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=Description=
=Description=


"This report was completed as the final project  
"This report was completed as the final project
of my Masters Degree at Hyper Island, Feb 2013
of my Masters Degree at Hyper Island, Feb 2013


A resource for anyone who wants  
A resource for anyone who wants
to create a better workspace. This  
to create a better workspace. This
report tries to understand how  
report tries to understand how
the socio-economic factors that  
the socio-economic factors that
spawned coworking will continue  
spawned coworking will continue
to affect our workspacesfor the  
to affect our workspacesfor the
better - and with this create tools  
better - and with this create tools
to make it happen."
to make it happen."


Line 22: Line 22:
=Contents=
=Contents=


"This report takes the form of eight chapters on different aspects of the  
"This report takes the form of eight chapters on different aspects of the
spaces, if you are reading this report as a resource in your research  
spaces, if you are reading this report as a resource in your research
to set up a coworking or other space you can utilise these chapters in  
to set up a coworking or other space you can utilise these chapters in
any order.  
any order.


They are as follows:
They are as follows:
Line 31: Line 31:
==CHAPTER 1. ON STRUCTURE==
==CHAPTER 1. ON STRUCTURE==


All shapes and sizes: The spaces we work with others and the many  
All shapes and sizes: The spaces we work with others and the many
forms they take. Where I look at how the spaces we work in compare  
forms they take. Where I look at how the spaces we work in compare
to each other in structure, form and business model.  
to each other in structure, form and business model.




==CHAPTER 2. ON THE PEOPLE==
==CHAPTER 2. ON THE PEOPLE==


Hacking your job: Exploring the individuals involved and their  
Hacking your job: Exploring the individuals involved and their
motivations. Where I explore the decisions that lead people into  
motivations. Where I explore the decisions that lead people into
coworking spaces and what types of people use these new workplaces.  
coworking spaces and what types of people use these new workplaces.




==CHAPTER 3. ON THE PHYSICAL SPACE==
==CHAPTER 3. ON THE PHYSICAL SPACE==


Open and closed doors: Creating a balanced environment for work  
Open and closed doors: Creating a balanced environment for work
and collaboration. Looking at the differences in the physical spaces  
and collaboration. Looking at the differences in the physical spaces
we work in and how this affects the success, the work, the people. 6
we work in and how this affects the success, the work, the people. 6


Line 53: Line 53:


Let’s get together: Communities and culture in the workspace.
Let’s get together: Communities and culture in the workspace.
This chapter looks at the importance of community, openness and  
This chapter looks at the importance of community, openness and
collaboration.
collaboration.




==CHAPTER 5. ON THE GROWTH OF COWORKING==
==CHAPTER 5. ON THE GROWTH OF COWORKING==
 
Coworking: Where did it all come from. A look at the history, current  
Coworking: Where did it all come from. A look at the history, current
situation and rapid growth of coworking.
situation and rapid growth of coworking.




==CHAPTER 6. ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS==  
==CHAPTER 6. ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS==


Sharing is caring: An economy of trust and other things.
Sharing is caring: An economy of trust and other things.


Coworking is part of the boom in collaborative consumption, where  
Coworking is part of the boom in collaborative consumption, where
trust between strangers is earned online and Airbnb is taking the  
trust between strangers is earned online and Airbnb is taking the
world by storm. The coworking movement is booming in relation to  
world by storm. The coworking movement is booming in relation to
the economy’s downturn and the effect it has had on the job market,  
the economy’s downturn and the effect it has had on the job market,
people are choosing to create their own opportunities and choose the  
people are choosing to create their own opportunities and choose the
place where they work.
place where they work.




==CHAPTER 7. ON PREDICTIONS==
==CHAPTER 7. ON PREDICTIONS==
Outward not inward: Communes for the digital age. A look at the  
Outward not inward: Communes for the digital age. A look at the
possible outcomes of the current situation and how it could effect the  
possible outcomes of the current situation and how it could effect the
future of work.
future of work.




==CHAPTER 8. THE CONCLUSIONS==  
==CHAPTER 8. THE CONCLUSIONS==


Community and knowledge. Lessons learnt that can be applied to  
Community and knowledge. Lessons learnt that can be applied to
coworking spaces to help succeed get to their goals and overcome  
coworking spaces to help succeed get to their goals and overcome
their obstacles. Findings in relation to the research questions."
their obstacles. Findings in relation to the research questions."


