Coworkers and Social Networking

[Mojo]

Hello.  I have a hypothesis that I'd like to prove or disprove.  As part of my exploration into valuing new revenue opportunities for the coworking movement, I would like to ask for some help from this group. I've put together a short survey to collect some data that will show the levels of social networking among coworking members. My belief is that coworkers are great connectors, influencers and opinion leaders ... this survey will help establish some level of empirical evidence.

My request is that you please forward the attached link to your members and ask them to fill out this anonymous survey. My goal will be to present results at GCUC as part of an unconference conversation. Note that at this point, we are only looking to survey North American coworkers, but will likely expand internationally as a future phase.  

Here is the survey link.  We'd like to have as many surveys as possible completed in the next 2 weeks.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WJQfLmqxCRYwfHaVSuw3-VLLQEYl-AXfZzNobgEeWDY/viewform

If anyone has questions, please don't hesitate to message or call me directly - 828-398-1840. Thanks!

[Alex Hillman]

I'm VERY interested to see these results! Thanks for putting this together, Craig. Will you be sharing the raw data as well as your synthesis?

"My belief is that coworkers are great connectors, influencers and opinion leaders ... this survey will help establish some level of empirical evidence."

My instinct is that you're half right, but selection bias will trend your results in your thesis' favor. I wonder how we can help you correct that. 

I've seen more people BECOME great connectors, influencers, and opinion leaders as an outcome of participation in a coworking community...but very few self-categorize or act that way from the onset. I have a model that's part of our Masterclass construct that explains why this happens (based on larger sociological patterns & lots of study of communities through history, not just in coworking), and a long overdue blogpost about it. 

This stuff around leadership within our membership communities is my #1 fascination right now, so if anyone else has similar threads of interest for discussion, I would love to be reading them here!!

-Alex

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/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

Got Community? http://masterclass.indyhall.org

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[Rena Tom]

"I've seen more people BECOME great connectors, influencers, and opinion leaders as an outcome of participation in a coworking community...but very few self-categorize or act that way from the onset."

Yes, this! I've been doing a lot of thinking about this, Alex. I'm actually giving a presentation in April at TYPO in San Francisco where I'll mostly be covering how we help our members (freelancers) take charge of their careers and develop their skills by encouraging more participation in our community. We are getting more and more people to start office hours to share knowledge, teach a workshop or participate in a panel. They both learn from the experience and gain confidence in the skills they have.

rena / makeshift society

[Daniel Dudley]

Thanks for putting together this survey and I am (also) definitely looking forward to hearing your results when it is done.

Something else that I think would be interesting to include in a future study is the spread of "online-enabled" offline networking. I am thinking specifically of how people in the coworking movement utilise sites like meetup to congregate and meet new people as well as rely on services like yelp and foursquare to discover new places.
These are not exactly what you are currently looking to measure currently but I think so definite parallels can be drawn and having correlated data could be very useful.

-DAniel
founder, LakeworkSpaces
[cleveland, oh]

[Mojo]

Yes,  I'll share everything I get - and will try to overlay my interpretation.  Hopefully, I'll get a chance to also do the same survey among "non-coworkers" in order to have a comparison.  My marketing agency has used a variety of online survey organizations - so I'll start there.  I also agree that there will be a certain amount of selection bias and I'll talk with our research folks to find a way to address that bias.

The notion that people gain connecting and influencing ability by being coworking members is certainly valid.  I can see it happening a Mojo all the time.  In fact, it's one of the most gratifying aspects of watching our family grow.  But, I guess that idea still fits into the hypothesis that coworkers are (or will soon be) better connectors, opinion leaders, influencers.

More to come.  Please share the SURVEY URL with your members and encourage them to participate.  Thanks again.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WJQfLmqxCRYwfHaVSuw3-VLLQEYl-AXfZzNobgEeWDY/viewform

Craig McA