Coworking
= In coworking, freelancers and contractors share work space – and sometimes professional or philosophical affinities.
URL = http://blog.coworking.info/
Definition
From the Wikipedia:
"Coworking is a style of work which involves a shared working environment, sometimes an office yet independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization. Typically it is attractive to work-at-home professionals, independent contractors, or people who travel frequently who end up working in relative isolation. Coworking is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values, and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking)
Advantages
From the "The Current State of Coworking" workshop (2010):
"* Healthy coworking spaces help retain local talent; cities can play a role. La Cantine is partially sponsored by the city of Paris. The city of Santa Cruz, California, helped create NextSpace in order to retain local talent. As one person put it, “People heading over the mountain to Silicon Valley to work are too tired in the evening to participate in their own city culture.” Hillary Hartley, co-owner of Citizen Space and active in Gov 2.0 initiatives, mentioned San Francisco's city hall is intrigued by coworking, and has even considered "municipal coworking" as a way of fostering and maintaining talent in the Bay Area.
- Keeping things local creates (unique) coworking spaces. With the growing popularity and press coverage of coworking, some "rent-an-office" businesses have re-branded themselves with coworking to attract business. Authentic coworking, however, thrives when the community self-organizes into a space or when community voices are woven into the culture of a space. "Members have a voice," said Raines Cohen of Hub Bay Area. Just in San Francisco alone, these voices manifest themselves as Citizen Space, Parisoma, Sandbox Suites, Hat Factory, and Cubes & Crayons (not to mention spaces elsewhere in the Bay Area and start-up incubators, some of them pursuing ideas associated with coworking)
- What role does corporate sponsorship play in coworking spaces? We briefly touched on this. Coworking spaces have a wide diversity of models to remain financially sustainable. Citizen Space is member and owner supported, but has been looking into sponsorship opportunities. We are doing so with both the integrity of the space and the needs of the members in mind. Other space have direct corporate sponsorship and are fine.
- Organized community is vital. Sharing experiences with other people was sweeter than the donut I had for breakfast that morning. Online forums and other digital venues are needed, but don't underestimate the speed of light insight that springs from real-time, face-to-face discussions. A community of coworking owners/managers/coordinators staves off isolation, and is a huge resource for knowledge- sharing and motivation. The informal coworking meetings that take place at the SXSW gathering are important in this regard, too. With that in mind, Chris Heuer offered space at the Social Media "clubhouse" during SXSW for coworkers to meet. Chris also suggested starting a monthly coworking video chat, using something like TokBox. Who’s interested? An organized community also brings buying power for more affordable office equipment, IT services, etc.
* "Coopetition" works. Especially in cities or regions with multiple coworking spaces, embracing the community aspect of this movement is a good thing. As manager of Citizen Space, I recently reached out to other spaces in the city with this in mind and it is has been extremely valuable. It feels great! Sharing expertise and cooperation with competing spaces provides benefits to the whole community."
(http://shareable.net/blog/the-state-of-coworking)
From a business point of view
Stowe Boyd:
"Looking from a economics viewpoint, all the players have economic motivations to support coworking:
- The office worker saves significant expense and time by decreasing commute time, and those with the longest commutes should have the strongest motivation to shift to telework. Therefore, there is a steady migration to telework as businesses adopt policies to support it.
- Businesses have a strong incentive to increase employee morale and productivity, and to decrease expenses related to the increasingly large percentage of their office space that is underutilized. Even if businesses have to subsidize coworking space use by teleworkers, the net savings are significant.
- As the number of freelancers and teleworkers increase, the demand for coworking space grows, since people need the strong social connections historically offered in the workplace, not just the chance connections afforded by sharing a table in Starbucks.
- Entrepreneurs have strong incentives to create coworking spaces: partly to serve as their own base of operations, but also as a business proposition of its own. Note that the desire of businesses to shed unneeded office space in our down economy also provides lower cost space in which to set up shop."
(http://gigaom.com/collaboration/coworking-the-pivot-in-todays-transformation-of-work/)
Discussion
Tara Hunt on the conditions for successfull coworking:
"Spike: Your advice to someone wanting to start a coworking space?
1. If you can’t be a ‘patron’, i.e., someone who can support the space yourself without making any money for the first year, then find one. This way, you can put community ahead of making money and build a nice atmosphere.
2. Build community before you get a space. We did. Indy Hall did. New Work City is. Caroline Collective is. Office Nomads did. This is consistent across the board. Get the support first before you get the space. You can’t just build it and they will come.
3. Build out simply and slowly once you have 1 + 2 covered. We started simple and have built out from there. I know there are spaces, like Launchpad, that are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into infrastructure and that is cool, but not everyone has to. People just want a space to come to so they aren’t working alone anymore. If the need for a fancy photocopier comes up more times than not, THEN invest in it. We don’t even have a phone system, just VoIP. Everyone uses their own cell phones. We don’t have a photocopier. Only 3 people have EVER asked (in 1.5 years) and there is a Kinkos nearby. I don’t know. Providing a nice space with a great atmosphere is key. The other stuff is overhead." (http://blog.launchpadcoworking.com/2008/04/12/an-intervew-with-tara-hunt/)
The Economics of Coworking
Stowe Boyd:
"In the US and Western countries, there has been a growing adoption of coworking spaces, where freelancers, employees of small businesses, or teleworkers can get the best of both worlds: they can work from a work space close to their home — thereby avoiding a long distance commute — but at the same time they can have the support and stimulation that comes from social interaction with well-known people other than your family.
Ray Oldenburg, the urban sociologist, is best known for his notion of the Third Place, like the corner bar, the cafe, or the barber shop, where we can interact with people that we don’t know well, and perhaps with whom we have little in common. He argued that such places are critically import to the health of cities and out societies. He took almost as a given that people would continue their relationship with First and Second Places, the home and the workplace, respectively. But the trends of telework and freelancing means that an increasing means the more people are spending less time in official Second Places, and more at home and Starbucks. But as wonderful as working in a café is, there is definitely a great deal missing.
So it’s no real surprise that the coworking movement is growing at a pace that seems closely linked to the number of people jumping into telework or out of the traditional workplace. Deskmag states there are now more than 1,100 coworking spaces worldwide, more than double the number in 2006. Loosecubes, a service set up to help people find coworking spaces, is tracking over 1,400 locations in over 500 cities, globally.
According to Carsten Foetrsch of deskmag, 72 percent of all coworking spaces become profitable after 2 years of operation, and for privately-run spaces, the number is even higher: 87 percent . So the economics for those interested in setting up and running coworking spaces is compelling." (http://gigaom.com/collaboration/coworking-the-pivot-in-todays-transformation-of-work/)
Examples