Line 93: Line 93:
From the introduction:
From the introduction:


"The purpose of this  
"The purpose of this
report is to discuss the  
report is to discuss the
spaces in which we work  
spaces in which we work
with others, specifically,  
with others, specifically,
coworking spaces.
coworking spaces.


There is no doubt that we are entering a new phase of society,  
There is no doubt that we are entering a new phase of society,
aren’t we always? This particular time sees a set of circumstances  
aren’t we always? This particular time sees a set of circumstances
that are having a positive affect on the spaces we work in.  
that are having a positive affect on the spaces we work in.


We’re  living in an information society, on the cusp of the knowledge  
We’re  living in an information society, on the cusp of the knowledge
economy where our know-how is as much an economic resource  
economy where our know-how is as much an economic resource
as our labour, the first generation of digital natives are entering  
as our labour, the first generation of digital natives are entering
the workplace, the global job market is in the news every day  
the workplace, the global job market is in the news every day
and half of all college graduates can’t find work. We hold in our  
and half of all college graduates can’t find work. We hold in our
hands these amazing new tools for sharing and communicating;  
hands these amazing new tools for sharing and communicating;
the mobile internet and the cloud. Recent years have seen the  
the mobile internet and the cloud. Recent years have seen the
rise of collaborative consumption due to the efficiency of peerto-peer exchanges in our networked world.  
rise of collaborative consumption due to the efficiency of peerto-peer exchanges in our networked world.


Most significantly, by  
Most significantly, by
2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion,  
2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion,
representing 37.2% of the total workforce according to a report  
representing 37.2% of the total workforce according to a report
from the IDC in January 2012. - These socioeconomic factors have  
from the IDC in January 2012. - These socioeconomic factors have
resulted in a new crop of work spaces which is only now able to  
resulted in a new crop of work spaces which is only now able to
see it’s own data and evaluate it’s own existence … a young market  
see it’s own data and evaluate it’s own existence … a young market
that is yet to see it’s failures these circumstances that surround the  
that is yet to see it’s failures these circumstances that surround the
emergence of coworking spaces will continue to affect the spaces in  
emergence of coworking spaces will continue to affect the spaces in
which we all work.
which we all work.


The two key components I have found that will change the  
The two key components I have found that will change the
future of where we work are Community and Knowledge. I will show  
future of where we work are Community and Knowledge. I will show
how I came to these and look at how they might continue to effect  
how I came to these and look at how they might continue to effect
where we work.  
where we work.


This report when not stated otherwise is based on observations of my  
This report when not stated otherwise is based on observations of my
time in a coworking space and studying workspaces for a period of 12  
time in a coworking space and studying workspaces for a period of 12
weeks. When discussing the future of workspaces in Chapter 8 and  
weeks. When discussing the future of workspaces in Chapter 8 and
9 I have drawn these conclusions, which are my own thoughts and  
9 I have drawn these conclusions, which are my own thoughts and
opinions, based on my observations and research.
opinions, based on my observations and research.


Coworking is a difficult word to pin down and is defined by some in  
Coworking is a difficult word to pin down and is defined by some in
different ways. I will attempt to be consistent in my use of the word  
different ways. I will attempt to be consistent in my use of the word
and it is important to first define in the context of this report what a  
and it is important to first define in the context of this report what a
few terms are referring to:
few terms are referring to:


Line 142: Line 142:
* Coworking space: A dedicated communal space and facility for  coworking.
* Coworking space: A dedicated communal space and facility for  coworking.


A Space: The physical space in which people do the work they  
A Space: The physical space in which people do the work they
are either solely pursuing as Independents or contracted for.
are either solely pursuing as Independents or contracted for.
Independents: People who are not dependent on a single  
Independents: People who are not dependent on a single
employer, investor or shareholder."
employer, investor or shareholder."


