Hi Ranie, welcome to the group! Very cool to hear that you're working on something in Indonesia. > 1. Here in Indonesia, coworking is a really new concept, does anybody know > the best way to educate people about the coworking space concept?
It's worth remembering that coworking is a really new concept in most places still, and even in the places where it's "known" most people haven't heard of it before. My favorite analogy to help people understand (and Brad from The Hub Melbourne used very similar language during is talk at Coworking Europe) is "it's like joining a club. you get to be a part of a community that also has a clubhouse that the members share to do work." > 2. How to nail the community? is Jelly effective? Jelly is a great first brush with building a community because it doesn't cost anything and the barrier is really low for people to try it out. The key to Jelly leading to community is repetition: doing it on some regular interval is a lot more powerful than doing it once in a while. But jelly is just one kind of experience. By itself, it's not a community-builder. "Nailing the community" comes from working hard on three measurable factors: Participation - people don't just show up, they contribute Connections - people start to form relationships with other people in the group Empathy - you and the other members don't have to agree on everything, but you establish common ground for understanding even within disagreements because disagreements are inevitable Jelly can help grow all three of these things in tandem…but there's countless other ways! > 3. Freelancer or Start-up entrepreneur? Which one the most suitable to work > at coworking space? Coworking is valuable for both, but there are pros and cons to both. In my experience, it's been a lot easier to build a sustainable community and business around freelancers than startups. This view might be unpopular given all of the love for startups in our world today, so I want to articulate what I've seen here at Indy Hall and elsewhere. I've found it to be more difficult to integrate a team's culture without a lot of extra work from them and for us. The team ends up being a mini-clique within the bigger community, which can weaken the entire community. Generally, freelancers tend to identify more with the "I'm alone" set of needs than startups do. Startups identify with wanting to be around other people but more for business networking and low-cost space. These two things can be complimentary, but they often create culture clash. The other factor is that startups have two "most likely" outcomes: they outgrow you, or they die. Either way, they're gone unless you've done a great job of integrating them into the community (in which case, they become part of your alumni and continue to contribute). And every multi-person startup that you lose to one of these fats needs to be replaced by another multi-person startup…meaning that you'll be in the same boat again before long. Every startup that's come to our coworking space has ended up leaving due to one of those two factors. We take that risk into consideration when teams join. Freelancers, on the other hand, tend to stay members for much much longer, keeping our churn down and ultimately building our community & business stronger. -Alex -- /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia pre-order the new eBook, "the business of community (http://book.businessofcommunity.com/?ref=email)" -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
