Sharing Coworking Stories

[Nancy Yadira Gonzalez]

Hi All!

As the Director of a coworking space in NYC, I am always interested in coworking stories.  If you run a space or work at one, what do you love? what aren't you crazy about?

What things would improve your coworking experience?

Many of you might have done something similar for @GoodCoworking.  But I feel this discussion will be great for those with extensive journal entries.

Thanks!

- - - - - -

Ok, I'll go first:

I love coworking at my space (SoTechie Spaces) because it gives me the opportunity to widen out with people not in my industry.  We all have stories to share, at the water cooler, near the break room, after landing that great new client, all these are excellent times shared only while coworking.

As the Director of a space I would say that the highlight of my day is when members that would otherwise have nothing to do with each other find some synergy.  An example of this: one of my members is involved in a health business and another member has several businesses ranging from finance to the sciences.  And here at my space they met and were connected.  I once overheard one of them cheering on the other while in a bidding war on ebay.  This is the great stuff that goes on when coworking!

- - - - - -

Looking forward to more stories :-)

Nancy Y. Gonzalez

Director, SoTechie Spaces

28 W. 39th St Suite 401 NY, NY 10018

tel. 3477629110

Visit Us

@SoTechie

Like Us!

My Video

[Susan Evans Dorsch]

Hi Nancy & all!

Oh man, how this topic brings up a project that I got really excited about and then completely overwhelmed with a ways back. After the October 2011 gathering in LA, the Coworking Awareness Group (which is a current google group that is 100% inactive at the moment so I hesitate linking to it) gathered together a few stories so that we could help shape the kind of stories that were told in the media about coworking. The idea was that so often writers tell the "how coworking saved me $X/month" or "the new generation loves sharing their offices - isn't that adorable?!" stories, when they should be telling stories about incredible collaborations, accelerated serendipity, improved lives, and other fabulous aspects of coworking that require a slightly deeper look. 

Aaaanyway, I have completely lost steam but would love to invite anyone (or everyone!) to continue working on ways in which we can help the awesome stories about coworking get told more broadly. I'm happy to hand over the reigns of the project that we started and help in any way I can. 

OR, I'm happy to direct our efforts in a completely different way. 

What do you guys think? 

You can see some of the stories posted at coworking.com that we collected (the "check out these stories" link), and know that there are several more that we collected but didn't publish yet. 

Thankfully we have the fine folks at Deskmag telling stories that help dive into the "why" and "how" of coworking in a more meaningful way, but I'd love to see some of the depth of knowledge and conversation that we have here in the Google Group and at our conferences picked up by the larger media outlets once and a while. Mostly because I think you all are awesome and should get the spotlight on ya every once and a while. :)

S

(yes, it's still me! Susan Evans of Office Nomads, now Susan Dorsch of Office Nomads) 

__
Office Nomads         
officenomads.com  
206-323-6500(o)

206-484-5859(m)

--
Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Nancy Yadira Gonzalez]

Hey Susan and Fellow Group Members!

I think these ideas are excellent and we should definitely pursue.

If anyone else has been cooking something up along these lines, let's get on a call and bounce them around.

I am in NYC, if anyone wants to meet and discuss just let me know!

At present we acquired a new domain and would love to turn this into an excellent coworking tool and sharing source.

Stories on coworking.com are great.  I know there are many more out there.

We can all perhaps start with this discussion thread that way they are all down in writing.  Let's start somewhere!

Any and all - feel free to reach me direct with ideas and/or anything along these lines.

Best,

[Nicolas Bergé]

Oh yeah !

Stories are great. Every story is worth telling and reading. This group is a beautiful sample of the potential that stories could have on us. Among questions and answers that we see everyday, stories are somehow lost in translation. I know I've read paramount episodes and I know I'll struggle to find them here (I could/should have "star-ed" them but I did not). GoodCoworking is excellent, especially for short stories (short explanations, short comments). But detailed stories, i.e. long stories, of "incredible collaborations, accelerated serendipity, improved lives, and other fabulous aspects of coworking that require a slightly deeper look", as Susan said, are hard to find. Respective blogs of yours is a solution but there is a better way I guess.

Perhaps the team behind GoodCoworking could work on that (we could all give a hand) : "I love coworking at xxx because..." for short stories and "Here is my story I share with you about coworking..." for longer ones. Hey, that could be a start...

There is a thing I do everyweek in Les Satellites that I called "Histoires des Satellites" (Les Satellites' Stories) : I collect everything I see, hear, sense in the space and I make it a story that I send to the members. I would love to, sometimes, publish them at large for what I learn everyweek could serve anyone. That's how I learnt - and I'm still learning - from you all : ).

Okidok. So. Susan, I'm with you on this ! Thank's Nancy !

Nicolas Bergé

Les Satellites

[Nicolas Bergé]

Oh, I forgot.

There is a library in Paris called Shakespeare & Company (http://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/) that sometimes welcomes writers who don't have a house to sleep in Paris. The library has two tiny beds : tiny but useful. The writers, in order to pay their "rent", has the obligation to write and leave one page of their personal life. Since its inception, the library has collected 35 000 pages. Awesome, isn't it : 35 000 stories !

I believe we can dig into this for our spaces : )

Nicolas Bergé

Les Satellites