==Communities and  culture in the  workspace==
"Our workplaces are communities, our colleagues are our
neighbours, but where did neighbourliness go? Our new
workspaces are exploring community once again and waving
goodbye to the cubicle. This chapter looks at community-building,
openness and collaboration.
Some recent research I did on neighbourhoods for another recent
project has a lot of parallels with our coworking environments, the
relationship between members in a coworking environment is often
a neighbourly one - a view also shared by C. Spinuzzi in his paper
Working alone together (see infographics from chapter 1). What we
found When we looked at neighbourhoods in urban environments
was, that people where disconnected to their neighbours. They had
more trust in the people they would interact with on the internet,
They sometimes wouldn’t interact with their neighbours at all. We
found that every community could be dissected into Community
Leaders, Supporters and the Crowd, and that at each level required a
different kind of empowerment and action that was required of them.
Because people had no connection to their neighbours they where
not always compelled to look after their building or surrounding area.
Neighbourliness was often successful when there was a champion, a
community leader who would act and inspire others to act much like
described by Clay Shirkey in Here comes everybody."
==The history of Coworking==
Kathy Jackson:
"It all depends who you speak to where the origins of coworking
come from. If your looking for the current iteration most popular in
America, now growing the world over, the version of the story goes a
little this:
Brad Neuberg from San Francisco, was a coder, used to hacking out
solutions, in 2005 he decided to create a community of likeminded
people to work alongside in order to keep what he loved about
freelance and what he loved about structure and community. He used
the word coworking to describe what his space was for and was the
first to do so.
Based out of Spiral Muse simply referred to as the coworking
group. The space was inside a house, with a kitchen communal area
and work space. The original online flyer said “Coworking Rents
Space From Spiral Muse, a Healing Centre Complete with Massage
Therapists, Life Coaches, and More On the Second Floor” 4.29
The space utilised the 3 day downtime of the health and wellness
centre to get them out of their homes and working side by side, but
also maintained the ethos of the health centre with yoga and other
healthy activities being a daily occurrence.
Mr Neuberg and many of the other first coworking space creators
where developers and advocates of the open source movement
they applied the same principals to their new ventures and they
shared their knowledge online on the coworking wiki, spreading the
concept.
After his Spiral Muse venture Brad then created the first full time
coworking space The Hat Factory in San Francisco. Simultaneously
Chris Messina and others where establishing the first BarCamps - 34
The antidote to the corporate over priced overproduced exclusive
tech conferences. From this Chris Messina along with Tara hunt
Founded Citizen Space, one of the longest running coworking spaces
- currently with 3 locations - and Brad, Chris and others involved
early the movement created the coworking wiki and the google group
as any open-source thinkers would.
The concept certainly isn’t a new one, if we think of things like sewing
bees or quilting bees which go back to the 1700s and any tribal
groups from any period we find people gathering to work, to sing
together and to just generally not be alone. In 2002 Daniel H. Pink
was writing about F.A.N. clubs, Free Agent Nation clubs which where
similar to the popular current term of a Jelly event, gatherings of free
agents to learn and get away from home, they would meet in coffee
shops and other designated third spaces.
Of course the crucial development in the growth of coworking is an
outside factor, the instigation of wifi and later 3G. Wifi becoming
more commonly used and available around 2003/4 we have all the
tools necessary to work anywhere we please, and a generation of new
workers who are used to instant contact through mobile and Skype,
working anywhere is even more appealing now than back in 2002
when Daniel H. Pink wrote about Free Agents:
- “The largest private employer in the U.S. is not Detroit’s General
Motors or Ford, or even Seattle’s Microsoft or Amazon.com, but
Milwaukee’s Manpower Inc., a temp agency with more than
1,100 offices in the U.S. The dream of America’s young people?
Not to climb through an organization, or even to accept a job at
one, but to create their own gig on their own terms—often on
the World Wide Web.” (Free Agent Nation - 2002)
A factor that can’t be ignored in the short history of coworking is the
fact that we have had a major economic downturn and subsequent
unemployment rates. Coworking sums up a period in time right now
where the stars have aligned for some people to create something
new. Tony Bacigalupo is one of those people, founder of New Work
City, advocate of the coworking movement and a frequent blogger on
the surrounding factors of coworking.
He points out,
- “The Irony of being able to work anywhere is that there isn’t
anywhere designed for people who can work anywhere, so
a movement formed around that and that is the coworking 35
movement.” - Tony Bacigalupo
Tony’s presentation on the Job Crisis ‘Let’s fix the stupid job crisis
ourselves’ highlights the importance of the kind of independent
workers that use coworking spaces and that there is an opportunity
to create jobs for ourselves and for each other. Creating value for
yourself becomes a positive action in tackling the job crisis.
“The decline in lifetime job security has shifted the balance
towards self-employment”.
'''Working in the Unoffice'''
If we look at Google Trends we can see that in 2007, around the same
time as the downturn in the economy began to have major effect, the
word coworking began to take off in search. Google Trends are by
their own admission not a basis for accurate data but they can give
us a good picture in these circumstances of the growth in the use of
Brad Neuberg’s term ‘coworking’ we can see that 2 years after Brad
started using the phrase there has been fairly steady growth since,
with ‘coworking space’ being the most popular related term.
During this growth of coworking between 2007 and 2012 many
entrepreneurial coworkers and others, in the open-source thinking
spirit, have seen the need to create new online platforms and
directories for others to find coworking spaces and much like
coworking itself many appeared at the same time seemingly all
seeking to find the solution to the same problem. The two most
prominent of which are Deskwanted a directory of coworking spaces
available in cities around the world, successful because of it’s blog
DeskMag which conducts the annual Global Coworking Survey
and has established itself outside of the Google group and Wiki to
