What’s in a name?

Patrick’s getting coworking going in Montreal and is stymied by that old branding foe: What to name the space?

Alright so this past week has been very productive coworking space wise, a couple of meetings, new people showing interest in membership, full membership (often called anchors) and even investing so it’s looking very promising.

While traveling and visiting spaces I made the decision to push a lot harder for this thing and it’s already showing results. Sweet. One thing that I keep wanting to find and people keep asking me for is a name.

He’s got some great ideas already and there’s more gems in the comments, but I’m sure he’d appreciate more.

Any ideas for Patrick?

New coworking blog in Ireland

Coworking Ireland logoLooks like coworking is really taking off in Europe what with the many Open Coffee Clubs and now a new Coworking Ireland blog:

The goal of Coworking.ie is to promote coworking in ireland, to provide a community space for coworkers to team up and to serve as a guide to people who are looking to go out on their own.

The project is community driven and completely non profit. Everyone is encourages to contribute to the project in whatever way they can.

Brooklyn Coworking March Open House

BrooklynCoworking_Feb2007
Tired of arguing with your cat about a bad client?
Wondering what is the next wave of social networking technology?
Looking for an invigorating environment to call an “office?”

You are invited to Brooklyn Coworking’s monthly open house and happy hour!

Break free from hourly coffee purchases and grab a slice of Williamsburg’s alternative working community – Coworking @ The Change You Want to See – a cafe-like community and collaboration space for developers, writers and independents. These types of grassroots coworking spaces are popping up all over the world, from San Francisco, to Paris, to a few here in New York City…

Join us this Friday, 30 March, at The Change You Want to See gallery for COWORKING BROOKLYN. From 10 am to 5 pm, our doors will be open for anyone to come on by and give us a try. Bring a laptop, a snack or two, manuscript, screenplay, or killer app and leave the kats behind.

From 5 pm to 7 pm, we will host a happy hour(s)! Bring a treat or two and get ready to let your hair down.
Who are we? Writers, Programmers, Organizers, Artist, Philosophers, Activist, Bloggers, and Adventure Seekers…

When you join the Brooklyn Coworking space you get:
• a community of like minded folks
• a low monthly rate
• a flux of interesting people
• networking and expertise
• wifi
• printer and scanner
• coffee
• beer-o-clock
• quiet spaces to work in

If you have questions feel free to email us at brooklyn.coworking[a/t]gmail[d0t]com

Cost: Free!!!
When: Friday, 30 March, 10AM – 5PM (Happy Hour 5pm – 7pm)
Where: The Change You Want to See Gallery, 84 Havemeyer, Willamsburg, Brooklyn
Map: OnNYTurf Subway map

Want more info?
Join the new NYC Coworking Google Group –
http://groups.google.com/group/coworkingnyc
Check out The Change You Want to See Gallery:
http://www.notanalternative.net/wordpress/
See the Coworking Wiki: http://wiki.coworking.info/
See the Coworking Blog: http://blog.coworking.info/

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The economics of independents

There’s an old adage that claims to make money, you’ve got to spend money. While this can prove true over time, it’s not something that most independents are at liberty to consider — living project to project and figuring out how to make ends meet in between.

With the advent of affordable personal computing and connectivity, it’s interesting to consider the economics of being an independent web worker.

On the one hand, as Ben Edwards points out, working out of cafes isn’t as cheap as it might seem:

It is very nice to have low overhead costs and use the three things we need: Internet access, electricity, and a table – all for the cost of a few lattes and maybe a bran muffin.

…

However, like many things in life, the little jagged parts – issues that at first seemed pretty minor, begin to rub you the wrong way (or the same way but in the same spot repeatedly) until finally you can’t take it any more. In actuality, coffee shops are not free as each of the three of us has consistently spent between $25 and $50 per week on coffee, tea, and snacks. That adds up ($300-$600/month). Then we have to always cart all of our stuff in and out each day. We can’t bring too many books in our our good headphones. Bringing outside food is also, either awkward (rude to the establishment) or impractical (no refrigerator or microwave) so there are additional costs for lunch (both monetary and time-wise).

