Looking for a platform/software to allow our coworking members communicate with each other. Any idea?

[en...@indiegrovejc.com]

Hello everyone,

We are a coworking space in Jersey City, NJ area and seeking a platform that helps our members communicate/chat and also start some discussions between them. This would help them to collaborate, socialize and help each other with any needs.

For example, they could be able to post some requests based on their needs as well as just share some useful information about anything.

Based on some research we came up with Hipchat, Campfire and some other IRC platforms. However, we are not just looking for chat softwares. As I mentioned above, the conversation should remain permanently instead of disappearing chat windows. 

We also have found Alche.my and requested from them to try demo but they didn't contact with us yet.

Hope you understand what we need and come up with a solution or idea for us!

Thanks!..

Please check out Indiegrove Coworking Space:

http://www.indiegrovejc.com/

[rachel young]

We use Yammer (https://www.yammer.com/) and it works wonderfully for our community. And is so far unchanged since it was bought by M$.

However, you should search through the Google group since this question has been asked before and there were some other great suggestions.  Use terms like "community messaging" and "communication tools".

r.

____________________
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rac...@camaraderie.ca

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[Tom Lewis]

Hi there- we use Podio, and hugely recommend it.  It's similar to Yammer, but you can build your own drag and drop apps (or use thousands of community built ones for free), so you can customize it to your particular space/workflow.  We have tens of workspaces on it- and used it for our redevelopment, for our staff onboarding/training/HR, for our marketing and brand library, our press cuttings, and yes, even for our members intranet/chat (it's got a great built in chat client as well as campfire style commenting chat/likes/voting buttons etc.

If you are a not for profit (as we are) then it's worth getting in touch with Podio- I think it's $5 a user per month but they waived that for us in return for a link on our site.

Cheers

TOm

[Matthew Straub, Avenue HQ Community Manager]

Tom,

How long ago did Podio do that? I believe their website (now, anyways) specifically states that they don't do special nonprofit pricing. I wanted to get in touch with them recently about exactly that until I saw their site.

Thanks!

Matthew

[Tom Lewis]

I think we started with them about 18 months ago

Bear in mind that even if their policy has changed, you can get away with using Podio with very few chargeable users.  We have 10 users as part of our agreement with them, and despite having over 50 people on Podio across the various workspaces, we only use 2 'paid' accounts as we have two members of staff running the hub- Podio doesn't charge for 'external users' which it defines as those with different email domains as the 'paid users', so if there are two of you running a hub with 100 members, you only need two paid users at $5/month each.

[oren.s...@gmail.com]

Hi Tom,

What are the external users' limitations (if any)?

Seems strange to only charge for same email domain if that's so easy to spoof. 

If that's the case, why do you even bother to pay for two members and not just one?

Thanks!
oren

[Tom Lewis]

Hi Oren- I suggest you spend some time looking at Podio's site to understand the limitations, it's all made clear there.  The short answer is that you quite easily could do this, though you'd lose the 'employee network' which can only be accessed by those on the same domain as the admin.  But for the sake of a few dollars a month it's worth having that, and if you have employees, do you really want them using random/personal domains?  This way of working does have its advantages for Podio, which causes one frequent criticism of the platform- everyone you invite as guests then gets their own Podio account whether they want it or not, and it has a viral effect to spread take up/expansion for Podio, but can annoy some guest users (eg on our brand collateral workspace we've invited our printer so we can assign print jobs to him and he has all the source files he needs, but we only do this every month or so, and meantime he's now got a Podio account he doesn't really want, complete with daily update emails and even marketing emails/updates from Podio.

[Jerome Chang]

I'm going to chime in my two cents here.

I tried Podio, Hojoki, and Basecamp...after also researching several others. I pushed hard for Podio just for my small staff, and Basecamp won out. Why? It's simpler and "prettier". Once I used BC more, I realized why even I didn't use Podio as much - same reason. 

Bottom line: a platform is only as good as others' willingness to use it.

Jerome

www.BLANKSPACES.com

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[Jeannine]

Can I just say that I have been spending too much time on Quora because I just caught myself looking for the "Upvote" button.  :-)

[Blue Ocean Innovation Center, Bozeman Montana]

We just went live with Cobot and they are super so far.  I would contact them to ask if they are able to provide what you want.  They have been adapted by over 100 coworking centers so far.  We have worked mostly with Alex and Christina.  My daughter went to Princeton and just moved to Oxford, UK.  She was in Asia as an anchor for 4 years and back in NJ for 2 years and is spending a year in Oxford with her husband studying Christian mission/apologetics...fascinating place.  Keep us posted whether you go with Cobot other coworking software.  Becky, Founder of Blue Ocean Innovation Center, Bozeman, MT, USA :-)

[vitorfaro]

Hey, folks. I am just thinking in create a social network exclusive for coworking community (spaces and members). It is kind of mix Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn.

This is my presentation when I pitched a idea about that (in portuguese). http://goo.gl/M3G2e

I found this tool that is exactly what I had thought to create. https://www.comingle.me

Regards.

[Matt Farley]

Hey there!

