Hi All, I've not been very active on here but wanted to share some of what we've been up to over the last year at The Skiff in Brighton, UK. I'm certain we wouldn't be where we are now without the inspiration we've gained from what others have shared on this list and at the coworking meetup at SXSW last year.
This time last year I was actually considering closing the space at the end of our lease. Now, I don't think the community would let me do that if I tried, I've finally transfered most of my day-to-day responsibilities on to others and I'm putting it to the ultimate test by going travelling for four weeks in just over a week's time. The Skiff in 2010: In March we enjoyed our first month of breaking even, operating for the first time without additional financial support from our founders, Inuda Community (http://inuda.org). This was about 16 months after the start of our lease. In May we spotted a new building, perfect for us to move to and continue the growth of our booming community. In June, WiredSussex (http://wiredsussex.com), a local non-profit supporting the digital sector, agreed to take on a 50% share of The Skiff, working with Inuda Community to support the move. In July we moved to our lovely new space, throwing a comoving party that got everything moved 195 meters down the road in just a few short hours. At the start of October we hosted BarCamp Brighton 5, welcoming 90 people from around Europe to the space for a weekend-long unconference. At the end of October our most established community group BuildBrighton, which uses part of our space as a Hacker Space, hosted a White Night activity (http://www.whitenightnuitblanche.com/), introducing over 50 people to electronics hacking. In November we found that we had more than doubled our membership since the move. In December we celebrated our second birthday with a fantastic Skiffmas Party that brought together over 100 of the people that have been involved in our community. We've just passed 50 individual members and we also have a couple of local organisations holding membership that give them regular access to our meeting rooms. Our members list, which includes alumni, shows that around 120 people have been a member at some point in the last 2 years. We're expecting to hit our first break even point since the move in the next couple of months. Our membership is about 50% made up of software developers with the rest consisting of writers, journalists, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs working in all sorts of disciplines, from healthcare and human rights to music and manufacturing. Many of our members have been brought into contact with the space through the free community events and meetups that we have provided space for in the evenings. Some of them were already established but struggling to find the right space; others were founded here by our members and other people in the community. They've included a wide range of tech user groups covering JavaScript, Python, .net, Flash, iPhone, robot building, user experience as well as Hackdays, BarCamps, improv and writers groups. Last year we supported around 75 such events. If the current momentum continues it's likely to be around 125 in 2011. On the financial side of things we've found that a 2.5x multiplier between cost of rent and actual overal running cost has been spot on for estimating the monthly break even point at both spaces. I hope this is useful. Please do come and vist if you are in the UK and thinking of starting a space near you. We're keen to do what we can to support the growth of the coworking movement in the UK and Europe. Best, Jon -- Jonathan Markwell Director of Products, Inuda Technology Ruby/Rails web applications and JavaScript mobile applications for Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, Android and the web at large. http://inuda.com - Inuda Technology Ltd. Founder, Inuda Community Starting, organising and supporting activities at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship in Brighton, London, New York and San Francisco. http://inuda.org - Inuda Innovations Ltd. mob: 07766 021 485 | tel: 01273 704 549 skype: jlmarkwell | twitter: http://twitter.com/jot Try our bright, friendly coworking and meeting space in the heart of Brighton: http://theSkiff.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to coworking@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.