(emphasis added)
And this is the problem that has fueled the rise of the modern coworking community.

However, as Tara Hunt of Citizen Space noted in a post yesterday, running a space isn’t necessarily cheap either.

And so the choice of whether to be a bedroom, Bedouin or coworking worker can’t simply come down to dollars and cents. Instead you’ve got to look beyond hard costs to the soft amenities that Ben refers to. The benefits of having people and community an arms-length away, the ability to store your equipment safely (and not carry it wherever your go), to offer a professional atmosphere for your clients and partners, to collaborate with your peers and to simply not work alone, to hold events as you like… are just a few of the basic things that make running a coworking space worthwhile.

Ultimately, if you’re going to be spending money on a place to work, why not think about it from the standpoint of making an investment in your community and in cultivating the conditions in which you want to work? I mean, that’s what being an independent is all about: creating your own conditions for success and consciously creating the circumstances in which you thrive. Doing so in the context of community does make it somewhat easier and at minimum, makes it more fun and more socially rewarding.

Coworking: 2 Years and Going Strong

Brad Neuberg: Coding In Paradise: Coworking – Community for Developers Who Work From Home: “Join Spiral Muse and Brad Neuberg in creating a new kind of work environment for free spirits!”

This was the initial blog post I wrote kicking off coworking, an initiative I started to provide new kinds of work spaces for those tired of both corporate offices and coffee shops. I had recently quit my job, and was going into business for myself as a consultant. I needed community and structure but also wanted to have the independence and freedom of working for myself. Why couldn’t I have both?

Over the last 2 years, coworking has now spread all over the world, with 3 coworking spaces in San Francisco, spaces in New York City, ones opening in Paris, and more. We have a coworking wiki, blog, and mailing list that are brimming over with activity. There’s even been a Business Week article on it in the last few weeks!

It’s funny to see what of the initial idea has survived and what has changed — I initially wanted coworking to be a bit more hippie, with yoga and stuff, but that didn’t seem to work for as many people as other aspects. It’s also been a great exercise in giving ideas away — literally over the last 2 years I would constantly tell folks to steal the idea and take it in their own direction. If I hadn’t done this coworking would definently be dead today, since the original Spiral Muse space closed about 8 months after it opened. If it wasn’t for folks like Chris Messina, Jay Dedman, Ryanne Hodson, Tara Hunt, Shlomo Rabinowitz, and more, coworking would be far different and wouldn’t be where it is today. Coworking is actively being recreated and redefined every day, pushing into new directions.

The cult of the bedouin hacker

Trailrank.com owner Kevin Burton sets up shop several days a week at Ritual Roasters in San Francisco. Chronicle photo by Mike Kepka

Dan Fost of the SF Chronicle has been following coworking for some time and today has a cover story on the neo-nomads stalking out free wifi and power in San Francisco.

While the article gives a good overview of the culture of independents working out of cafes that lead to coworking, he conspicuously makes no mention of the many efforts to create physical spaces and efforts cropping up to proactively support this lifestyle.

In fact, in a slideshow called Urban Nomads, the first slide specifically leads off with text that reads:

A new breed of worker is flourishing. With laptops in hand, these tech savvy workers shirk the confines of cubicles to roam San Francisco coffee houses. Instead of renting office space, they pay for coffee and scones. They call themselves Bedouin workers and say they are changing the nature of the workplace.

(emphasis mine)
While this might be anecdotally true of Kevin and Jonathan, it ignores the progress our community is making in setting up sustainable, community-driven productivity spaces. It also seems to suggest that this behavior is specific to San Francisco, when in reality, this trend of independent working is happening around the world in equal measure.