It seems like you're not the only space that is looking for a better way to help members communicate with each other on a more frequent basis. About 3 months ago, I sent out a survey to approximately 60 coworking spaces around Canada and the US, and nearly half of the spaces who responded said they were looking for better ways to get their members to engage with each other. So myself and a rails developer I know decided to start building a new coworking space management application that includes a member facing social system as part of the core feature set.

We actually just launched a closed beta for our application today, so we can gather some user feedback and ideas for continued iteration and progress towards a public launch. Currently, our social system is kind of a cross between forums and chat. Members have the ability to broadcast a message to anyone, or send a private message to just one person. They can also send messages to a topic group that only gets seen by other members who are subscribed to that topic. They are persistent, meaning they won't disappear from view like chat messages when closed, and when a new reply is added to the message thread, the thread will is moved back to the top of your message list. You can filter your message list based on the type of message (public, topic, or private), and you'll be able to star message that are important to you and they will be displayed in a separate list.

The social system as of now is definitely a work in progress. We have a vision for where we want to go with it, but the more feedback we get, the better will end up being. You're welcome to request an invite to the closed beta and take a look. You can do so at http://dovetail.io.

The app will also include a member management system (coupled with payment processing eventually), metrics dashboard for monitoring both space and individual member metrics (like member churn rate, peak usage times, sales performance based on membership plans, and much more), and integrations with a series of 3rd party apps to reduce the amount of time space managers spend creating / updating member contact points. So when you integrate your existing apps for accounting, email marketing, billing & invoicing. etc. with Dovetail, you'll be able to make a change in the Dovetail member record, and it will automatically push the changes to our other apps.

If you'd like to know more about the app and our plans for the future, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Cheers,

[comingle.me]

Hello Indiegrove Coworking!

Just wanted to make sure you knew about Comingle! We're the proximity based coworking network designed to make coworking more collaborative. 

Check us out at comingle.me

All you need to do is create a personal account (free), add your space (free), have your members create their personal accounts (free) and let your members check in - also free. Then, members can see each other and send messages to each other, etc.

Lots of great updates are in the works, so create your profile today and we'll keep you posted as we add them!

Best,

The Comingle Team

www.comingle.me

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 7:56:46 AM UTC-6, en...@indiegrovejc.com wrote:

[comingle.me]

Hi vitofaro,

We're glad you found Comingle. Would love to hear your thoughts on the network! FYI, we do plan to make the geo-location tool available in Europe soon!

Thanks,

The Comingle Team

www.comingle.me

[Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking]

The coworkers here simply created a private Facebook group for internal communications and announcements. It works well for our simple needs.

[Gunasekar C. Rajaratnam]

Exactly Craig.. if most members are already active on a popular site like Facebook, they will be most comfortable with a Facebook secret group or closed group then log on to something else.
Gunasekar

On 17 Sep 2013 22:58, "Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking" <bau...@gmail.com> wrote:

The coworkers here simply created a private Facebook group for internal communications and announcements. It works well for our simple needs.

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[Ashley Johnson]

Hey there! Just to chime in...We are in development to create better communication between members not only as a chat platform but also as a way to showcase member profiles.  If anyone is interested in being involved with Galaxy Unite - the freelancer's coworking network - get in touch as we are happy to design based on your needs.  We are open to bringing on business partners as well ;) 

[Will Bennis, Locus Workspace]

Hi Ashley,

Galaxy Unite looks potentially pretty cool. But it also looks as though it only works for North America (I tried to get started setting up an account and it said my phone number was invalid). Is that right or am I just missing something?

Will

[Enrico Icardi]

Hello everybody...Just wanted to say that here at http://www.sharedesk.net we'd love to here your ideas to improve our platform...so my question is...:

Nobody can see this as an additional feature on ShareDesk??

If there is enough requests I can personally try to make space for this feature in the next release!

...just my 2 cents.
After all we're free, we are already "there" with a huge coworking spaces community (literally everywhere in the world)...and A LOT of spaces owners on the platform have already invited their active (or former) coworkers to list them in their coworking space page.

Members, after receiving the invitation, can create their ShareDesk profile with their email, LinkedIn or Facebook accounts.

It's a good start, isn't it?

...again: this is just a thought to see the community reaction although I honestly think it might actually work!

...anybody else can see this?
I don't see a feature like this profitable for us...but if there is a lot of interest in trying to build something like a "coworking space wall" or add a "multi-messaging system"...it's always good to help when we can! :)

Enrico.

[Enrico Icardi]

P.S.
I've worked in more than 10 spaces so far...and they mostly tend to start using Facebook groups (which is ok, but excludes a few professionals that hate Facebook or are Facebook users with fake identities).
Some uses yammer, but as already mentioned in this conversation: the free version force users to have the same e-mail domain...so it's a good alternative if you create e-mail accounts to your members (some spaces do, most of them don't).
Podio is ok. Basecamp as Freedcamp are more for project management than casual conversations/discussions/polls/pics/links....

[Ashley Johnson]

Yes Galaxy Unite is currently only in North America.  We will make sure to update the number form so that it works for outside of North America.  Thanks for the heads up.  You should still be able to make an account without adding your number.

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Onwards and upwards,

Ashley Johnson

UI / UX  Director, Founder

Galaxy Unite > the freelancers coworking network

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