Collaborative WorkSpaces
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Michael J. Fuhrman
Feb 7, 2011, 4:10:03 PM2/7/11
to Collaboration Alley
I finally found a link to the original article posted in Network
World, October 2007. Entitled "Co-working: the ultimate in
teleworking flexibility, Co-working sites make space, build community
for telecommuters", http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/102307-coworking.html
By Brad Reed, Network World
October 23, 2007 12:23 PM ET
Jon Pierce’s teleworking office can’t get much more casual.
Operating out of the third floor of a Cambridge, Mass., triple-decker
apartment building, Pierce and several of his peers come to work
dressed in jeans and spend their days pecking away diligently at their
keyboards. They play music sans headphones to help pass the time, with
the new Radiohead album garnering significant airplay in recent days.
For leisure, they’ve set up an electric guitar on a nearby chair that
can be played during break time, and there are piles of Reese’s cups
and jellybeans spread across the kitchen counter to satisfy their
quick hunger fixes.
While they may look like college roommates studying for a final exam,
they’re actually part of a growing trend in teleworking. After they
spent years teleworking either at home or at the local coffee shop,
Pierce and his colleagues banded together with others to form the Beta
House, a co-working community for Web entrepreneurs. Co-working
communities, which combine the relaxed, informal atmosphere of working
at home with the sociability and cost-sharing of an office, have
emerged as alternatives for telecommuters who miss having person-to-
person interaction during work.
“Over the past year or two, these co-working spaces have been
sprouting up around the country in recognition of individual
entrepreneurs who have taken to working out of coffee shops but who
still desire the kind of human interaction that they can’t really get
there,” says Pierce, a software developer who co-founded the Beta
House in February of this year to serve as a working space for
independent Web developers, product managers and start-up owners. The
project, say Beta House members, has been a rousing success so far.
“Personally, I’m very happy to have a four-burner gas stove, a grill
on the back porch and a fridge full of beer at work,” says Brian
DelVecchio, a software developer who also works at the Beta House.
“These are things that I find make a much more comfortable place to
work. It’s easy for me to focus here and get deep into things, instead
of working in a cubicle.”
The draw of co-working
Nationwide, there are roughly 16.2 million self-employed teleworkers
and 12.4 million teleworkers employed by an outside party. A 2007 CDW
survey of over 2,000 workers showed that 79% of workers employed in
the private sector and half of workers employed in the public sector
were worried about feeling isolated and missing human interaction if
they were to start telecommuting. Roughly a third of both private and
public-sector workers also reported that they didn’t want to stay at
home during work.
It is in this context, say co-working advocates, that co-working
provides a valuable service. For although working in your underwear
may seem appealing at first glance, many teleworkers say they quickly
began to feel isolated and that they missed having colleagues nearby
to bounce ideas off of.
“For the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve lived in an age where you can work
in socks and underwear, but that doesn’t prevent you from going
insane,” says Charles Planck, the CEO of Articulated Impact, the
founding parent company of the Washington, D.C.-based Affinity Lab co-
working space. “You find that if you’re at home too much, you lose
your edge in dealing with people.”
Most co-working spaces are designed less like offices and more like
lounges or coffee shops. While private desks are available to paying
customers, many co-working spaces have significant common areas
dedicated to encouraging interaction
The San Francisco-based Citizen Space, for instance, rents out only
seven private desks, and uses the rest of its space as a common area
that features a full library, meeting areas that come complete with
white boards and a projector, and even a popcorn machine. Citizen
Space co-founder Tara Hunt says that she and her partner Chris Messina
designed their co-working space with the idea of maximizing
sociability and idea sharing.
“When you’re an independent worker, there are times when you’re
hitting a wall when it comes to getting new ideas,” she says. “We
didn’t start out Citizen Space to be a rent-a-desk sort of office.
Rather, we wanted to work among really smart, turned-on people.” Hunt
says one of the most interesting aspects of Citizen Space is watching
how people get into daily rhythms of mixing work with social activity.
