Be sure to give this group's archives a search for this topic of phone booths, it's come up a bunch of times before <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/coworking/phone$20booth%7Csort:relevance> .
I can speak from the POV of having had *no* dedicated phone rooms in our original 1800 square ft space, having had a makeshift closet phone room in 4400 square feet (with all of the shortcomings Jerome mentioned, it still got used every day), adding a phone call "hood" <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/7KH14yX1SWI/EH5oldDjQT0J> during an expansion to 8800 sq ft, (that was far from soundproof, but made creative use of some otherwise unusable space and turned out to be rather popular) and custom-building a bunch of ADA compliant call rooms in our space last year. *For those keeping track, that's 10 years in operation before we had what some would consider 'passable' phone rooms.* Having lived with all of these variations, *my answer is to work with what you have, and manage member expectations accordingly. *You get to choose the primary value you provide. Focus on what you have, and do it as well as you can. You'd be amazed what you can *not* have and still have happy members, when you focus on the stuff that matters. Even now that we have phone rooms and conference rooms, we tell people on tour that if they spend a lot of their day on the phone or on video calls then we're probably not right for them. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to provide every service that an office has (or every startup wants) in order to be successful in coworking. :) ------------------ *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Liz Trice <liztr...@gmail.com> wrote: > We've had good luck with a closet turned into a phone booth. It is small > (about 5'x5'), has a heavy wooden door without a window, foam sealing where > the door meets the frame, and a sweep to block the gap under the door, > carpet on the floor, and a chair. We have white noise speakers both inside > and outside it. It's not a place where you'd want to spend more than an > hour, but provides a good sense of privacy for skype calls, and you can > only hear loud voices through it. We've considered building another one > next to it, but would definitely insulate and double up on sheetrock. > Jerome, what brand of pre-fab phone booths do you like? > > > On Monday, May 15, 2017 at 5:14:33 AM UTC-4, Katherine Warman Kern wrote: >> >> I agree with Jerome. We don't have plugs or chairs to discourage >> "squatting" and looked for a wall of nails that we could program to emerge >> on a timer but couldn't find one. >> >> Just kidding. >> >> I am creating a new meeting room system that integrates with our member >> billing account and may consider including the phone booths on it. That way >> if someone wants to use more than their fair share and is willing to pay >> for it, then fine. In general, this is consistent with our strategy. We >> charge one price and include everything. For those who use more than their >> fair share we don't say no, we figure out a reasonable way (both in terms >> of amount to the customer and administration) to charge money for excess >> usage. Most folks are fine with this and other members appreciate that they >> aren't paying for it. >> >> Katherine Kern >> >> -- > 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. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