be the place for study and research on coworking best practice and
trends. The other being Loosecubes, established in 2010 it was the 36
most publicised of the directories by tech blogs and newspapers alike.
Loosecubes was somewhat responsible for a lot of press around the
coworking movement, lauded as the Airbnb of deskspace, they where
venture capital funded in 2011, but they struggled with their business
model and failed to create the platform for coworking that was
envisioned by the community and the press they closed the website in
November 2012.
Other entrepreneurs are creating software to help coworking spaces
with the day to day running of the space. As time has gone on some
better established business models for spaces have become apparent
and it’s now possible to make something that can be useful and
adaptable to every space. Cobot where one of the firt to create such
software and more recently established Desktime have created a
balance between Directory and software.
Other entrepreneurs are creating ventures with a more community
focus, Goodcoworking.com launched at the end of 2012 aims to
create a different type of directory one based around ‘social’, the
spaces are listed when someone tells their story in a tweet of what
they love about working in that coworking space. Coffee and power
now called Work club connects you to people with skills in your
area who are working in different spaces, Work club bridges the gap
between home, coworking spaces and coffee shops, preventing the
small communities from becoming too inward facing, creating a
larger pool of resources in your area.
Parallel to the coworking movement we have seen websites like
Airbnb, Craigslist and Ebay show us that collaborative consumption
is the smart way forward.
“Sharing is to Ownership what the iPod is to the eight track,
what the solar panel is to the coal mine. Sharing is clean, crisp,
urbane, postmodern, owning is dull, selfish, timid, backward.”
(New York Times Journalist Mark Levine via WMIY.)
Ventures like Deskwanted, ShareDesks, Cobot and Desktime
look to the success of Airbnb to establish the economy of trust
Ratchel Botsman talks about in her recent TED Talk 2.5, The more
acclimatised to the process of sharing we become the more likely the
success of the directories and therefore the coworking spaces will
become."
(http://www.makingspaceforothers.com/content/home/MakingSpaceForOthers_By_Katy_Jackson_sml2.pdf)
==[[Typology of Collaborative Workspaces]]==
Kathy Jackson:
===LABS===
"Labs are being created by large corporations to take advantage
of the lean model, they are separate from the top down, CEO 8
filled traditional structure of the parent company, Labs are where
innovation roams free, Advertising companies (BBH), Tech
companies (Google) and even retail (Norstrom) and Newspapers
(New York Times) have adopted the new Lab structure within their companies.
===UNIVERSITY LABS===
Not the science kind - These are innovation labs, where students
from a variety of disciplines, can come together, in a highly charged
environment to solve common problems, brainstorm and create
ultimately the future start-ups and transformative ideas. Currently
some of these are, The Harvard iLab, The MIT CoLab and Media
Innovation Lab, The Stanford Peace Innovation Lab.
===INCUBATORS===
Business Incubators started around the 1960s and are designed
to support start-ups and entrepreneurs with development - They
provide all the basics and the structure they need to get going,
without the start-ups necessarily having the expense of hiring their
own lawyer for example. they are fast, high growth programs to get
businesses on their feet, Incubators often host a number of small
start-ups at once and they sometimes work alongside each other in
the programme, almost like a school for start-ups.
===TOUCHDOWN SPACES===
This refers to the established workstations and corporate virtual
offices, executive suites & touchdown service concepts that have been
around for 30 years or so, the biggest name in the business is Regus.
===HOME===
Working at home in your own home office, either as part of a
distributed team, as a remote worker or as an independent business
or solopreneur.
===COFFEE SHOP===
Where the home worker often finds themselves. Or the office worker
looking for a ‘Third space’ to cure the doldrums of a working day. 9
===COFFEE SHOP+ ===
There are other Coffee shops which start to verge on coworking
spaces, these are the small independent, more likely community
coffee shops that see the potential in the remote workforce and offer
up the best wifi, small tables and sockets-a-plenty, I’ve named them
here as ‘Coffee shop +’.
===COLLECTIVES===
An older model, historically this would have been artists. Collectives
differ from coworking spaces in that they usually have a co-op
business model, they all invest in space together, they are more often
than not made up of people in the same discipline, a way of banding
together to create a stronger voice than a lone freelancer.
===THE JELLY===
A gathering, a casual working event where people get together in a
coffee shop or a persons home. A popular solution to not working
alone “We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting
people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.” Often
Jelly events if a strong group bonds can lead to a coworking space
being established.
===COWORK LAB OR COWORKING FOR INNOVATION===
Another model I’ve witnessed in my studies is a new breed, born
of big businesses foreseeing the value of coworking, this model
uses coworking as a means to innovate, it allows certain types of
business to have a permanent place where they can study their
users and much like the Lab model they can innovate and change
practices without having to deal with the structure of an entire
corporation, these are places to experiment with customer service,
usage patterns… whatever they like, it’s the fastest way to innovate.
examples of these places are NextDoor in Chicago run by StateFarm
Insurance and conceived by IDEO, Google campus in London and
ING Cafes situated in various locations around the world. Then there
is American express who situate themselves in a coworking space
with similar aims “We try to learn from companies,” she continues,
speaking of the customers she serves. “Not only because I’ve fallen
in love with them, but because they inspire us to get to know them
better.” To that end, American Express OPEN took up residence at
one of the co-working spaces owned by tech incubator WeWork Labs.
“We do that so our team can walk outside their little glass cube and
interact with business owners who are around them and say, ‘What
do you think about this or that?’” Her team also works closely with 10
another co-working space, General Assembly.**4.25** (Google think quarterly)
===COWORKING SPACES===
Lastly in our graphic we have coworking spaces, which are a little
harder to define… "
(http://www.makingspaceforothers.com/content/home/MakingSpaceForOthers_By_Katy_Jackson_sml2.pdf)