Typically, people will mingle briefly at the beginning of the day, and
will then settle down and work for about 45 minutes before needing a
break, getting a cup of coffee and mingling some more. This differs
from coffee shops, she says, where people generally don’t know each
other, and also from executive suites, where too much conversation if
often frowned upon.
Of course, the sociability and sharing of ideas are only one part of
what makes co-working appealing. Another crucial benefit of co-working
is the ability to share costs with others for work essentials such as
Internet connection, phone service, office supplies and rent. Planck
says that paying $895 per month to Affinity Lab not only guarantees
you a desk but also two DSL pipes, various reference books, a kitchen
and conference room for common use, a color copier and printer and 24-
hour access to facility. A $275 monthly membership to the Philadelphia-
based Independents Hall, meanwhile, gets you a full-time desk,
wireless Internet connection, equipment storage space and a conference
room.
The Beta House charges between $200 and $400 per month per desk, and
rates depend upon on how much time a given member spends working in
the space. With 12 people working out of the space at any given time,
Pierce says that charging in the $200-$400 range is optimal for
covering the site’s expenses, which he says run an average of $3,000
to $3,500 per month
“Our costs are pretty much equally split among our members,” he says.
A philosophy of open source working
People who operate within co-working spaces often refer to their way
of work as a “movement.” Although co-working spaces have significant
differences in both service and culture, co-working as a whole is
generally defined by four major values: collaboration, openness,
community and sustainability. Essentially, co-working spaces encourage
their members to share as many of their ideas with each other as
possible and to not feel they’re in competition with their co-working
colleagues. This principle is encouraged by all major co-working
spaces, although different spaces have different methods of prodding
their members into being more open. Citizen Space, for instance,
explicitly prohibits its members from signing nondisclosure agreements
with one another. Affinity Lab, on the other hand, has no specific
policy on NDAs, but Planck says that all members must be “people who
work and play well with others.”
While none of the co-workers interviewed for this story say they have
ever encountered a situation where two people employed by competing
firms ever had to inhabit the same co-working spaces, they do concede
that such a situation could easily arise in the future. In that case,
they say that the two parties would be encouraged to talk openly with
each other, and that they would have to understand that their rivalry
does not exist within the confines of the co-working area.
“We’re a community space first, and that means the people who work
here come first, and the companies they work for come second,” says
Alex Hillman, one of the co-founders of Independents Hall.
Of course, this model of openness has given many employers and
investors pause. When Beta House member and co-founder Greg Gibson
started raising capital to start his own virtual goods business, many
venture capitalists expressed concern about co-working sites’
vulnerabilities to hacking and other security threats. While these
concerns were understandable, Gibson notes, the Beta House’s password-
secured wireless cable modem is still a more secure connection than
what most teleworkers use.
“We actually had quite a bit of pushback from some of the investors
about being located in a space like this,” he says. “Their concerns
were mostly security, confidentiality and concern that the guy next to
you is going to steal your ideas. And we had to do quite a bit of work
to explain the benefits versus the risks.”
And what about investors who insist on fretting about the Beta House’s
Internet security?
“We tell them, ‘Hey, it’s much less of a worry here than it would be
at Starbucks,’” he says.
Read more about small business networking in Network World's Small
Business Networking section.
World, October 2007. Entitled "Co-working: the ultimate in
teleworking flexibility, Co-working sites make space, build community
for telecommuters", http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/102307-coworking.html
By Brad Reed, Network World
October 23, 2007 12:23 PM ET
Jon Pierce’s teleworking office can’t get much more casual.
Operating out of the third floor of a Cambridge, Mass., triple-decker
apartment building, Pierce and several of his peers come to work
dressed in jeans and spend their days pecking away diligently at their
keyboards. They play music sans headphones to help pass the time, with
the new Radiohead album garnering significant airplay in recent days.
For leisure, they’ve set up an electric guitar on a nearby chair that
can be played during break time, and there are piles of Reese’s cups
and jellybeans spread across the kitchen counter to satisfy their
quick hunger fixes.
