop­er­a­tive Fund of New England

This was another great ses­sion full of lots of valu­able infor­ma­tion.  I’m in a hurry though so i’m going to make this one snappy!

First off, our co-op her­itage is one of an inte­grated coop­er­a­tive econ­omy.  This means stretch­ing across sec­tors. And […]

— Ann Hoyt, Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin

This one was a GOOD one!  This topic could be it’s own semester-long col­lege course.  But obvi­ously we had to breeze through the mate­r­ial in an hour and a half.  I am not a his­tory buff, and i took notes as best i could, so con­sider this a dis­claimer.  I’ll […]

— Mark G., Michael Healy, Bent­ley Lein, CDS Consulting Co-op

Under­stand­ing the board’s role as leaders/pioneers will nat­u­rally result in more effec­tive lead­er­ship and mem­ber link­age.  Not news to us board mem­bers who spent the recent board retreat explor­ing this very sub­ject.  So, maybe not all of this work­shop was news to me per se, but the […]

— Sarah Zaug, The Wedge, HR manager

There was plenty of dis­cus­sion which led to some worth­while take-aways.  Such as:

Sup­port­ing the GM/Link — This role is dif­fi­cult and lonely.  We often see and hear that Lori is stressed, over­worked, and work­ing looong hours.  How can we bet­ter sup­port the Co-Manager fill­ing this role?  The bet­ter equipped that […]

The juicy bits of the con­fer­ence have finally com­menced bright and early this morn­ing with the keynote address.  Speak­ers were Ann Hoyt, of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Co-op Exten­sion Pro­gram and main orga­nizer of these annual CCMA gath­er­ings.  Adam Schwartz, VP of Mem­ber Svcs. for NCBA, and Mark Meyer, CEO of the Filene Insti­tute, a […]

I just thought this was too hilar­i­ous:  In a room full of coop­er­a­tors from all over the coun­try i find Lori (People’s), Holly (Food Front), and Court­ney (Alberta) stand­ing around a table gab­bing for the bet­ter part of the evening. […]

Hey Board­ies! If you’re out there i need your help! There are way too many great-sounding sem­i­nars to attend and i need to fig­ure out which ones to attend! And soon! So here’s the break-down, start­ing with Friday AM:

Fri­day June 12^th 10:30am—12:00pm:

Win­ning in Tough Eco­nomic Times (Michael San­solo, San­solo Solu­tions LLC) — […]

Here are the pix i snapped from our tour today.  We almost avoided the rain but had a blast anyway!

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Hula hoops and humon­gous KALE

2L soda bot­tles make a nifty cas­cad­ing herb gar­den in very lit­tle space

the underground […]

Tour time: headed out to the east end neigh­bor­hood for a tour of some interesting-sounding sites.
First is the Gar­den dreams urban farm. An urban sus­tain­able farm in the midst of a strug­gling neigh­bor­hood Then a tour of our host co-op, the East End Food Co-op. Then Con­struc­tion junc­tion, my guess is […]

Hello to all from over­cast Pitts­burgh, PA. I’m here for the 53^rd annual Con­sumer Coop­er­a­tive Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence. I’ll be serv­ing as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Board of Direc­tors for People’s Food Co-op, as well as emis­sary to the IS4C/Fannie soft­ware projects. I hope to use this great oppor­tu­nity to sponge up […]