=More Information=
=More Information=

Latest revision as of 16:37, 10 March 2013

= Master's thesis on Coworking by Kathy Jackson

URL = http://www.makingspaceforothers.com/ download


Description

"This report was completed as the final project of my Masters Degree at Hyper Island, Feb 2013

A resource for anyone who wants to create a better workspace. This report tries to understand how the socio-economic factors that spawned coworking will continue to affect our workspacesfor the better - and with this create tools to make it happen."


Contents

"This report takes the form of eight chapters on different aspects of the spaces, if you are reading this report as a resource in your research to set up a coworking or other space you can utilise these chapters in any order.

They are as follows:

CHAPTER 1. ON STRUCTURE

All shapes and sizes: The spaces we work with others and the many forms they take. Where I look at how the spaces we work in compare to each other in structure, form and business model.


CHAPTER 2. ON THE PEOPLE

Hacking your job: Exploring the individuals involved and their motivations. Where I explore the decisions that lead people into coworking spaces and what types of people use these new workplaces.


CHAPTER 3. ON THE PHYSICAL SPACE

Open and closed doors: Creating a balanced environment for work and collaboration. Looking at the differences in the physical spaces we work in and how this affects the success, the work, the people. 6


CHAPTER 4. ON COMMUNITY

Let’s get together: Communities and culture in the workspace. This chapter looks at the importance of community, openness and collaboration.


CHAPTER 5. ON THE GROWTH OF COWORKING

Coworking: Where did it all come from. A look at the history, current situation and rapid growth of coworking.


CHAPTER 6. ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS

Sharing is caring: An economy of trust and other things.

Coworking is part of the boom in collaborative consumption, where trust between strangers is earned online and Airbnb is taking the world by storm. The coworking movement is booming in relation to the economy’s downturn and the effect it has had on the job market, people are choosing to create their own opportunities and choose the place where they work.


CHAPTER 7. ON PREDICTIONS

Outward not inward: Communes for the digital age. A look at the possible outcomes of the current situation and how it could effect the future of work.


