The Global Coworking Blog – Page 15

Werk in progress

The Werks is a coworking space in Brighton & Hove (UK). It launched in January 2008 with a challenge of filling up over 6,000 sq ft of creative space – a mixture of open plan desk & coworking space, enclosed office space and the events space.

There are 3 of us behind the project and has been entirely self funded (time and money wise). We have discovered that whilst it is a lot of hard work it is really rewarding to see it come together. The excitement of people’s faces is worth all the blood, sweat and tears that comes with trying to make it all work.

The Werks has and is all about community, where we hope it will be the best local hub – where anyone can really participate. Open Coworking every Friday has proven so popular that we have opened it up to every day of the week. Very popular with the community is the range of free and low cost events (educational and social) that we or community members organise, these give people the opportunity to sample what we are all about and to participate in a variety of different ways.

It’s not a complete surprise, but are we finding that our open and transparent approach is the best marketing tool. People are talking about us, making recommendations, coming to open coworking and events and feeling the positive vibe going on. It is because of this that we are pretty close to full capacity.

We are only at the beginning of our journey and very much looking forward to the future.

Coworking on NPR’s Marketplace

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY24QfGrCf0]

NPR’s Marketplace aired a short piece on Jelly and coworking on Monday, along with the above video.

I’ve always liked the synergy and compatibility between Jelly as a gateway to full fledged coworking, and that this story blends the two initiatives speaks to fact that on ramps like Jellies and Juntos (in Philly) are great ways to coalesce the ingredients to coworking communities.

Citizen Desk no more; party tonight

The citizens of Wausau (WI) are deskless! Or at least Citizen Desk-less.

As of last Saturday, there will no longer be “physical” space called CitizenDesk. We’ve shut down the office space.

I’m hoping to interview the space founder, Marcus Nelson, to do a more-detailed failure analysis and find some lessons that other coworking organizers and catalysts can learn from. He does give some clues, however, in his farewell message on the space blog, as he looks in the rear view mirror and notes the “slow adoption rate” of new ideas in the town:

Had I had more time to do it all over again, I would have first focussed on building up the local Web Community, like the idea of organizing the Jellys & a Web715 network (which should still move forward under someone else’s stewardship). Getting a group of like-minded people together takes time – especially in a smaller market like Wausau. My good friend Alex says all the time – community, community, community! I suspect that’ll be the way I do it next time.

Although the physical space may be no more, the community continues, marking the occasion tonight with brews flowing at Red Eye Brewery starting at 7. Let’s all virtually join them from afar, raising a glass to toast the coworking that was… and the coworking that will be… in Wausau and around the world. — Raines

It happens in Milano.

44 days afrter opening, Cowo Milano sees some interesting facts happening.

1- Mostly small groups seem to be interested in our coworking initiative. First a group of architects, then a group of 4 designers, then again 3 professionals… it made us think. Having 5 desks to offer, would we rather go for a rather nice monthly income, settled for a long time (all of them needed a place for the long run) and practically abandon the coworking idea, or refuse these offers to stick to a more open way, allowing only single or mini-teams of professionals, and leaving the coworking door open? Well, we chose the latter, both because we want to give a try to coworking (otherwise we wouldn’t be here) and also because we don’t feel like hosting groups that are larger than ours (we are 3).

2 – Coworking is raising interest in the italian media. On radio and national press (D di Repubblica recently published an article about cw, I’m trying to find it to post it). A couple of journalist have called to get info and get in touch for future interviews.

3 – Coworkers are finding us. Actually we have two regulars (a yacht designer and a new media consultant) and a third one should arrive in the next few days. All of them are interested in staying for a medium-range period and maybe longer.

4 – I really wanted a video to show what the Cowo is like, so ? pikced up the videocamera and did it. Here it is. Ciao from the Cowo!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKkX-p2pXrY&hl=en]

Cinco de May-aye-aye

So how many dollar store Hot Tamales can YOU fit in your mouth at one time and still breathe? My record is 27. I beat Stan by a mile who wimped out at about 19. He is so not the man. Well, at least when it comes to dollar store tamales. We are actually getting work done today, even though someone kicked in the blender a bit early (what do you expect we’d drink with pile high nachos and quesadillas anyway – coffee?).

Janis was a bit grossed out (by the tamales, not the tequila) but all survived and the new carpet is still intact. The whiteboard is getting worked overtime today as groupies add to the “What We’d Be Doing At Home Right Now If We Weren’t Sipping ‘Tea’ And Hanging Out” list. The more we sip, the better the confessions.

I just met and hopefully did not scare away Henry, a possible newbie who wanted to see the space. I told him that our work-party actually had nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo. We just like Mondays. He kinda sorta half-smiled. I think I need to learn to not dead pan in certain situations, especially those involving business deals.

