Introduction: Althea from the Freelancers Union

[Althea]

Hi everyone,

This is my quick introduction email. My name is Althea, and I work at
the Freelancers Union. Julie was kind enough to introduce me in a
different thread, but I thought I'd follow community guidelines and
post a separate introductory email.

I'm joining this group because it seems like there are a ton of
synergies between the coworking movement and the work of the
Freelancers Union. My recent conversation with Julie from Austin
really confirmed that. Freelancers Union exists because we believe
that when people come together in groups, they can accomplish a lot of
amazing things. Coworking spaces are a perfect example.

Freelancers Union has been growing really quickly (we're almost up to
70,000 members), and we've been thinking a lot about ways we can
support different groups of independent workers, and how we can help
connect those groups to build a strong network that spans the country.
If we can build a strong national network, we can demonstrate both our
market power and our political power, and really make progress on
things like group health insurance in other states, reforming onerous
taxes, etc.

So I'd throw that question out to you all. Do you see value in
connecting with other (non-coworking) groups of independent workers?
And what can Freelancers Union do to help support your individual
groups?

I'm excited to hear your thoughts.

Best,
Althea

p.s. If you're not familiar with Freelancers Union, you can check us
out here: www.freelancersunion.org. membership is free.

[Alex Hillman]

In general, I'm super supportive of infrastructures like this. The way I see it, we all kick ass at whatever it is that we do, be it creative, development, business, management...anything really. Coworking gives us an opportunity to put our focus on what our core competency is and collaborate where our skills overlap.

A freelancers union seems like it could allow the same kind of opportunity on a larger scale. One of the biggest takeaways from SXSW this year, as we've discussed, is finding ways to unite the spaces and communities across the globe. This is a pretty massive undertaking from an infrastructure standpoint, so my biggest question is what does the Freelancer's union have to offer that might help us streamline that kind of process?

Thanks for introducing yourself Althea, and welcome to the group!

-Alex

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Alex Hillman
round(3)media new! ask me about it
digital: al...@round3media.com
visual: www.round3media.com | www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org