Author: Jeannine

The Benefits Of Coworking: How Where You Work Affects Your Success As A Freelancer

Post Author: jeannine.

Working freelance has a huge number of advantages: a work/life balance many would kill for, the freedom to choose exactly how you want to work, the luxury of being able to dictate your own prices, pay rises and bonuses, and the opportunity to get to the post office / bank / gym when everyone else is at work. One of the other plus-sides is the freedom to work in your pajamas all day if you want to, or indeed not get out of bed at all.

Although this sounds like heaven to those of us stuck in grey cubicles all day, forced to listen to Rhonda from HR’s gossip about Tim in Accounting while avoiding leery Jeremy from Marketing, large numbers of freelancers report feelings of loneliness and isolation when working alone from home, which often undermines all of the advantages for which they chose to go freelance in the first place. But there is an alternative option open to freelancers who can’t bear their own company any longer and are desperate for someone, anyone (other than the cat) to talk to, collaborate with or simply be around during their working day and that option is coworking.

So what are the advantages of coworking?

1. In a coworking space you are never alone

So the first and most obvious advantage of coworking is that you are never alone. You are surrounded by other like-minded freelancers who are looking for a little bit of company in their otherwise solitary working lives. You will find that if you join a coworking space you are not just signing up for a desk in a room, you become part of a community, with many coworking spaces hosting parties, social events and after work drinks. Also, if you were dying to get away from an office environment when you went freelance, you will probably notice how different your coworking space is from an office. You come and go as you please, everyone is generally polite and respectful (they are freelancers too, remember) and with no manager or boss looking over your shoulder, your productivity will soar

2. You don’t have to worry about your facilities

When you work for yourself you have to, always, have a stable internet connection. Without one you will lose jobs and clients very quickly. You will also need coffee. Once you are part of a coworking space you no longer need to worry about these two essentials, you will be connected from the moment you walk in the door to both internet and coffee before you’ve even said hello. In a coworking space you’ll also have a decent chair, with back-support, a nice desk and perhaps even a window! Although you might have hated your office environment in your permanent job, you’ll certainly appreciate some decent furniture when you’ve spent months sat with your computer on your lap on the sofa and your back is about ready to snap.

3. You’ll find more work

When you’ve spent all day on the sofa with the cat the number of potential clients you will have interacted with is precisely zero (unless Fluffy happens to be looking for a web developer!). However, plant yourself in a coworking space and you’ll be instantly surrounded by other freelancers who could potentially offer you work themselves, or pass work that they can’t do onto you. Coworking is excellent for networking and therefore excellent for your career. If you’re a web developer you’ll meet entrepreneurs who need programming skills, if you’re a UX designer you’ll soon be propositioned by developers, and so on. On the other side of the coin, if you need someone to do a job for you, you probably won’t even have to advertise! If there isn’t someone in your coworking space who’s qualified you’ll bet there’s someone there who knows someone who is!

 

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Are you interested in coworking? Then CareerFoundry’s Code & Surf Retreat could be the thing for you! Residing at a beach-side coworking resort in Santa Cruz students will learn Web Development or UX Design with in-house mentors in the mornings, while afternoons will be spent learning to surf, hiking and practicing yoga on the beach. To be in with a chance of winning, check out the site here: Code & Surf Retreat

 

 

First Coworking Africa conference: Cape Town, July 23rd and 24th 2015

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The Coworking Africa conference, the first major event organized on the topic of Coworking in Africa, is to take place in Cape Town, South Africa, on July 23rd and 24th 2015.

During two days, Cape Town will be the African capital of Coworking, an ever more successful work model that is becoming the natural professional environment of the new breed of digital workers, startups, and distributed companies who are shaping the economy of the 21st century. Coworking spaces are (mainly) open floor or building where people active on respective different businesses come to work on a same mutualised flexible place shared with peers.

Africa, too, is ready for a Coworking boom

More than 5.800 spaces are operating in the world. The number almost doubles every year. Although Africa still is a small player in the Coworking landscape, the booming tech scene and major demographic shifts are creating the ideal conditions to unleash the development of many more Coworking spaces all across the continent. Within the last 18 months, the number of Coworking spaces in Africa more than tripled. Nowadays, more than 100 units are in operation on the whole continent, to extend that one can now say : Coworking in Africa is now on the same growth trend Europe and the US were five years ago.