Judging by the attendance at the coworking meetup at yesterday, I’d say that it’s important that the story told is one that acknowledges the work of an international community that is working to meet its own needs by creating, building and renting spaces for modern independent workers. It’s not so much that the cafe environment isn’t a good one for us (I’m writing this from Halcyon in Austin), it’s just that there’s more to the story than Dan is reporting on. And, as someone who’s visited Citizen Space and The Hat Factory, I hope that in a later article, he’ll address the work that we’ve begun to move even beyond the cafe environs to creating work spaces of our own design and desire.

Barcamp Austin 2 – Coworking Meeting on Saturday

for those of you who are at SXSW interactive and Barcamp Austin 2, TODAY (saturday) at 3.30, we’ll be meeting to talk about the coworking movement. please spread the word to your fellow attendants…
Saturday, 10 March @ 3.30 pm
Barcamp Austin 2
508 East Sixth Street, Austin, TX

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Green Coworking at Citizen Space

We’ve always wanted Citizen Space to be a green space — not just the walls (which they are) — but that we’d have as small a ecological footprint as possible in how we run and manage the space. And no, it’s not easy given that we work in high tech and there’s lots of disposables (like a 4′ long box that Amazon sent my new laptop in)… but I digress.

More recently I’ve become obsessed with carbon offsetting and other simple but effective ways that we continue to effectively reduce our footprint. I asked Ivan Storck, a Citizen Coworker who runs Sustainable Marketing, to write up what we’ve done so far and will be doing next:

Chris Messina has really lit a fire under my butt to get our shared “coworking” office CitizenSpace operating and certified as green. While Sustainable Marketing is already certified as a green business via the Co-Op America Green Business Network, it’s only recently that we’ve had a real office outside of my home. Now we can begin to participate in the Bay Area Green Business Program.

Some steps we’ve already taken:

  1. Ordered a full set of trash, recycling, and compost bins from our trash provider.
  2. Continuing our Renewable Energy Certificate program to offset our carbon emissions. See Sustainable Wesbsites Wind Power page for more details. We are going to extend this to the whole office in addition to Sustainable Websites.
  3. Our partner Ethotec has prototyped a green business basics class.
  4. Created a page on the Coworking Wiki to encourage other coworking spaces to be green. Feel free to add to it!
  5. When we moved into CitizenSpace Tara and Chris chose sustainable bamboo flooring and low-energy compact fluorescent light-bulbs (CFLs)
  6. Checked with our landlord on whether we had a low-flow toilet (we did!)
  7. Applied to the San Francisco Green Business Program.

And what’s next:

  1. Figuring out a strategy to deal with phantom power – all the various chargers (”do you have wall warts?!”) for our gadgets sucking up power even when they’re not charging.
  2. Encouraging other technology businesses to go green and devising innovative programs to accomplish this.

So, you can of course contribute on the wiki or leave your thoughts here on how we can bake green principles and practices into the coworking movement.

Historical Collaboration

“The Junto was a club established in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin for mutual improvement.”

Sound familiar? I’m really excited about the interest in coworking that I’ve been able to generate here in Philadelphia. I’ve got a couple of agencies that are interested in sharing space with indies, and some potential dedicated-space opportunities. At the rate I’ve been getting feedback on the website I created for Independents Hall, I’m confident that after some meetup events, and maybe one or two more successful ‘Camps(if not sooner), we will have a good start to an established collective of indies here in Philadelphia.

Also exciting is the interest from one of the cities oldest running New Media organizations, PANMA. PANMA has spent the last 10 years representing the regions digital development community. I’ve spoken with a couple of their board members, and one even proposed that I think about joining the board and launching coworking with the support of PANMA.

At this point, my biggest concern isn’t getting people, it isn’t all of the administrative tasks involved with running a space (though thats pretty high on the list, I’m confident the tool being built by the guys up in NYC will help), my biggest concern is funding. I’m considering approaching Ben Franklin Technology Partners for a grant since this seems to be right up their alley. I’m of the conviction that if I can build it, they will come.

Stay tuned for more cool stuff coming out of Philadelphia.

-Alex [dangerouslyawesome (at) gmail (dot) com]

Technorati Tags: , , , ,