Our favorite party animal, Cobi the golden, came down from upstairs to hang out and its a good thing too because I think Stan will need an escort home. Oops.

Okay . . . that whole rant above was a bit of a stretch. We didn’t have a bunch of members hanging out, the blender is still clean and, except for a very nice drop-in visit by my pal Bruce, here I sit, waiting to exhale a big sigh of relief for the day when this place is hopping with activity and, alas, a break-even revenue stream. Our day is just around the bend, I know it. But, for an uber impatient gal like myself it will seem like ions. Until then, more tequila for me.

Buenos Tardes Amigos.

Suzitta de Desparado

Be Free Or Die

When we first discussed hosting events at group88, we thought that we would have some freebies mixed with paid seminars that provide many layers of apply-it-now knowledge. Now I’m rethinking it all. We want to have tons of events but I don’t want attendees to have to pay. I’m finding out that finding sponsors is not difficult, nor is convincing them to pay for sponsorships in a cool atmosphere with cool people.

Convincing people that, yes, they are more than welcome to attend our events, however, is a bit of a challenge. Our space is brand spankin’ new and the comfort zone has not yet been established. One thing that I’m quickly learning is that people are just too nice.

Our first event is next week (4/24) and is a discussion on “Low-Cost Video Production for Solos and Small Businesses” from a local TV anchor celeb and her new vid production company. We first promoted this event as $25 for non-members and $15 for members. Our result was: zero. Not one sign-up.

Today, after sealing the deal with cool social finance site Geezeo as our sponsor, I was able to eblast a “guess what? drinks are on us!” announcement. Response? Four sign-ups within two hours. And I only eblasted half my list.

What’s really interesting is that I got a phone call from someone who received the invite but was unsure if it meant she could really attend. This brings me back to my earlier point: people need comfort zones. Once they visit your space and have a good experience, you’re golden. Before that happens you need to make sure your online, mail and phone experience falls 100% into their comfort zone.

It’s no different than having new friends and going to their house for the first time. There’s always that adjustment time. I know we’re all e-hogs and find it easier to chat or email but, when it comes to making people feel comfortable, there is nothing better than a phone call. It’s the closest thing to meeting in person and helps create a comfort zone for your new friends instead of making them create it on their own. Then, the decision to join your community is not a decision, it’s an important event on their calendar.

Introducing Cowo Milano (Italy).

Hi everybody, just wanted to introduce our brand new little coworking project, here in Milano: Cowo@ monkeybusiness.

First of all I’d like to say that the work thas been done and shared on this blog and related wiki has been fundamental for us, so… thanks guys!

We’ve been officially opened for 10 days now, and we have no coworkers in house yet. This may sound like bad news but actually we’ve started completely out of the blue, so it’s kind of expected to have a warm-up period, I guess.

Our space is a 140 sqm loft on two levels (pictures here) located in the eastern part of the city, towards Linate airport.

The neighborhood is being totally gentrified, being – in the past 20 years – an industrial district. Used to be blue collar environment, now it’s becoming student-artistic-media kind of thing. But still, for now at least, we enjoy the good sides of city borders, i. e. parking with no charge, not-as-much traffic congestions and… my house is at walking distance!

In these first days of Cowo, my wife + partner Laura and myself are mostly concerned with understanding the market need of a coworking place in Milano (as far as we know, we’re the only ones – speaking of cw, desks to rent you can find many), something that we’ll discover in the near future.

The people who showed interest, up to now, have been very different, ranging from the freelance art director to the sailing boat designer, from a group of architects to pr professionals and code writers.

They all seemed fine people and we enjoyed meeting them.

We did notice that our place seem to rise interest in small groups, which brings up the price issue.

Of course a three-people group have a different evaluation of the single desk price, and that’s something we didn’t think of. We are also considering offering a free drop-in 1 day option, which I feel is a nice approach that we already practice with the people we know (so why not extend it as a standard Cowo feature? Thanks Riccardo for your suggestion!)

What else? Oh, what we do for a living! We’re a creative consultancy for advertising, called Monkey Business, the three of us include a copywriting dude (me) with two supertalented art directors, that make look great whatever crap comes out from my mac. Check out our smiling logo and you’ll see what I mean!

Last but not least, we have enjoyed a good blogosphere attention thanks to the announcements made by the Italian Art Directors Club blog and the much-followed creative free-lance blog, BolleBlu.

So, next time you’re in town, please come and visit us: cowo @monkeybusiness via ventura 3 milano 20134 [email protected]… we’ll share pizza e birra to begin with!

