Hey Paul, Great post! We have made a couple of attempts to get our local transportation agencies to pay attention to coworking, but have not had a ton of luck thus far. In fact, I got to a point in a conversation with one of my local transportation contacts where she simply said that the best way for us to move forward would be for ON to reach out to all Seattle businesses individually...meh. Not the most productive way to share resources, methinks. I blogged about it briefly here - http://www.officenomads.com/2009/05/still-commuting-across-lake-washington/
Your post is inspiring me to refresh my efforts and get back in touch with those agencies and continue the conversation. Not to make a broad judgement, but sometimes, particularly with government agencies, the key is to be persistent over a long period of time - these things take a while to catch on. ;) Additionally, we have a few organizations locally in Seattle that could be great to tap into, particularly this one: http://www.commuteseattle.com/. Another cool opportunity is if you have any commute trip reduction laws in your area - folks who are subject to these laws are usually looking to post cool alternatives for their employees, and coworking would likely be a great resource to put on the table. So sorry, no great success at pulling government folks into our space, but we are definitely looking into it. My best recommendation would be to continue conversations with your local transportation agencies and to build relationships with them so they don't think you're just trying to sell to them (from our perspective, we're simply trying to recommend coworking as a model, not sell ON to them specifically). It is important for these connections to be made over a long period of time, and for you as a coworking space to make yourself available to be of help. Typically energy and urgency around these conversations are heightened anytime there is big construction that impedes commuters -that was my best round of conversations thus far, but again, hasn't proved to be very productive thus far. Best of luck to you! Susan __ Office Nomads http://www.officenomads.com On Aug 26, 8:26 am, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > Here's a link to a recent newsletter that gives coworking a "shout- > out". > > In the Washington DC area traffic is horrible and Commuter Connections > is designed to promote car pooling and alternative working > arrangements. All branches of the Federal Government are supposed to > have a person that coordinates teleworking and actually promotes it. > We have been reaching out to these DC based contacts to raise > awareness of our space. The government operated "Teleworking" centers > in our area are sterile, government type offices. They charge $1200 > per month for a desk! > > Hopefully this is a pool of people that we can tap into! Has anyone > else had an success or experience with pulling government people into > their space? > > http://www.mwcog.org/commuter2/pdf/Summer%202009%20pages1-6.pdf > > Paul > > www.businessplayce.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
