Incubating separate coworking comm'ty inside another coworking space

[Elaine Glowacki]

Anyone have experience incubating a coworking community inside your space? I am owner of a fledgling community with values similar to the coworking space we may be moving into as we grow. We need to figure out a financial arrangement certainly, but any ideas on how we can maintain our identity separate from the other at the same time promoting the strategic alliance of sharing resources?

Any ideas of how to approach this or questions we should be asking ourselves?

Thanks

[Tony Bacigalupo]

Hi Elaine! I moved my coworking space into another one for 4 months in between spaces. It was awkward at times, but in the end we both saved each other (they needed the rent, we needed a home). 

Ultimately, it's more about the culture than the space itself. If you define what your community's vision and purpose is, that should stand on its own. People can be attracted to participate in your vision, or someone else's, or both.

If you do eventually move out of the space, you can maintain a strong collaborative relationship, so you're cross-promoting each other's efforts and continuing to build collective social capital among the both of you.

But first thing's first: why are you here, and what is it that you want to create that's different from everything else out there?

Tony

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[Elaine Glowacki]

Tony,

Thanks for answering so quickly. You might have suspected that I'm working with Tiffanie Mark @ Matrix to start this relationship between our two spaces, since you saw the same question on two different groups at the same time - and provided us both with answers. Love coworkers!

I agree with your advice about defining our community's vision and purpose as separate from the other's, which actually has very similar values and goals. This will be a good litmus test to see if we can in fact differentiate ourselves. If we cannot - well that says something too!

Would you comment on what was "awkward" at times? I know we can't anticipate everything. Tiffanie is being really accommodating and cooperative. But we want to make sure we are cooperative right back.

Thanks again and congrats to you on the New Work new digs. I hope to visit one day soon..

Elaine.

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[Tony Bacigalupo]

I was wondering what was going on with that :)

The awkwardness came up when:

• Someone was there to check out a coworking space, but they didn't quite understand the difference, or were maybe interested in both spaces, or wanted us to explain why they should choose one over the other.
  
• Sometimes when there were events geared towards one particular group and not the other
• Communication between members of the different communities
• Anything that might have had to do with one set of members paying a different rate than another set of members for essentially the same thing
• Times when the host space's managers needed the visiting community's managers/members to adjust their behaviors, or vice versa. 

It's a little fuzzy at that point, but that's what I recall :-)

Lots of stuff that's basically the same as what you'd encounter with roommates, just different :-)

Tony

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[Elaine Glowacki]

Thanks for the insight. It's all about communication :-). I'll do my best to document our experiences and pay it forward.

E