Coworking empowers freelancers, remote employees and entrepreneurs all over Africa in multiple ways. Infrastructure wise, coworking spaces are local hotspot where users can now benefit from an efficient connectivity solutions as well as access to an affordable qualitative working environment to operate their activity in African cities often experiencing high real estate costs. From a business perspective, the community dynamic of a coworking spaces brings freelancers and small businesses with more visibility and networking opportunities to boost their activity. More broadly, Coworking spaces physically support the development of local entrepreneurial ecosystem, connected with other communities in Africa and in the rest of the world.

More than 100 delegates from Africa and beyond are expected in Cape Town to attend the Coworking Africa 2015 conference.

By having a Coworking conference to Africa, the initiators of the conferences hope to support the development of an African Coworking awareness as well as a link between Coworking communities on the continent in order to bring Africa in a global move from which we all can end better off.

Organisation :

Coworking Africa 2015 is the result of a partnership between Global Enterprise and Cape Town Office.

Dates
July 23rd and 24th July 2015

EDIT: PLEASE NOTE, VENUE HAS CHANGED

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Registration tickets :
http://coworkingafrica.com/book-now/

Accreditation press : vanessa@coworkingafrica.com

Web and social media :
Coworking Africa Cape Town Office
www.coworkingafrica.com
https://www.facebook.com/CoworkingAfrica https://www.facebook.com/capetownoffice
@CoworkingAfrica @capetownoffice

Country Profile: Coworking in Kazakhstan

Note:  This blogpost was written by Faraz Majidulla, of  Astana Multispace, as part of an informal series to introduce us to Coworking spaces and how they function all over the world.  So let’s start the series off with a little bling bling from Kazakhstan.  

Thanks, Faraz!  

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Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in world based on land mass but only boasts a population of about 18 million people.  Astana is the newly formed capital city and it hosts some of the world’s best new age architecture, from the Norman Foster designed tent shaped shopping center, Khan Statyr, to the multiple new skyscrapers scattered around the city.  One of the most fascinating sites in the city is the Batirek monument, which towers over the city and from the top gives you the best view of Astana.   Kazakhstan is most famous for being an oil rich country but it also has abundance of other natural resources like: gas, gold, copper, uranium, which has given it the opportunity to attract investors from all over the world.

Coworking is a relatively new concept in Kazakhstan and most people are yet to grasp it.  With Astana Multispace being the first real coworking in Kazakhstan we have been entrusted with not only providing world class services that coworking members around the world are accustom to but also with educating the public on how coworking can help them.

Astana Multispace is situated on the top floor of Astana Mall, one of the most popular and unique malls’ in Astana.  The mall has previously hosted many concerts featuring some of the region’s most famous talents.  It has also hosted other great events like drift racing competitions in the underground parking lot and MMA fights in the middle of the mall.  All of these things have helped make Astana Mall one of the destination spots in the Astana.  In recent months however the trend has changed as most people are visiting the mall for more business oriented events that are generally hosted in Multispace.  On a daily basis there are hundreds of people coming for seminars or conferences hosted by the likes of big financial institutions, the national railway company, big oil companies, and big media institutions.

Multispace is considered to be the ‘third place’ filled with eager entrepreneurs, creative designers, and inquisitive journalists.   The sensible design gives it unique ambience that makes it comfortable whether you want to work or relax.  Our design is often compared to Google Office designs.  There are a host of different types of workstations available, individually themed private meeting rooms, a large conference room, a library, an amphitheatre, individually themed private offices, a cigar lounge, a coffee shop and relaxation area.  In addition to this there is a reception area that offers a concierge services.  In Multispace we focus on giving our coworkers the right ‘props’ and best possible conditions to achieve their goals.  This includes high-quality eco-friendly furniture, proper lighting, and the ability to relax in the special twilight recreation room, this is all so that people can work more productively. Our main task is to give young entrepreneurs a new lifestyle.

The future of coworking in Kazakhstan looks very bright as more and more people are choosing this concept opposed to the traditional office.  Most of our coworkers claim that it would be near impossible to switch back to the old ways and see this as the better alternative.   The reason for this is mostly the social aspect that has been injected into their work life making them more open to new ideas and productive.