Coworking's contribution to economic development and community

[Steven Talcott Smith]

Hello Co-workers,

I am a software consultant and sometimes entrepreneur based in Boca
Raton, Florida, and I am currently writing a report as a volunteer
project for a local economic development non-profit focused on tech
entrepreneurship. The report will cover what I think is necessary to
nurture a thriving local entrepreneurial tech community (from a
participant's perspective) and what I think the some of the
opportunities are for non-profits, for-profits and groups that don't
fit well in either category. There are many elements to this but one
thing I am looking at is the idea of a space or spaces, in locations
that are "places", that bring a stronger community aspect than
incubators and more conventional workplace setups. Community is one
of the missing elements here and I think the co-work movement has
something to say about that. I believe there is room for a lot of
different concepts and that they occupy different and potentially
mutually supportive niches.

I became interested in co-work spaces through organizing my local Ruby
developers meetup. For a long time, until I moved into an incubator,
we lacked a place to meet. A number of us are freelancers and would
enjoy working together along with other creative professionals whether
or not anything we are working on would really qualify for an
incubator. We also continually find ourselves in need of design and
creative resources and we lack the community to make it easy to find
people we are comfortable working with.

At RubyConf in Orlando last month, I ran into several other people who
were involved in co-work spaces in Minnesota and Washington State.

I am primarily interested in creating a co-work space that would also
be the "natural place" for professional meetups and user groups to get
together. I am interested in what fellow co-workers think makes a
successful space and location. How important is the convenience of
public transit? How important is it to have potentially complementary
nearby (walkable) resources and businesses such as libraries, book
stores, cafes, etc? What are some surprising synergies you have
discovered? Have you seen the co-work space produce new and
successful relationships that would not have come about without it?

Has anyone provided space for user groups to meet in the evening? Was
this successful in bringing membership and attention to the space?
How much did you go out of your way to accommodate these groups? When
the meetings break up do the members go home or do they stand outside
or go somewhere else? What about adding facilities for trainers to
use? Anyone who could teach a class on something technical or useful
professionally will struggle with finding an appropriate venue. What
about one that is designed for it? Could that be complementary to co-
working?

How many anchor "members" (not tenants) do you need to have to begin
to realize the community benefits?

I ask the members of this group to please point me to books I should
read or other resources you may know about that are relevant to my
report or to share personal experiences that might be enlightening for
us all.

Very Much Appreciated,

Steven Talcott Smith

[Alex Hillman]

Steven,
You've asked a bunch of great questions, many of which have been discussed and answered in this forum before. I suggest you search the group: http://groups.google.com/group/coworking and perhaps return with pointers to specific discussions or opportunities to ask new questions from what you can learn from those previous discussions.

Best,
Alex Hillman, IndyHall, Philadelphia

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Alex Hillman
im always developing something
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com
visual: www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org

[Tara Hunt]

I should add that this is going to be part of a SXSW Interactive talk:
Regional Whuffie Building, run by Tony B from New Work City. ;)

T
--
tara 'missrogue' hunt

Book: The Whuffie Factor (http://twurl.nl/qhe1l0)
Company: Citizen Agency (http://citizenagency.com)
Blog: HorsePigCow: Marketing Uncommon (http://horsepigcow.com)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/missrogue
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335

[David Kominsky]

Steven, 

We at CubeSpace are very much a hub of Portland's open source tech scene, and host space for lots of users groups to meet in the evening. The important thing to realize, however, is that running a coworking space is not a part time job. Rather, it is a more than full time job, especially if you want to create the community of your vision. Happy to talk to you more about this, but running off to do "my job." ;-)

--David

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David Kominsky
Da...@CubeSpacePDX.com
503-206-3500
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Avenue
Portland, OR 97214

[axon]

The principal underlying motivation for our coworking space is
explicitly to cultivate entrepreneurship as an economic development
strategy for the community and the surrounding region. It remains to
be seen whether or not it will be successful. That said, I coined a
phrase the other day to describe it. Coworking: free-range
entrepreneurship.

--Ax