Hello, I've been putting a lot of time and thought into how we share data, the data we share, and what could be done with all this data. I've chimed in here and there but I wanted to throw out some ideas that keep coming up and where I'm currently at. First, it's important to recognize that our community has exploded in recent years and has grown quite large and broad both in terms of geography and diversity. One extraordinary aspect of this community is the desire to share openly everything from startup tips, marketing advice, and best practices to legal documents, annual reports, and business plans. The current systems used to facilitate this sharing are our google group and the coworking wiki. Their primary advantages are their neutrality and openness and their ability to grow organically as the community grows and different players come and go. I love that these simple systems can be so effective and instrumental in our growth and I want to recognize that even with their faults they have facilitated this community effectively. The topic of where they are lacking has come up and has been discussed frequently. Usually it follows the pattern that some other tool would do a better job and it's countered by the fact that every tool has things that it does well, and things it does not. Also, switching systems is very disruptive and time consuming and with an all volunteer effort such as this it's unclear who is going to take on the work.
What we've witnessed time and again is that setting up great collaboration tools isn't the hard part. The problem is organizing volunteers, maintaining momentum and growing the solutions over time. Case in point is the Google Map. Someone set this up long ago, yet it's unmaintained and out of date, rendering it useless. The fact that it was easy to setup is irrelevant and misleading. It's important to take a holistic/systems view and consider all these little intricate elements when trying to find "solutions". To that end, I've been having a lot of individual conversations, with a wide array of folks, exploring different ways to take on these challenges. I believe this can be done without the disruption of switching tools or enforcing standards on the group. *Our diversity and our independence is what makes us so beautiful and that should be embraced, not mitigated to make solutions easier to implement*. One way to do this that continually comes up is the formation of an organization that can take the time to focus on these specific issues. This organization would have the simple, and specific goal of organizing and maintaining the data coworking spaces love to share and helping coordinate free/libre/open source projects that benefit the coworking community. I believe a dedicated, neutral entity, can strike the right balances and maintain the right focus to make something like this work. The image of a library comes to mind and it makes me wonder if we need a coworking library. And more and more terrific projects are emerging from within the community every day that would benefit from more support, coordination, and information. Great examples include Stephanie's indexing of the Google Group conversations, Jonathan's development of the Coworking Registry, the Coworking Blog, Hallen Projekt, PariSOMA iPhone app, Coworking Europe and the SxSW unconference. With the diversity of talent and global reach of the coworking movement, more collaboration will enable us to accomplish even more amazing things. I want to open the discussion to the whole group and see whether people think an organization like this is necessary and if this is going in the right direction? Would you support this endeavor and/or participate? What other tasks/challenges do you think should be taken on? Everything is still very early in the development and it's really more about pinning down a core philosophy which I've tried to communicate here as best I could. Thoughts, comments, concerns? Jacob --- Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation http://www.officenomads.com - (206) 323-6500 -- 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.