While they may look like college roommates studying for a final exam,
they’re actually part of a growing trend in teleworking. After they
spent years teleworking either at home or at the local coffee shop,
Pierce and his colleagues banded together with others to form the Beta
House, a co-working community for Web entrepreneurs. Co-working
communities, which combine the relaxed, informal atmosphere of working
at home with the sociability and cost-sharing of an office, have
emerged as alternatives for telecommuters who miss having person-to-
person interaction during work.
“Over the past year or two, these co-working spaces have been
sprouting up around the country in recognition of individual
entrepreneurs who have taken to working out of coffee shops but who
still desire the kind of human interaction that they can’t really get
there,” says Pierce, a software developer who co-founded the Beta
House in February of this year to serve as a working space for
independent Web developers, product managers and start-up owners. The
project, say Beta House members, has been a rousing success so far.
“Personally, I’m very happy to have a four-burner gas stove, a grill
on the back porch and a fridge full of beer at work,” says Brian
DelVecchio, a software developer who also works at the Beta House.
“These are things that I find make a much more comfortable place to
work. It’s easy for me to focus here and get deep into things, instead
of working in a cubicle.”
The draw of co-working
Nationwide, there are roughly 16.2 million self-employed teleworkers
and 12.4 million teleworkers employed by an outside party. A 2007 CDW
survey of over 2,000 workers showed that 79% of workers employed in
the private sector and half of workers employed in the public sector
were worried about feeling isolated and missing human interaction if
they were to start telecommuting. Roughly a third of both private and
public-sector workers also reported that they didn’t want to stay at
home during work.
It is in this context, say co-working advocates, that co-working
provides a valuable service. For although working in your underwear
may seem appealing at first glance, many teleworkers say they quickly
began to feel isolated and that they missed having colleagues nearby
to bounce ideas off of.
“For the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve lived in an age where you can work
in socks and underwear, but that doesn’t prevent you from going
insane,” says Charles Planck, the CEO of Articulated Impact, the
founding parent company of the Washington, D.C.-based Affinity Lab co-
working space. “You find that if you’re at home too much, you lose
your edge in dealing with people.”
Most co-working spaces are designed less like offices and more like
lounges or coffee shops. While private desks are available to paying
customers, many co-working spaces have significant common areas
dedicated to encouraging interaction
The San Francisco-based Citizen Space, for instance, rents out only
seven private desks, and uses the rest of its space as a common area
that features a full library, meeting areas that come complete with
white boards and a projector, and even a popcorn machine. Citizen
Space co-founder Tara Hunt says that she and her partner Chris Messina
designed their co-working space with the idea of maximizing
sociability and idea sharing.
“When you’re an independent worker, there are times when you’re
hitting a wall when it comes to getting new ideas,” she says. “We
didn’t start out Citizen Space to be a rent-a-desk sort of office.
Rather, we wanted to work among really smart, turned-on people.” Hunt
says one of the most interesting aspects of Citizen Space is watching
how people get into daily rhythms of mixing work with social activity.
Typically, people will mingle briefly at the beginning of the day, and
will then settle down and work for about 45 minutes before needing a
break, getting a cup of coffee and mingling some more. This differs
from coffee shops, she says, where people generally don’t know each
other, and also from executive suites, where too much conversation if
often frowned upon.
Of course, the sociability and sharing of ideas are only one part of
what makes co-working appealing. Another crucial benefit of co-working
is the ability to share costs with others for work essentials such as
Internet connection, phone service, office supplies and rent. Planck
says that paying $895 per month to Affinity Lab not only guarantees
you a desk but also two DSL pipes, various reference books, a kitchen
and conference room for common use, a color copier and printer and 24-
hour access to facility. A $275 monthly membership to the Philadelphia-
based Independents Hall, meanwhile, gets you a full-time desk,
wireless Internet connection, equipment storage space and a conference
room.
The Beta House charges between $200 and $400 per month per desk, and
rates depend upon on how much time a given member spends working in
the space. With 12 people working out of the space at any given time,
Pierce says that charging in the $200-$400 range is optimal for
covering the site’s expenses, which he says run an average of $3,000
to $3,500 per month
“Our costs are pretty much equally split among our members,” he says.
