Hi Eric,
I like your grouping of members and "catalysts that either start
or promote a space." It was never my intent to treat members as a sub-
class within the community, as spaces exist for their members. When
discussing the future of coworking, and ways that individual spaces
can work together to benefit the entire ecosystem, I wanted to make
sure that we recognize the voice of people who have a vested financial
and sweat equity stake in these spaces. During the @OnCoworking show
last night, Andy and I talked about the need for space owners to
discuss this topic with their members so that everyone's voice is
heard. With 70-100 spaces potentially needing representation in the
conversation, it's my thought that we're going to run into logistical
issues if everyone involved in every space talks about this on the
same forum at the same time. I'm only pointing out, like Alex and
others have mentioned, that we need to define a structure for the
conversation that allows everyone's sentiments on their issues to be
heard while maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio. I don't claim to
have a definitive answer on how this should be accomplished, though I
keep thinking about the Continental Congress and the ability for each
space to elect representatives to bring their needs to the wider
group. It's our first task to discuss, starting here on this post and
elsewhere on the group and wiki, that will launch the actual
conversation on federated coworking.
I truly hope I'm not stepping on too many toes, and readily admit
that this is a delicate issue for many individuals. Yet, it's an issue
that must be faced sooner rather than later, so the people who care
about coworking (that includes everyone, from people who care about
the movement like myself, to members, to catalysts) steer the
conversation, and we don't allow some outside organization or media
spin to define it instead. This conversation should benefit all of us,
members and catalysts alike, by ushering in a new framework for unity
and deeper collaboration. If it doesn't, the conversation needs to
evolve until it does.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Eric.
- Chris
On Jul 15, 10:39 pm, Eric Marden <eric.mar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 15, 2009, at 8:55 PM, Chris Stewart wrote:
>
> > The first thing to do is to develop a structure for dialogue
> > that involves people with a vested interest in coworking's success,
> > namely the space owners, and the rest of the coworking faithful to a
> > lesser extent.
>
> Just wondering why non-space owner catalysts were left off this list,
> and members of spaces were kind of delegated to some "lower" status? I
> realize that this may just be semantics, but it sounds like there is
> something more in the background that is going unsaid. In other words,
> is "federated coworking" more about pushing the good ship coworking
> forward or about tying individual rafts (spaces) together to keep them
> afloat?
>
> Communities are made of members, who galvanize around catalysts, that
> either start or promote a space (owner). All three players are needed,
> more or less equally, or you won't have a game. This is why starting a
> space before there is a coworking community in your city usually
> doesn't work.
>
> - Eric Marden
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .http://ericmarden.com
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