Atomised: a new ethical, green web design co-operative in Scotland

A new ethical web design & development company has been launched with the help of Co-operativesUK. Atomised Co-operative Ltd is a workers' co-operative founded by three web developers (Alasdair Macmillan, Neil Albrock & Morgan Faichney) who previously worked together at The University of St Andrews.

Atomised offer web design & development to co-operative, charitable, voluntary, public and social enterprise sectorsʼ and have already completed a new site for agricultural co-operative East of Scotland Growers Ltd.

The three founders are only in their early thirties but have clocked up a combined 20 years of experience working for some of the biggest players on the web including the U.K Government, BT, Standard Life, The University of St. Andrews & Aberdeen Asset Management.

While working together at the University of St. Andrews, mainly on database-driven web projects for the U.K Government, Alasdair, Neil & Morgan began sketching out the possibility of striking out on their own and starting a different sort of web design agency: one that was ethical, environmental and enterprising.

As co-founder Alasdair Macmillan says “Ethically we always knew we wanted to incorporate as a workerʼs co-operative. Neil worked for Scotmid Co-op for years while I worked for an Edinburgh based charity and we saw the benefits both for us as members but also for the client. My experience of many web design companies are that they are often marketing companies that subcontract designers. You often donʼt get good service and many times you have to deal with ʻmiddle menʼ, not the designers and developers themselves . We know already that our clients love the personal direct line they have to Neil, Morgan & AL the team that builds their sites and are on the end of a phone.”

“We also knew we wanted Atomised to be environmentally sound - so for example, in Atomised we work remotely from our 3 home offices and use video conferencing whereas previously we each had 80 mile a day roundtrip commutes to the office. And later this year we will be offering web hosting on our new server which is powered entirely by wind power generated electricity something we believe there is a desire for. Data centres are responsible for almost three per cent of electricity use in the UK and this is expected to double by 2020. Our aim is to be offering carbon-free wind-powered website hosting to our customers by early 2009.”

“But we also want to be enterprising and on the cutting edge. Really what drives us is wanting to make available to organisations in the co-operative, educational, charitable, voluntary, public and social enterprise sectors access to the same cutting edge web technology as the largest companies have at an affordable cost. For example, we are currently working on an iphone web application for an ethical company in Manchester that we are incredibly excited about. We are building mobile web capabilities alongside their new regular site. Something we are getting asked more and more for.”

Atomised have offices near Edinburgh & Glasgow. They are available for work U.K-wide and can be reached on +44 (0) 7866218073, on the web at www.atomised.coop