A philosophy of open source working
People who operate within co-working spaces often refer to their way
of work as a “movement.” Although co-working spaces have significant
differences in both service and culture, co-working as a whole is
generally defined by four major values: collaboration, openness,
community and sustainability. Essentially, co-working spaces encourage
their members to share as many of their ideas with each other as
possible and to not feel they’re in competition with their co-working
colleagues. This principle is encouraged by all major co-working
spaces, although different spaces have different methods of prodding
their members into being more open. Citizen Space, for instance,
explicitly prohibits its members from signing nondisclosure agreements
with one another. Affinity Lab, on the other hand, has no specific
policy on NDAs, but Planck says that all members must be “people who
work and play well with others.”
While none of the co-workers interviewed for this story say they have
ever encountered a situation where two people employed by competing
firms ever had to inhabit the same co-working spaces, they do concede
that such a situation could easily arise in the future. In that case,
they say that the two parties would be encouraged to talk openly with
each other, and that they would have to understand that their rivalry
does not exist within the confines of the co-working area.
“We’re a community space first, and that means the people who work
here come first, and the companies they work for come second,” says
Alex Hillman, one of the co-founders of Independents Hall.
Of course, this model of openness has given many employers and
investors pause. When Beta House member and co-founder Greg Gibson
started raising capital to start his own virtual goods business, many
venture capitalists expressed concern about co-working sites’
vulnerabilities to hacking and other security threats. While these
concerns were understandable, Gibson notes, the Beta House’s password-
secured wireless cable modem is still a more secure connection than
what most teleworkers use.
“We actually had quite a bit of pushback from some of the investors
about being located in a space like this,” he says. “Their concerns
were mostly security, confidentiality and concern that the guy next to
you is going to steal your ideas. And we had to do quite a bit of work
to explain the benefits versus the risks.”
And what about investors who insist on fretting about the Beta House’s
Internet security?
“We tell them, ‘Hey, it’s much less of a worry here than it would be
at Starbucks,’” he says.
Read more about small business networking in Network World's Small
Business Networking section.
Warren Vail
Feb 7, 2011, 5:04:01 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
Not sure this is the right thread, but I think this got started with a
reminiscence that several people claimed to have heard before about a
meeting of the "Home Brew Computer Club" at the Auditorium of the Stanford
Linear Accelerator where Steve Wazniak chose the lobby to demo his new
single board computer. I believe this may have been about 1976, maybe
earlier, but definitely after 1971.
reminiscence that several people claimed to have heard before about a
meeting of the "Home Brew Computer Club" at the Auditorium of the Stanford
Linear Accelerator where Steve Wazniak chose the lobby to demo his new
single board computer. I believe this may have been about 1976, maybe
earlier, but definitely after 1971.
Also in the lobby was a group demoing their new S100 card that made possible
a 128 by 128 pixel display on a color TV
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco_Dazzler).
Steve noticed that the S100 card was getting all the inquiries and his board
was getting very little interest, which with hind site seems that it must
have inspired him to go back to the drawing board to create the color Apple
II computer.
Discussion then shifted to the collaborative relationship between The Woz
and Steve Jobs, which I hope to find out more about, next thing I know I
received an invitation to this group, which is incredibly timely for me, as
I single handedly explore turning my own ideas (with a consensus of one
vote) into a reality. Has my aversion to getting involved in the kind of
relationship that the two Steves shared worked against me? What was it that
made that collaboration so successful and so many others turn into something
exploitive.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Warren Vail
Vail Systems Technology
war...@vailtech.net
(510) 444-5380
Wjhonson
Feb 7, 2011, 5:30:30 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
Although Jobs met Wozniak while both worked at Hewlett-packard as summer employees, Jobs moved to Oregon where he was until 1974. He and Woz did not collaborate on any design ideas until he needed a circuit board designed for Atari.
Wjhonson
Feb 7, 2011, 5:31:53 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
One was a technician with no marketing skill.
The other a marketer with little technical skill.
The other a marketer with little technical skill.
What was it that
made that collaboration so successful and so many others turn into something
exploitive.