CHAPTER 8. THE CONCLUSIONS

Community and knowledge. Lessons learnt that can be applied to coworking spaces to help succeed get to their goals and overcome their obstacles. Findings in relation to the research questions."


Excerpt

From the introduction:

"The purpose of this report is to discuss the spaces in which we work with others, specifically, coworking spaces.

There is no doubt that we are entering a new phase of society, aren’t we always? This particular time sees a set of circumstances that are having a positive affect on the spaces we work in.

We’re living in an information society, on the cusp of the knowledge economy where our know-how is as much an economic resource as our labour, the first generation of digital natives are entering the workplace, the global job market is in the news every day and half of all college graduates can’t find work. We hold in our hands these amazing new tools for sharing and communicating; the mobile internet and the cloud. Recent years have seen the rise of collaborative consumption due to the efficiency of peerto-peer exchanges in our networked world.

Most significantly, by 2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2% of the total workforce according to a report from the IDC in January 2012. - These socioeconomic factors have resulted in a new crop of work spaces which is only now able to see it’s own data and evaluate it’s own existence … a young market that is yet to see it’s failures these circumstances that surround the emergence of coworking spaces will continue to affect the spaces in which we all work.

The two key components I have found that will change the future of where we work are Community and Knowledge. I will show how I came to these and look at how they might continue to effect where we work.

This report when not stated otherwise is based on observations of my time in a coworking space and studying workspaces for a period of 12 weeks. When discussing the future of workspaces in Chapter 8 and 9 I have drawn these conclusions, which are my own thoughts and opinions, based on my observations and research.

Coworking is a difficult word to pin down and is defined by some in different ways. I will attempt to be consistent in my use of the word and it is important to first define in the context of this report what a few terms are referring to:

  • Coworking: The deliberate choice to not work alone.
  • Coworking space: A dedicated communal space and facility for coworking.

A Space: The physical space in which people do the work they are either solely pursuing as Independents or contracted for. Independents: People who are not dependent on a single employer, investor or shareholder."


Communities and culture in the workspace

"Our workplaces are communities, our colleagues are our neighbours, but where did neighbourliness go? Our new workspaces are exploring community once again and waving goodbye to the cubicle. This chapter looks at community-building, openness and collaboration.

Some recent research I did on neighbourhoods for another recent project has a lot of parallels with our coworking environments, the relationship between members in a coworking environment is often a neighbourly one - a view also shared by C. Spinuzzi in his paper Working alone together (see infographics from chapter 1). What we found When we looked at neighbourhoods in urban environments was, that people where disconnected to their neighbours. They had more trust in the people they would interact with on the internet, They sometimes wouldn’t interact with their neighbours at all. We found that every community could be dissected into Community Leaders, Supporters and the Crowd, and that at each level required a different kind of empowerment and action that was required of them. Because people had no connection to their neighbours they where not always compelled to look after their building or surrounding area.

Neighbourliness was often successful when there was a champion, a community leader who would act and inspire others to act much like described by Clay Shirkey in Here comes everybody."


The history of Coworking

Kathy Jackson:

"It all depends who you speak to where the origins of coworking come from. If your looking for the current iteration most popular in America, now growing the world over, the version of the story goes a little this:

Brad Neuberg from San Francisco, was a coder, used to hacking out solutions, in 2005 he decided to create a community of likeminded people to work alongside in order to keep what he loved about freelance and what he loved about structure and community. He used the word coworking to describe what his space was for and was the first to do so.

Based out of Spiral Muse simply referred to as the coworking group. The space was inside a house, with a kitchen communal area and work space. The original online flyer said “Coworking Rents Space From Spiral Muse, a Healing Centre Complete with Massage Therapists, Life Coaches, and More On the Second Floor” 4.29 The space utilised the 3 day downtime of the health and wellness centre to get them out of their homes and working side by side, but also maintained the ethos of the health centre with yoga and other healthy activities being a daily occurrence.

Mr Neuberg and many of the other first coworking space creators where developers and advocates of the open source movement they applied the same principals to their new ventures and they shared their knowledge online on the coworking wiki, spreading the concept.

