Chiming in: on directories & meeting community needs

[Susan Evans]

Hi all,

The recent conversation going on about directories has inspired me to chime in. There is a lot spinning around in my mind right now, so hopefully I'm able to be clear enough (I have a nasty cold today though, so bear with me):

A critical conversation has been missing when talking about all the various commercial coworking directories: What is the value of a directory for a coworking community? So far, the primary value I've seen discussed for what a coworking space gets out of being listed is increased traffic, either to their website or to their space itself. Is that enough? In order to build a long-lasting coworking space, we've always needed more than to simply get more traffic to our space; we need to continue to attract long-term, participating members of our community. We notice this now especially as we are pushing membership capacity at Office Nomads - the directory efforts to simply list our space seem particularly unnecessary, and at worst, counter to what we're actually working to do. If we are all working so hard to develop platforms for thriving coworking communities around the world, I am not convinced that utilizing commercial coworking directories help us to do that work. 

In order to meet our community needs, as well as to meet our own needs as a coworking space, Office Nomads is currently putting our efforts into the following areas:

As always, staying focused on our local coworking community. Working together is way more interesting, fun, and rewarding than creating artificial competition where there is none. We've been working hard ever since we got started to build connections between our coworking space and others in Seattle through Coworking Seattle, then the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance. Working together and helping one another talk about coworking locally benefits us all, and demonstrates our desire to do things differently. It is not without its challenges, and is definitely harder than just inputting your information into a website, but it is incredibly rewarding. And it turns out, it helps us build the best coworking communities we can: by helping individuals find the space that is right for them, each coworking community benefits. In addition, we will continue to be good neighbors in Capitol Hill, and to participate and collaborate as much as possible within our neighborhood. A significant portion of our members come from our neighborhood and from neighborhoods nearby - we reach them best when we are contributing members of our local community.

Encouraging and fostering coworking spaces worldwide to connect and collaborate for the benefit of all. Being a part of and contributing to the global coworking conversation is important not only because of the bonds it builds between our space and other spaces worldwide, but because it enables shared learning between spaces, enhancing the development and creation of each of our spaces independently. One key factor that I believe in personally is that these bonds and learning experiences are best built when they are neutral/non-commercial, and for the benefit of all. This is one of the many reasons I am excited about the revamp of the Coworking Wiki, and why I think it's important that our space continues to contribute content to the global coworking community (through the Google Group, the Coworking Blog, etc.). I believe that by creating and maintaing a place where coworking space operators can connect, share, and support one another, we get much more bang for our buck. In fact, we get out of it usually about the same as what we put into it. This means I'm encouraged to participate more as opposed to auto-fill-and-forget (which is what usually happens after I list myself in a commerical directory). 

I hope that by sharing our story, our concerns, and our needs, I'm helping us to look at the bigger picture when it comes to listing sites, both commercial, and non.

What do you think?

Susan

__
Office Nomads         
officenomads.com  

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

Whenever I think about how people find coworking these days it usually just follows this very specific process that those people are probably using to find *anything*:

Open browser

Browser is probably set with google.com as home

Type in "x + my city" (in our case it's coworking  + city name)

Browse results

Visit those websites

Take action if wanted

THAT'S why I don't think space directories are useful for Cohere + pretty much everything Susan said :)

Angel

[Alex Hillman]

The other thing is that coworking directories assume the people know what they're looking for. In the case of coworking, they only thing they know to look for is what they've seen before. This leaves a HUGE opportunity for coworking spaces to differentiate, but I've yet to see a directory that facilitates that. The sortable categories are things that all have their own weaknesses: 

• "Vibe" - which is more of a made up marketing concept than the attitude it's meant to portray
• Location - which is mentally limiting for people who don't know how far they'd be willing to commute to be part of a great community. 
• Price - price is an important aspect, but when it's the primary sort field it leads potential members to shop on price and it leads coworking spaces to compete on price. This is good for nobody.

I'd love to see a tool go the way of a "tribe finder", and putting the marketing tools of a coworking space in it's members hands rather than it's owners hands. Our members are the #1 reason that people belong to our spaces, why do they come second in most marketing and "way finding" material compared to space, amenities, and price?

-Alex

-- 

/ah

indyhall.org

coworking in philadelphia

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/d6B3AhfXsF8J.
To post to this group, send email to cowo...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to coworking+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.

[Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking]

These directories are evolving and I get a sense that Loosecubes is
the closet one to bringing in that 'vibe' factor. I like how I, as a
space owner, can add regulars to the sidebar to show visitors to the
listing the type of people that cowork here. The regulars have a
profile page that give some the people some personality, but they have
a long way to go to gaining a complete picture.

Tekhne.co, a Colorado news source for technology and startups, created
a survey for the space owners to fill out. I think they did a good job
of pulling out fun details about a space and community that give more
of a complete picture. I would like for the directories to incorporate
more of this into the space profiles.
Here is the link: http://tekhne.co/970/colorado-coworking-culture-which-space-is-best-for-you/

[Susan Evans]

Thanks for the responses, you guys. It's a tricky question for sure, and my goal is certainly not to bag on commercial directory sites. Thanks Craig for sending out that link about Techne.co - it's nice to see the kinds of questions they're asking. I think in particular it was nice to see that they dove into some specifics to try and attach a spectrum of what the vibe really feels like in each space. (I was a particular fan of the "icon" feature for each space, and that Ira Glass made it onto the list for multiple spaces. Awesome.)

At the end of the day, though, I think I was hoping to bring the question back to what we as community operators are interested in when it comes to attracting new members of our spaces. Especially as we push capacity at Office Nomads, that whole idea of "getting more butts in seats" is even less attractive as it has ever been, as each person taking up a seat in our space who really doesn't get it or really isn't interested in participating takes away a seat from someone who really does want to be a part of what we have going on here. Listing my space for listing's sake has fully lost it's lustre for me, and moving towards a localized and neutral place seems much more appropriate for what our space is going through at the moment (I say "at the moment" specifically - life in a coworking space changes moment to moment as you all know, and our needs change over time).

I think the more that we can narrow in on the "vibe" and "tribe" aspects, and the further we can move away from square footage and amenity conversations in those spaces the better. It's very similar to how I feel about the kinds of stories we tell about coworking spaces - by focusing on the "stuff" of spaces, we seriously miss out on the opportunity to tap into the guts of each space. 

My focus at this point is to dive into participating on an open platform where we as spaces can learn from one another and help prospective members who reach out find the space that suits them best. The Collaborative Space Alliance here in Seattle is the best venue I have to do that (due to my ability to very specifically know the ins and outs of each space in Seattle), followed directly by the Coworking Wiki. 

S
__
Office Nomads         
officenomads.com  
206-484-5859

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group.