Milestone: Members as City Officials, City Officials as Members

[Alex Hillman]

There have been threads about coworking spaces working with local governments, and (I think) examples of city officials joining coworking spaces…but I'm pretty excited about the fact that one of our members has just been recruited as Philadelphia's first Chief Data Officer as part of the city's push towards open data for citizens.

http://technicallyphilly.com/2012/08/13/mark-headd-first-ever-city-of-philadelphia-chief-digital-officer

We've played an active role in that initiative, and a very vocal supporter of some leaders in City Hall who have attempted to interact with the community in a way that's a bit more coworking-like. Mark's made it a point to say that he feels that in order for him to do this job effectively he wants to maintain strong ties to the community that supported him up through his appointment.

Related, but separately, we're working on a program to invite city officials/workers to work from Indy Hall once a month as an opportunity to embed themselves in our community better as well

This post is partially to share my personal excitement for this milestone in OUR community, and wondering if anyone else has similar success stories. 

I know that Gangplank has a very tight relationship with their local gov't and a number of other spaces have casual/functional relationships (a lot like we've had up until this point), but I'm wondering mostly about examples about embedding city officials in coworking spaces and vice/versa.

-Alex

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/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[Derek Neighbors]

Alex,

One of our Gangplank locations has City Staff (Economic Development) that works out of the space once per week.

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Derek

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[TCS]

Our City has planted support staff in our space.  The first is a research analyst for our Department of Culture.  She fits right in and loves this space over the City Hall space she can also use if needed.  The Economic Development Office has made mention of some staff placements as well wanting to be close to the heartbeat of SMEs in Barrie.  Our new CAO is working on moving their local government supported business Resource Centre into our space.  This works great as one of our members is a business coach and would love to spearhead something like this anyways.  We will, although, do all we can to be self-sufficiant and sustainable, so we'll always keep our main operations community/privately supported.

Peace,

Chad

Chad Ballantyne

705.812.0689

ch...@thecreativespace.ca

[Alex Hillman]

Any interesting outcomes of that working arrangement worth sharing?

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Alex Hillman]

Chad, I'll ask you the same thing as I did Derek: Any interesting outcomes of that working arrangement worth sharing?

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[TCS]

 interesting outcomes

We've noticed as one department plants their feet in our space, others start to conceder options for them.  We have had local networking groups find us as a referral from our Economic Development Office.  Although it will not impact us directly, City Hall is building a new office space in the next  year and have included in their design minimizing the footprint per employee while designing more collaborative spaces within their "office" (open space working)  Losing the doors and walls where appropriate.  This is all a result of touring our space and interviewing our members.  So, I guess one outcome would be, inspiration!

Chad

Chad Ballantyne

705.812.0689

ch...@thecreativespace.ca

[Derek Neighbors]

Alex,

I think we see the City more involved because of it. There has been discussion about how to get more staff to have it as an option.  At one of our other sites having the interaction changed city requirements to allow people to run home based businesses.  Most cities have ordinances that prevent the typical startup in your garage.  The City of Chandler based on interaction with participants at Gangplank have created a way to get a zoning clearance to accommodate this.

http://www.chandleraz.gov/content/HomeBusinessApplication.pdf

It still isn't flexible enough, but it is a start.

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Derek Neighbors

Gangplank

[Alex Hillman]

Wicked cool stuff from both of you guys. Thanks for sharing. 

-Alex

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

[Sabrina]

Hi everyone, 

This is a great thread and I am wondering if there have been any more stories (since 2012!) in this topic of local government folks working in coworking spaces to share? 

I have a very innovative City Council manager who is looking to work from our space, as their new goal in the city is to reduce the ratio of # of desks:employees from 7:10 down to 4:10. She has small children at home (dad is the caregiver) and so she can't work from home. Plus she's awesome and we'd love to have her in our space :). As usual, she is getting a bit of pushback, so she was hoping I might have some examples she could share to bolster her case. If you happen to be in the UK and have examples, that will be super, but all examples and stories are much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

-Sabrina

THINQTANQ

Plymouth, UK