It is said that every business has a natural scale; but I think every entrepreneur has a natural scale also. It is my considered opinion that the natural scale of coworking is global; it is further my opinion that the natural scale of any coworking space is hyperlocal. I find the notion of successful combination of the two scales intoxicating, really. But here are my thoughts, disorganized as they are.
In many ways you touch on a larger question which is floating around in the human conversation just at the moment for many reasons, Coworking is just the place we are encountering it just now. It is about, oh, technology and a changing workforce, about globalization and social equity, it is about gender politics and sustainability. We can unpack it any number of ways. It is tempting with all the tools we have to plunge off into exploring all the uses for them; but the reality is that this is primarily of interest for the mobile knowledge workers who are a very small percentage of the workers in the world who actually could and do use a coworking approach. The rest of the world still works and lives within a couple kilometers of their house and while the glories of intercontinental communication are fun and interesting, they do not for these people put bread on the table. In my own community the primary interest in coworking comes from professionals and semi professionals, but not in IT mostly. As a former military brat (born at Fort Mac, yay) I can say that I have come to believe that every place which self-identifies (as a city, a county, a district, however they define themselves) has a character. I don't know if it is in the water or what, but as people form places, places also form people. Franchising or standardizing along any lines which do not take that into account does not interest me personally. I have no desire to stop anybody else from doing it, I just don't want to go there. If I were to set up a chain of coworking spaces, I would standardize them by their local character: my current space is about gracious hospitality and coming home, quality over flash and and feeling a part of an established order. If I were to open in Rotterdam, I have to tell you that it would be all about the flash and the bling-bling, but also about making your life the way you want it and changing the established order to suit. In Den Bosch it would be all about fun and energy and celebrating life, and in the Hague it would be about being connected. My first impulse on reading your post was really that the basis of this argument will split roughly along gender lines -- having fought in the gender wars, made documentaries about same (still working on one now!) and examined it in all sorts of ways I have to say that I still think that it will. (Dudes, don't be scared off by this comment; it is a description, not a prescription). Leading and serving your own tribe maniacally well is worth doing. I actually had the following experience and because I am stupid it took me three years to figure it out: I can have a square foot garden in Atlanta and feed my family pretty reliably from it. I can also have one in Oosterhout and do the same. The framework will be the same -- same boxes and same dirt and seeds and blah, blah. But what is growing there and the techniques I bring to bear will have to be be vastly different. Whether coworking should grow is for me sort of an academic question: it is doing so. It is fun to watch it grow. I confess freely, I am not about the why of things but about the how of things. So somebody else can come along and deal with they why bit. But whether any particular approach should grow and scale? Maybe. I myself favor a hyperlocal approach with global (interstellar as necessary, should SETI pan out :-)) communication/access. It's why I am here. That should be enough to chew on for a starter. :-) Laters, Jeannine On Mar 15, 5:47 am, Angel Kwiatkowski <[email protected]> wrote: > When I disagreed with a statement that coworking spaces need to scale > and grow, it caused quite a stir at the Coworking Unconference. I've > been marinating on my decision to make that feeling public and I'm > real glad I put my feelings right out there. I found this blog post > that I wrote last August-only 5 months after Cohere > opened.http://coherecommunity.com/?p=1377"Business Growth: An > Argument." [I'm nothing if not extremely consistent!] :) > > Cohere got her legs under her at the 5 month mark and every person I > met out on the street wanted to know when I was going to expand or > open a second location. Check out the blog post and weigh in here or > in the comments on the blog with your opinion on whether or not (or > how) coworking spaces should expand/grow/replicate. > > Angel -- 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.