After his Spiral Muse venture Brad then created the first full time coworking space The Hat Factory in San Francisco. Simultaneously Chris Messina and others where establishing the first BarCamps - 34 The antidote to the corporate over priced overproduced exclusive tech conferences. From this Chris Messina along with Tara hunt Founded Citizen Space, one of the longest running coworking spaces - currently with 3 locations - and Brad, Chris and others involved early the movement created the coworking wiki and the google group as any open-source thinkers would.

The concept certainly isn’t a new one, if we think of things like sewing bees or quilting bees which go back to the 1700s and any tribal groups from any period we find people gathering to work, to sing together and to just generally not be alone. In 2002 Daniel H. Pink was writing about F.A.N. clubs, Free Agent Nation clubs which where similar to the popular current term of a Jelly event, gatherings of free agents to learn and get away from home, they would meet in coffee shops and other designated third spaces.

Of course the crucial development in the growth of coworking is an outside factor, the instigation of wifi and later 3G. Wifi becoming more commonly used and available around 2003/4 we have all the tools necessary to work anywhere we please, and a generation of new workers who are used to instant contact through mobile and Skype, working anywhere is even more appealing now than back in 2002 when Daniel H. Pink wrote about Free Agents:

- “The largest private employer in the U.S. is not Detroit’s General Motors or Ford, or even Seattle’s Microsoft or Amazon.com, but Milwaukee’s Manpower Inc., a temp agency with more than 1,100 offices in the U.S. The dream of America’s young people? Not to climb through an organization, or even to accept a job at one, but to create their own gig on their own terms—often on the World Wide Web.” (Free Agent Nation - 2002)

A factor that can’t be ignored in the short history of coworking is the fact that we have had a major economic downturn and subsequent unemployment rates. Coworking sums up a period in time right now where the stars have aligned for some people to create something new. Tony Bacigalupo is one of those people, founder of New Work City, advocate of the coworking movement and a frequent blogger on the surrounding factors of coworking.

He points out,

- “The Irony of being able to work anywhere is that there isn’t anywhere designed for people who can work anywhere, so a movement formed around that and that is the coworking 35 movement.” - Tony Bacigalupo

Tony’s presentation on the Job Crisis ‘Let’s fix the stupid job crisis ourselves’ highlights the importance of the kind of independent workers that use coworking spaces and that there is an opportunity to create jobs for ourselves and for each other. Creating value for yourself becomes a positive action in tackling the job crisis. “The decline in lifetime job security has shifted the balance towards self-employment”.


Working in the Unoffice


If we look at Google Trends we can see that in 2007, around the same time as the downturn in the economy began to have major effect, the word coworking began to take off in search. Google Trends are by their own admission not a basis for accurate data but they can give us a good picture in these circumstances of the growth in the use of Brad Neuberg’s term ‘coworking’ we can see that 2 years after Brad started using the phrase there has been fairly steady growth since, with ‘coworking space’ being the most popular related term.

During this growth of coworking between 2007 and 2012 many entrepreneurial coworkers and others, in the open-source thinking spirit, have seen the need to create new online platforms and directories for others to find coworking spaces and much like coworking itself many appeared at the same time seemingly all seeking to find the solution to the same problem. The two most prominent of which are Deskwanted a directory of coworking spaces available in cities around the world, successful because of it’s blog DeskMag which conducts the annual Global Coworking Survey and has established itself outside of the Google group and Wiki to be the place for study and research on coworking best practice and trends. The other being Loosecubes, established in 2010 it was the 36 most publicised of the directories by tech blogs and newspapers alike. Loosecubes was somewhat responsible for a lot of press around the coworking movement, lauded as the Airbnb of deskspace, they where venture capital funded in 2011, but they struggled with their business model and failed to create the platform for coworking that was envisioned by the community and the press they closed the website in November 2012.

Other entrepreneurs are creating software to help coworking spaces with the day to day running of the space. As time has gone on some better established business models for spaces have become apparent and it’s now possible to make something that can be useful and adaptable to every space. Cobot where one of the firt to create such software and more recently established Desktime have created a balance between Directory and software.

Other entrepreneurs are creating ventures with a more community focus, Goodcoworking.com launched at the end of 2012 aims to create a different type of directory one based around ‘social’, the spaces are listed when someone tells their story in a tweet of what they love about working in that coworking space. Coffee and power now called Work club connects you to people with skills in your area who are working in different spaces, Work club bridges the gap between home, coworking spaces and coffee shops, preventing the small communities from becoming too inward facing, creating a larger pool of resources in your area.