Face Time: Building the coworking community

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Alex Hillman of Phildelphia coworking space, IndyHall, about finding your niche as an owner of coworking space and than reaching that niche. Coworking spaces vary greatly in their audience. While coworking is about openness and community, each space has its own character and appeals to different groups. Alex wisely pointed out that each space has to build its community in order to be successful.

The face time is absolutely key to the success of any coworking community. There have been several posts recently on the google group about advertising, running events and building membership. To create the community that gets people in the door, you absolutely must put in the faceup. Alex tells a great tale about all the meetups he went to for a month or two before he even signed a lease. In his words, he was looking for “cool, interesting people who might also work from home.” He spread the coworking idea, got interested members, and then signed the lease and got up and running. Of course, we all want successes like Alex.

Finding that niche that is the right audience for your group requires more than just connecting through blogs, online groups, and cyberspace, you need to talk to the people you think will use your space. And you may discover that you don’t always know who will use your space. I was confident our primary members of Cubes&Crayons would be entrepreneurs. As of today, our membership, with the exception of myself, completely lacks entrepreneurs. We have freelance workers in all walks of life from medical translators to biotech researchers to recruiters to professors. It had been a pleasant surprise to find that the common thread comes from the atmosphere we have created more than their careers. We provide a professional and inspirational coworking space. We have new members come in because they are impressed with how much they get done and how much they enjoy working at Cubes & Crayons. And of course, one of my personal favorites is the praise for the free gourmet chocolates available in our kitchen.

In building our community, although word of mouth has been tremendous and we have had some good press (more to come…look for it this weekend), the best marketing has involved simply a conversation. Whether I am talking about coworking to fellow volunteers at a board meeting or hosting a meetup or event at Cubes & Crayons, or going out to meetups and organization’s events, the best marketing is when I tell people about our site, my story, and/or our clients. People are interested in people. Forget that you are “selling” your service. It is about getting people connected to other people in a great community that somewhere has a common thread. We are hosting a blogging day on April 11th to encourage bloggers to come and blog in our space as well as share blogging stories and ideas with each other. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Coworking: A Generational Thing?

I recently read a post about coworking being a generational thing for the millenials. True, maybe? But for those of you hanging out in the coworking places, is everyone a millenial? Not even close. The founders of most of these coworking sites are smart entrepreneurs who are beyond the millenial age, at least chronologically. Just look at the photos from events at places such as IndyHall and Citizen Space and you notice that coworkers have embraced a common philosophy regardless of birth age. At Cubes&Crayons, we have coworkers, coworkers with young kids, and coworkers whose kids have long out grown our space.

What occurred to me is that coworking is generational if you change your definition. Coworking is about this “generation” of people altering the perception of “professional,” “work environment,” “colleague,” etc. It is about hip people writing their own ticket for work. Coworkers are skilled individuals who are prepared to be part of the global community. They are interested in programs that are developing like PACTFund, where they can exchange their skills with other people’s skills.

And businesses need to be aware of and adapt to this changing workforce. I have been researching this avenue quite a bit and as much as “coworking” is hip and trendy, it is smart and necessary in our changing economy. When software engineers end up doing business with colleagues halfway across the world, what’s to motivate them to come into a traditional office? Isn’t it more interesting for them to be in a coworking space where they can meet people in all walks of life? Businesses will be getting educated if they want to survive and stay competitive. It is just a matter of time before this “generation” of coworkers changes the way businesses do business.

Crazy 88s at Connecticut Coworking

One of the best Kill Bill scenes, hands down, is Beatrix fighting O-Ren Ishii’s Crazy 88s. Slight Uma Thurman in a yellow Bruce Lee jump suit slaughtering Lucy Liu’s murderous Tokyo gang of (nearly) 88 swordsthugs? Only Tarantino could pull that off.

In pulling together group88 Coworking, I feel a bit like Beatrix (with a few pounds plus, unfortunately) surrounded by the scary loomingness of potential defeat. Like Beatrix, I have been training for the challenge – learning from other coworker masters, conquering hesitation by coworking in other spots, networking like crazy (possibly 88+ times since last August) and agonizing over my revenge tactics for terminating the pains of solitary confinement for independents in the ‘burbs.

I’m sure we’ll have many more challenges on our journey. One out of three people I talk to about coworking, usually respond with “Cowhatting?” Yet, there are tons of solos in our little creative and hopping corner of Connecticut. There is nothing like our space in this area.

Will flexible membership, free coffee and a 5-minute walk by Rails to Trails for sushi be enough to bring folks in? Only time will tell. I’m sure we’ll have 88 more challenges ahead, but I’m ready. Yellow jumpsuit not required, but in consideration.