Worker Cooperatives from around the country met at Isthmus Engineering on Saturday June 20 to elect a new board, consider some proposals, and debate some serious issues. We also heard about the research coming out of the UW Center for Cooperatives and heard a rousing speech from Ed Garvey who should remind all of us that this process, this work, should be fun.As president of the organization, I facilitated the day and did not take notes. Executive Director Melissa Hoover took over that role with assistance from NASCO's ED, Tom Pierson.We elected 4 directors who I think will bring a lot of diversity, energy, and knowledge to the organization. I won't release their names right now since I think that all the candidates should be notified before the winning names get published.We passed the by-law change that will extend the term limit to 5 years and will alternate the election of at-large members with regional directors. At next year's conference in San Francisco, the membership will elect their regional reps and have a special election for an at-large member to serve for one-year (to replace me). This means that the at-large members will always be elected on the odd-number year during the annual meeting (without the conference) and the regional reps will always be elected on the even-numbered years during the conference.We created the "Worker Cooperator of the Year Award" although their was some discussion about also allowing a Worker Cooperative of the Year as well. The first award will be presented next year in San Francisco! The award cannot be given to current directors (or staff) and nominations will come up through the regions--so people should start thinking now about who you would like to nominate!We broke into small groups to discuss areas of interests and to help formulate a plan for the board to act upon in the coming year. this is where having the notes would be great, but I don't. It was a good discussion and presented some very clear ideas about where we will be going this year. I imagine that the next newsletter will have a lot on this topic.Ed Garvey presented the keynote address. Ed's work over the years has been incredible. He organized the NFL players and led them through their first strike to get decent pay. He fought Perrier's attempt to steal Wisconsin's water (and won), he ran for the US Senate and Governor of Wisconsin. He lost, but only due to the negative campaigns and tons of money. He didn't tell the crowd this, but the race for Senate was so nasty, Ed won a defamation lawsuit against the Senator (that is almost unheard of). Six years later, Russ Feingold beat the incumbent and that is the rest of the story. Most recently, he created Fighting Bob Fest in honor of Bob La Follette--a Wisconsin socialist/progressive who was the last third party candidate to win any electoral votes in a presidential election (1924). He had a great speech-he is a powerful speaker and he is very, very funny. He told us that we are the future of the labor movement. The unions, while good, have lost their way (he mentioned Andy Stern and the SEIU's attempt to offer concessions before they even have a union). He told us, though, that we need to get our story out. He has offered his web site for Fighting Bob Fest as a platform for us and will print our blogs, our letters, and our stories. The rest is up to us.In the big discussion, we ended up with an animated discussion over buying from other worker cooperatives. For some, the issue is solidarity and growing the movement. For others, the issues revolves around fairness, the lack of diversity in products and services, and quality issues.The second discussion was about raising dues for the Federation. We need to have a full-time staff person to succeed as an organization. So far, we have done a good job at getting the low-hanging fruit, but now we need to step up. This will be difficult. People expect to get services in return for their dues, but our current dues limit our abiities. Also the spread between the low and high end is very wide. One thing that we all definitely agreed upon is that we need more member cooperatives. We especially need the bigger member cooperatives to join as well.We adjourned for the day to a coop reception and then to Rebecca Kemble and Adam Chern's house for party. Rebecca and her sister Martha (both Union Cab members) also catered the meeting and were declared best caterers ever. They kindly invited the Federation to their house for their annual wedding anniversary and solstice party. (Gordon, there were about 15-20 cheeses laid out--next time you come to Madison, I will introduce you to them and their cheese maven friends). It was an incredible night and I had to use my presidential authority to veto an executive decision from staff that would have made all future meetings and conferences held in Madison!