Hello, listserv. I've been reading this list for the past several months and decided to come out of lurk mode.
My husband and I are considering opening a coworking space in Attleboro, Massachusetts, where we have access to about 2500 square feet (on 2 floors) in an historic mill building. Our city is one in which the industrial and manufacturing base has almost dried up, and we believe that enabling and helping a community of independents, startups, and freelancers can help bring prosperity and employment back to our city. We are located about 10 miles from Providence, RI, which has a strong tech and startup community (but no coworking spaces that I am aware of). We are not yet sure if we actually have the population in our city to support a coworking venture. On the other hand, we also don't have any local coffee shops or even Starbucks -- Panera and Borders are about it, and both have their drawbacks. This message is our first public "unveiling" of our plans. Our next step is to explore the local community to see if there is indeed an interest in coworking, so that we can build our community before actually opening the space. We are thinking about hosting free coworking days in our (very unfurnished) space, depending on the cost for turning on the internet access and getting our wifi set up. A bit of background: I come at this from 20 years of working from home for a corporate employer (where I still work). My husband is the property manager for the building where we are hoping to locate our space -- it currently houses some small manufacturing and industrial companies, and I am curious to see if we can integrate them into our coworking community as well. I have been inspired by the stories of coworking from this list, from the Coworkers podcast (thank you Alex and Tony, please do more). Thanks to all for the insights and information that you have posted. This list is a valuable resource. Ann Kingman Cowork508 Attleboro, MA -- 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.
