Coworker Agreement

[Alex Hillman]

Hey Everybody!
Coworking Philadelphia, a.k.a. Independents Hall, is literally a couple of weeks away from opening!

We'll be signing a lease on a great space in Old City Philadelphia mid-august, and in the mean time we're working hard to get everything else in place.  If anyone's going to be near Philadelphia towards the end of August, let me know, we'd love for you to stop by!

We've got an awesome, committed userbase for launch but that doesn't mean we don't need paperwork.

We've modified EastMedia's Terms of Use (http://wiki.coworking.info/EM_TOU ) for our own purposes, but we're still needing to draft a member agreement, binding a person to a membership level for a certain period of time. Does anyone have an agreement that they'd be willing to share that we can use as a model for ours?

Much thanks to everyone who's supported us to get this far...I can't believe we're this close!

Cheers,
Alex

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Alex Hillman
web.developer.innovation.consultant
vocal: 484.597.6256
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome
visual: www.weknowhtml.com | www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.independentshall.org

[dangerous...@gmail.com]

Bumping this topic because I'm still hurting for example documents.
Anyone able to help?
Thanks so much!

-Alex

On Jul 31, 5:15 pm, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> digital: a...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[Tara Hunt]

We do gentleperson's agreements...on a month to month program. We decided early on to avoid all paperwork possible to also avoid externalized trust scenarios.

T.

On 8/3/07, dangerous...@gmail.com <dangerous...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bumping this topic because I'm still hurting for example documents.
Anyone able to help?
Thanks so much!

-Alex

On Jul 31, 5:15 pm, "Alex Hillman" < dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hey Everybody!
> Coworking Philadelphia, a.k.a. Independents Hall, is literally a couple of
> weeks away from opening!
>
> We'll be signing a lease on a great space in Old City Philadelphia
> mid-august, and in the mean time we're working hard to get everything else
> in place.  If anyone's going to be near Philadelphia towards the end of
> August, let me know, we'd love for you to stop by!
>
> We've got an awesome, committed userbase for launch but that doesn't mean we
> don't need paperwork.
>

> We've modified EastMedia's Terms of Use ( http://wiki.coworking.info/EM_TOU)

> for our own purposes, but we're still needing to draft a member agreement,
> binding a person to a membership level for a certain period of time. Does
> anyone have an agreement that they'd be willing to share that we can use as
> a model for ours?
>
> Much thanks to everyone who's supported us to get this far...I can't believe
> we're this close!
>
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
> --
> -----
> --
> -----
> Alex Hillman
> web.developer.innovation.consultant
> vocal: 484.597.6256
> digital: a...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome
> visual:www.weknowhtml.com|www.dangerouslyawesome.com
> local:www.independentshall.org

--
tara 'miss rogue' hunt
co-founder & CMO
Citizen Agency (www.citizenagency.com)
blog: www.horsepigcow.com
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335

[Alex Hillman]

I wish our situation allowed for that...we've got a slightly different business model and a very specific agreement with our landlord who, while is now very excited to be renting to us, has owned the building for 40+ years and we need to have some more stringent paperwork to deal with liability that comes with migrant workers.

Believe me...I'm the first person to want to avoid complication and additional overhead, but this is really a necessary precaution for now. Perhaps things will change for us in the future.

Anyone else have thoughts on this operation?

-Alex

digital: al...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[NathanaelB]

So you're saying that the leasing conditions require each person who
will be using the premises to sign an agreement??

[Alex Hillman]

Not each and every person, but the core "permenent" membership...tenants, so to speak.

On 8/4/07, NathanaelB < sn...@purecaffeine.com> wrote:

So you're saying that the leasing conditions require each person who
will be using the premises to sign an agreement??

[NathanaelB]

Ok so the purpose of the agreement is to, what, ensure the lease
payments are met? Are you concerned that they won't be? Would some
sort of leasesure insurance/protection be an acceptable substitute?

I don't have or know of anything - but if it's only for the landlord's
peace of mind then you won't need anything overly complex. As long as
it's an agreement that commits parties to a certain level ($ or %) of
contributions for a minimum period of time and measures in place to
handle inability to contribute to payments - should be sufficient;
couple of pages?

[Chris Messina]

There's also the matter of liability, which is probably of serious
importance. That is, should anything happen to a tenant's things
(theft, damage, fire/disaster, etc) that Alex or the landlord should
have minimal responsibility -- essentially that the tenants are
responsible for securing their effects.

