Coworking 2.0, SPaaS and the Future of Coworking

[Miroslav Miroslavov]

Happy New Year to you all,

I recently wrote an article about the Future of Coworking, called Coworking 2.0.

It's about the transition from traditional offices to SPaaS (Space as a Service) and the similarity with the evolution of traditional software to SaaS (Software as a Service). 

What do you guys think about the future of Coworking? What do you think the next wave of Coworking spaces will bring?

Cheers,

Miro Miroslavov

[José Augusto Tome]

Thank you Miroslavov for share your insights! 

I also appreciate  the concept of "Innovation Habitat".

Innovation habitats are differentiated spaces, conducive to innovation occur, they are information sharing and knowledge locus, forming networking, and allow you to minimize the risks and maximize the results associated with business.

Here we are doing a great efort to be seen as this kind of habitat.

Best,

Tomé

AgTech Coworking

[Alex Hillman]

Replace "Coworking 2.0" with "McCoworking" and this article is right on the money...about everything that's wrong with the coworking industry.

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The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org

Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com

My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten

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[Miroslav Miroslavov]

Alex, let me tell you a story about blogs.

This year it will be the 20th anniversary of the term 'Blog'. 

In 1997 John Barger created a simple web diary that he named 'Weblog'. Soon after that, Peter Merholz created his own weblog but shifted the words and named it 'we blog'. Shortly thereafter, people started to use 'blog' to refer to editing web logs or the content itself. 

The blogging was such a great idea. It literally changed the world forever. Growing slowly at the start, gaining momentum by only a handful of bloggers, it was 5 years later that blogging started to grow more rapidly. Good bloggers started to attract groups of followers, like-minded people who were reading their blog posts and liking them, sharing them - with one word - collaborating. Good bloggers knew that the most important thing for them was their Community. 

And wow, 10 years later, suddenly the whole world was blogging or talking about blogs. Politicians adopted it. Corporate America adopted it. McDonnalds created their own blog. Even hey, the penguins on Antarctica started a blog.

Blogging was such a success that so many software companies started a race to create new tools and means of blogging. Things like micro-blogging, meta-blogging, blog hosts gained momentum too. A few years ago, a company called Medium started yet another blog host website, or blog franchise if you will. It wasn't really a new idea but it was looking nice so people started to use it. It attracted more bloggers. 

Even Alex Hillman started a blog. It was a great blog, full of really insightful articles and essays. It helped a lot of coworking founders setup their own spaces and build their own communities. Even though the whole world was blogging, he managed to stand out and built a community around the coworking topic and helped thousands of people.    

Blogging changed the world forever, one community at a time.

Cheers,

Miro M.

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[Katherine Warman Kern]

It would be so interesting if this thread were more exploratory.

There is a disconnect between vision [everyone collaborating to build their business and grow the overall market] and reality [everyone is so busy putting out fires on the surface - essentially madly treading water - that they don't have time to get to know others well enough to do business together or figure out a business model in which independent entities collaborate]

Real estate companies see what they want to see: higher revenues per square foot than they can get with long term leases. They are creating a commodity market with words-as-window-dressing: "collaboration, innovation, community, create." Right now they are all racing to be the first IPO. Then there will be a race to the bottom of the pricing ladder. The only folks who will make money are the dealmakers. But that's their problem.

The rest of us should focus on how we breakdown the barriers to independents collaborating - including us. I think that starts with inventing a new business model. Any ideas?

K-

[Tony Bacigalupo]

Thanks for moving the conversation this way, Katherine.

I think a lot of people here will resonate with the situation you described. 

To your question: The are some good ideas out there. I personally am a fan of approaches that de-emphasize the office space side of things and increase emphasis on using the space as a meeting and gathering space. (Quick example: http://lmhq.nyc)

But before we get too deep into the details of the What, I'm thinking we need as much as ever now to examine the Why.

When coworking started, there was only the Why. We didn't even have a What yet, and it certainly wasn't an industry!

Now, 11+ years later, the Why has been largely obscured by so much talk about the What. The real estate. The tech. The mechanisms.

Let's take what's happening to its logical extension and assume that, to Miroslav's point, coworking space is as ubiquitous and available as WordPress or, to Alex's point, a Big Mac. 

Great! Anyone anywhere (in a developed nation, anyway) can build a free blog in a shared space while eating a cheeseburger.

So what? What next?

A cheap cheeseburger is food, but what is nutrition?

Taking these things to their maximum extensions is valuable because it lets us shift from focusing on availability to focusing on mastery.

We're in a time of great opportunity, but also great uncertainty. There is much work to be done to steer us as a society away from dystopia and towards peace and prosperity.

A lot of us got into coworking because we saw it as a way of moving us in that better direction, and it is. The day-to-day of operating a space can be an enormous distraction, and in many cases the business model is not complete. 

Which is why I think it's critical that we all work on getting in touch with why we care about doing this work in the first place.

Go back to that for a while, and really let that percolate, I think the next steps for each of us and for us as a movement start to become clear.

I can tell you what I see, but it doesn't matter what I see. What do you see?

Tony

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New Work Cities • Coworking.org

[Bernhard Mehl]

I don't understand the rant here. Let's let real estate folks make money, who cares - as long as the community is tight and managed with the right spirit?

@Alex your comparison with McCoworking seems like you see the main issue with replicated spaces. There are tons of examples of amazing landlords who work with coworking operators to spin up locally unique spaces. In fact we often see them become so convinced of how amazing the community is, that they want to expand floors or even buildings. That's a good thing, no?

@Tony: Asking "Why?" is a good start, and exactly as you pointed out the answer is for everyone different. Landord: $. Member: Spirit / Community. I don't think that's a conflict.

For us we work in a space the City of New York invested in. Coworking becomes a new way of city development. Sometimes I don't think people understand the full scope of the impact of a powerful community. 

Here's my plan: Let's let coworking grow up and not handle it like a hippie camp.

[Eric Y.F Lim]

Interesting discussion....Here is my two cents....My prototype (Hypercube @ SOHOland) is on a combination of "Social" and "Business", Coworking and Co-living leading to a commons-centric collaborative consumption, with equity  and equality as essential components... more details at www.soholand-collaborative.com .... the accompanying infographic summarizes the approach the project has adopted:

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[Steve King]

This thread, to me, reflects the continuing evolution of the coworking ecosystem. Coworking has been expanding, evolving and hybridizing since its beginnings. This has led to a growing variety in space types and services offered. In most cases, this is driven by customers who are looking for different types of spaces and space experiences, including different types of community. 

It seems clear at this point there are multiple coworking market segments. These different segments attract different types of customers. Some customers are very focused on community, others less so. For example, our research shows independent workers, on average, are more involved with and assign a greater value to a coworking space's community than corporate and startup employees who work in coworking spaces.

Organizations also have different interests in adopting coworking. Some see the "space as a service" benefits as described in the article as the important pieces and care little about community or see it as a bonus. For others, community is the key.  Most larger organizations (at least today) fall into the category of caring more about the "space as a service" features than community. 

Given that more large organizations (and traditional small and mid-size firms) are starting to move to coworking, it makes sense that spaces that focus on the "space as service" attributes will be able to find customers. At the same time, independent workers and others looking for community first spaces will continue to drive the growth of community focused spaces.

In other words, there’s room for both.