An update from tonight's event
Paul Robinson
two core aspects to co-working:
- Sharing physical space
- Exchanging ideas
I also 'announced' that by January a site will operate where those
looking to share space can find each other and to help connect those
people with spare capacity. This will have a couple of aspects:
- Those who want to work together being able to find each other
- Those who have a spare desk being able to offer it for hot-desk
purposes
- Those who want a desk for a day being able to find those with desks
- I'm also thinking about offering commercial office providers the
ability to post space on there for a smallish fee (to offset the
spamming, and to fund the time it's going to take to run this thing
properly)
So that should mean we don't end up with one co-working space but
several. There are going to be failures in this, and the best
protection is to offer several different models with nobody in charge.
In other words, I want people to stop saying "Paul, what are you doing
about co-working?" and for me to start asking people what *they* are
doing to make it happen.
Out of the follow-up conversations, the people at Innospace and UMIC
expressed an interest in helping companies post-incubation which is a
new area for them. That's a *huge* win for us.
That effectively that means we're getting buy-in from MMU and
Manchester University, which in turn means the future of Project
Sahara is starting to look brighter - it's a long process though, and
I'm impatient, so the guerilla style I'm going for is also a must. ;-)
In addition, idea exchanges were discussed. It looks like there is
real interest in this, and I think the revised model for OpenCoffee
might be a winner. I'm going to talk to all the stakeholders
expressing an interest in that and build something that works for them
too - not just techs but marketing, PR, sales, finance and VC
stakeholders as well.
So, things are looking up and everything is rather bright for the
future of co-working and collaboration in the North West. Tonight was
a good night for these projects, and I expect that next year we'll see
many more.
--
Paul Robinson
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