In adition to that, as you've mentioned, setting up a pay schedule and
remedies for tardy payments is probably a good idea, as well as
reserving the right to change the rent with a certain number of days'
notice and so on.

Ideally this document could be written like an FAQ or memorandum of
understanding -- or even a simple letter that should be signed by each
tenant. While lengthy agreements with legalese are in vogue, I
wouldn't mind seeing a gentler kind of document that sets out the
right bits, but in a readable, conversational tone, and that doesn't
necessarily go into all the myriad possibilites of things that could
wrong and disclaims them, but instead lays things out clearly and in
the interest of shared understanding.

Given that, Alex, maybe you could list things, in outline form, that
you think must be covered by such a document?

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

[Alex Hillman]

This is EXACTLY what I am seeking out...and if it doesn't exist, I'm happy to share what we do create.

I don't want this to be more than a couple of pages, as Nathaniel suggested, and I don't want it to be full of legalese, because frankly, I don't speak it well myself.

What it DOES need is to be protective of both our interests as the space facilitators, as well as our coworkers, their equipment, and their clients . I'd be naive to believe that there will not be issues, while these are all upstanding people (at least they haven't defaulted in any way in the last 5-6 months of interaction), in the real world: sh*t happens.

I'm not looking to cover every single corner case in this agreement...the FAQ format is exactly what I had envisioned, with a spot to sign/print your name, put a checkbox next to the plan you are agreeing to, and that's it. The terms of use that I have ARE quite a few pages of legalese, but can be broken down into very simple things like:

be courteous
be kind
don't leave your garbage around
don't abuse our resources

in short: don't be an idiot.

These are simple social graces, but as we all know, common sense isn't necessarily common and with a model that allows walk-ins off the street, we need to have rules set forth...again, not to cover corner cases, it's more to cover basic liability, and agree to a structure (simple as it may be) set forth.

I've already got said outline started, I'll get a couple of more contributions of ideas from our team and post them here, perhaps we can all work together to cut out cruft and really target the points that are important.

Thanks guys.

-Alex

[Hillary Hartley]

alex, you might find some useful info by googling around for sublease
agreements. since they are usually one-on-one agreements, they might
have some of the pieces you're wanting.

http://www.ilrg.com/forms/

good luck! and congrats again on opening independents hall!
hillary

On Aug 5, 7:49 am, "Alex Hillman" <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> digital: a...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[NathanaelB]

Thanks for the link Hillary - they seem to be US-oriented, but we can
probably use the guts of one of those forms to develop an agreement
for our own planned Space in Canberra; cheers.

[Alex Hillman]

Sweet, thanks! I'll do some digging and see if anything in here comes in handy.

Thanks again Hillary
-Alex

vocal: 484.597.6256
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com | skype: dangerouslyawesome

[Christopher Allen]

On 8/3/07, Tara Hunt <ta...@citizenagency.com> wrote:

> We do gentleperson's agreements...on a month to month program. We decided
> early on to avoid all paperwork possible to also avoid externalized trust
> scenarios.

Like Citizen's Space, we are doing a gentleperson's agreement month to
month with our anchors.

We really don't want to get into any "lease" type stuff in an
agreement. If things don't work for an anchor, or for the other
co-workers, we should just be able to amicably just stop. In fact, I'm
reluctant to even use the word tenant.

We have talked, however, about having something written to take care
of liability issues.

Basically, each coworker is presumed to have their own business, they
are not employees, they will not "live" at the coworking site (i.e.
not fall under tenant rights for residents), they are responsible for
their own liability insurance, if anything is lost or stolen it is
their own responsibility, and indemnify us for anything that happens
to themselves as much as legally possible (I do know some
indemnification can't be waived).

To this end there are also some policies we have which may or may not
be relevant to make the presumptions above work (an attorney would
know exactly which): coworkers may not receive mail at our coworking
center (there are 3 mailbox places nearby -- they should use those),
we are not responsible for packages, coworkers are not provided
telephone lines (they should use their cell phones).

It is also possible that because of their use of our internet that
they may need to agree not to do some things that we could otherwise
be liable for. In essence, the coworking site is not an enduser, but a
common carrier for the coworkers as end users.

Of course, ideally this should be as free of legalese as possible, and
be friendly and non-intimidating.

-- Christopher Allen