001: Our full team, the inaugural co-op meeting and a few photos!

Hello, I’m Harry, one of the currently three people behind Village One, with an update on where we stand on the path to becoming a proper co-op!

First things first though, let me introduce our third member: Doro Schwartzmann! She’s a UX designer by trade, worked at think moto, then joined Goodpatch Berlin as a design strategist, later becoming part of their leadership team, assuming the role of Studio Lead for Berlin. She’s been part of Village One from the very start, but we could only reveal that now! She completes our current team, along with Christoph (taking on everything design), and me, Harry, for all things technical! Us three will have to get this thing off the ground, but we’re also looking forward to speak to like-minded people who are interested in joining—if that’s you, simply hit reply and start the conversation!

So the three of us met in person on July 1st for our organization’s inaugural meeting—the life of every co-op begins here, by signing a bunch of documents and also staffing formally required roles (such as the board) by voting. Rather exciting, especially after having organized this whole endeavor remotely and asynchronously thus far… sitting around a table and signing stuff definitely made it more real. Pictures say more than a thousand words, so here are a few impressions:

(Shout-out to Hella for taking the photos and making us laugh the whole time!)

What else is happening?

• All our paperwork is being inspected by a cooperative association and we’re hoping for a seal of approval soon!
• Meanwhile we’re opening a bank account, applying for a tax number and our dear tax accountants from Wegener Hollenberger are preparing our monthly bookkeeping and employment setup, while our lawyer friends from KUHLEN Berlin are busy drafting contracts!
• In parallel we’re already working on a few projects together and also building out our own website.

As you can see, we’re not quite out of the woods yet and it feels like there’s ever more paperwork to deal with. I’ll be honest, it can be draining at times, but we also know why we’re doing all this. With a bit of luck we should be fully up and running sometime in August… it’s all coming together, slowly, but surely!