Parallel to the coworking movement we have seen websites like Airbnb, Craigslist and Ebay show us that collaborative consumption is the smart way forward.

“Sharing is to Ownership what the iPod is to the eight track, what the solar panel is to the coal mine. Sharing is clean, crisp, urbane, postmodern, owning is dull, selfish, timid, backward.” (New York Times Journalist Mark Levine via WMIY.)

Ventures like Deskwanted, ShareDesks, Cobot and Desktime look to the success of Airbnb to establish the economy of trust Ratchel Botsman talks about in her recent TED Talk 2.5, The more acclimatised to the process of sharing we become the more likely the success of the directories and therefore the coworking spaces will become." (http://www.makingspaceforothers.com/content/home/MakingSpaceForOthers_By_Katy_Jackson_sml2.pdf)


Typology of Collaborative Workspaces

Kathy Jackson:

LABS

"Labs are being created by large corporations to take advantage of the lean model, they are separate from the top down, CEO 8 filled traditional structure of the parent company, Labs are where innovation roams free, Advertising companies (BBH), Tech companies (Google) and even retail (Norstrom) and Newspapers (New York Times) have adopted the new Lab structure within their companies.


UNIVERSITY LABS

Not the science kind - These are innovation labs, where students from a variety of disciplines, can come together, in a highly charged environment to solve common problems, brainstorm and create ultimately the future start-ups and transformative ideas. Currently some of these are, The Harvard iLab, The MIT CoLab and Media Innovation Lab, The Stanford Peace Innovation Lab.


INCUBATORS

Business Incubators started around the 1960s and are designed to support start-ups and entrepreneurs with development - They provide all the basics and the structure they need to get going, without the start-ups necessarily having the expense of hiring their own lawyer for example. they are fast, high growth programs to get businesses on their feet, Incubators often host a number of small start-ups at once and they sometimes work alongside each other in the programme, almost like a school for start-ups.


TOUCHDOWN SPACES

This refers to the established workstations and corporate virtual offices, executive suites & touchdown service concepts that have been around for 30 years or so, the biggest name in the business is Regus.

HOME

Working at home in your own home office, either as part of a distributed team, as a remote worker or as an independent business or solopreneur.


COFFEE SHOP

Where the home worker often finds themselves. Or the office worker looking for a ‘Third space’ to cure the doldrums of a working day. 9


COFFEE SHOP+

There are other Coffee shops which start to verge on coworking spaces, these are the small independent, more likely community coffee shops that see the potential in the remote workforce and offer up the best wifi, small tables and sockets-a-plenty, I’ve named them here as ‘Coffee shop +’.


COLLECTIVES

An older model, historically this would have been artists. Collectives differ from coworking spaces in that they usually have a co-op business model, they all invest in space together, they are more often than not made up of people in the same discipline, a way of banding together to create a stronger voice than a lone freelancer.


THE JELLY

A gathering, a casual working event where people get together in a coffee shop or a persons home. A popular solution to not working alone “We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.” Often Jelly events if a strong group bonds can lead to a coworking space being established.


COWORK LAB OR COWORKING FOR INNOVATION

Another model I’ve witnessed in my studies is a new breed, born of big businesses foreseeing the value of coworking, this model uses coworking as a means to innovate, it allows certain types of business to have a permanent place where they can study their users and much like the Lab model they can innovate and change practices without having to deal with the structure of an entire corporation, these are places to experiment with customer service, usage patterns… whatever they like, it’s the fastest way to innovate. examples of these places are NextDoor in Chicago run by StateFarm Insurance and conceived by IDEO, Google campus in London and ING Cafes situated in various locations around the world. Then there is American express who situate themselves in a coworking space with similar aims “We try to learn from companies,” she continues, speaking of the customers she serves. “Not only because I’ve fallen in love with them, but because they inspire us to get to know them better.” To that end, American Express OPEN took up residence at one of the co-working spaces owned by tech incubator WeWork Labs. “We do that so our team can walk outside their little glass cube and interact with business owners who are around them and say, ‘What do you think about this or that?’” Her team also works closely with 10 another co-working space, General Assembly.**4.25** (Google think quarterly)


COWORKING SPACES

Lastly in our graphic we have coworking spaces, which are a little harder to define… " (http://www.makingspaceforothers.com/content/home/MakingSpaceForOthers_By_Katy_Jackson_sml2.pdf)

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