Thanks for the responses, you guys. It's a tricky question for sure, and my goal is certainly not to bag on commercial directory sites. Thanks Craig for sending out that link about Techne.co - it's nice to see the kinds of questions they're asking. I think in particular it was nice to see that they dove into some specifics to try and attach a spectrum of what the vibe really feels like in each space. (I was a particular fan of the "icon" feature for each space, and that Ira Glass made it onto the list for multiple spaces. Awesome.)
At the end of the day, though, I think I was hoping to bring the question back to what we as community operators are interested in when it comes to attracting new members of our spaces. Especially as we push capacity at Office Nomads, that whole idea of "getting more butts in seats" is even less attractive as it has ever been, as each person taking up a seat in our space who really doesn't get it or really isn't interested in participating takes away a seat from someone who really does want to be a part of what we have going on here. Listing my space for listing's sake has fully lost it's lustre for me, and moving towards a localized and neutral place seems much more appropriate for what our space is going through at the moment (I say "at the moment" specifically - life in a coworking space changes moment to moment as you all know, and our needs change over time). I think the more that we can narrow in on the "vibe" and "tribe" aspects, and the further we can move away from square footage and amenity conversations in those spaces the better. It's very similar to how I feel about the kinds of stories we tell about coworking spaces - by focusing on the "stuff" of spaces, we seriously miss out on the opportunity to tap into the guts of each space. My focus at this point is to dive into participating on an open platform where we as spaces can learn from one another and help prospective members who reach out find the space that suits them best. The Collaborative Space Alliance here in Seattle is the best venue I have to do that (due to my ability to very specifically know the ins and outs of each space in Seattle), followed directly by the Coworking Wiki. S __ Office Nomads officenomads.com 206-484-5859 On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking < baut...@gmail.com> wrote: > These directories are evolving and I get a sense that Loosecubes is > the closet one to bringing in that 'vibe' factor. I like how I, as a > space owner, can add regulars to the sidebar to show visitors to the > listing the type of people that cowork here. The regulars have a > profile page that give some the people some personality, but they have > a long way to go to gaining a complete picture. > > Tekhne.co, a Colorado news source for technology and startups, created > a survey for the space owners to fill out. I think they did a good job > of pulling out fun details about a space and community that give more > of a complete picture. I would like for the directories to incorporate > more of this into the space profiles. > Here is the link: > http://tekhne.co/970/colorado-coworking-culture-which-space-is-best-for-you/ > > -- > 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. > > -- 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.