-----Original Message-----
From: Warren Vail <war...@vailtech.net>
To: collabora...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 2:04 pm
Subject: RE: Collaborative WorkSpaces
From: Warren Vail <war...@vailtech.net>
To: collabora...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 2:04 pm
Subject: RE: Collaborative WorkSpaces
Warren Vail
Feb 7, 2011, 7:04:11 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
I think there may have been more to it than that, I’ve had lot’s of dealing with marketers who think the purpose of our collaboration is for me to implement their ideas, and for little more complensation than the person who operates the plunger who unclogs their toilet. (yeah, I know it sounds bitter, and my belief is that this did not occur between these two). Is my perception off, or did the Woz get a nice share of Apple?
Wjhonson
Feb 7, 2011, 7:22:54 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
I changed the title of this thread, to more directly label of what we're discussing here.
Specifically I believe Jobs saw Woz as a person who could fulfill the need for the Atari board. Woz wasn't working *for* Jobs, they were working together. Neither could do it alone. Once they together realized that there was a market desire, it was Woz' designs which worked, and Jobs did the personal networking part to find buyers.
The point is working together, not working under :)
And being friends helps ensure that the guy you're working .... with... doesn't try to screw you.
Specifically I believe Jobs saw Woz as a person who could fulfill the need for the Atari board. Woz wasn't working *for* Jobs, they were working together. Neither could do it alone. Once they together realized that there was a market desire, it was Woz' designs which worked, and Jobs did the personal networking part to find buyers.
The point is working together, not working under :)
And being friends helps ensure that the guy you're working .... with... doesn't try to screw you.
David
Feb 7, 2011, 7:42:52 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
I am curious to see if developers will allow their time to be used as
currency - as in, I am requesting 2 hours of HTML/frontend knowing
that at some point I am obligated to doing 2 hours of PHP for someone.
Whether you can actually commoditize labor to that degree is an
interesting question.
currency - as in, I am requesting 2 hours of HTML/frontend knowing
that at some point I am obligated to doing 2 hours of PHP for someone.
Whether you can actually commoditize labor to that degree is an
interesting question.
Warren Vail
Feb 7, 2011, 8:16:56 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
That is an interesting question.
It also makes me aware of my tendency to actually put in 3-4 hours to make
sure you get 2 hours worth productivity, drives me crazy and probably
doesn't work as intended. Guess I see the learning process that all
projects begin with as something that should come off my books.
Warren Vail
-----Original Message-----
From: collabora...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:collabora...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 4:43 PM
To: collabora...@googlegroups.com
Michael J. Fuhrman
Feb 7, 2011, 11:18:05 PM2/7/11
to Collaboration Alley
While reviewing other's work - Steve and Bill - is a great thing
concerning how to start companies, I'm wondering what lessons we can
glean from them to make Collaboration Alley spring into the market
place.
concerning how to start companies, I'm wondering what lessons we can
glean from them to make Collaboration Alley spring into the market
place.
Wjhonson
Feb 7, 2011, 11:50:58 PM2/7/11
to collabora...@googlegroups.com
We need a collaboration site. That would be one thing.
I propose to start, a wiki. Wikis grow naturally or organically if you will, and just going through that process can show up what to do next. That is, build a site, no one comes, because you didn't build what they wanted. Give an open forum, and see how people actually use it. Then build a site, that mimics actual usage.
Will
I propose to start, a wiki. Wikis grow naturally or organically if you will, and just going through that process can show up what to do next. That is, build a site, no one comes, because you didn't build what they wanted. Give an open forum, and see how people actually use it. Then build a site, that mimics actual usage.
Will
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael J. Fuhrman <enet...@gmail.com>
To: Collaboration Alley <collabora...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 8:18 pm
Subject: Re: Job and Woz talk or how to collaborate or not was Collaborative WorkSpaces
From: Michael J. Fuhrman <enet...@gmail.com>
To: Collaboration Alley <collabora...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 8:18 pm
Subject: Re: Job and Woz talk or how to collaborate or not was Collaborative WorkSpaces
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