Oh yes, so much this. I find it sort of humorous that we are now talking about whether coworking can survive a recession, there are serious articles from back then (and it wasn't that long ago) about whether coworking was really just a manifestation of recession and whether it would go away as soon as the economy took an upturn.
To which I sad then as I say now, come back in ten years, we'll see then who's still standing. On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 4:22:10 PM UTC+1, Angel Kwiatkowski wrote: > > Jeanine, > I remember this woman who was familiar with Cohere but was working in a > regular job in the next town. She showed up on our doorstep one day after > lunch and proclaimed, "I just got laid off. I didn't want to go home so I > came here instead." > > A > > On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 3:37:30 AM UTC-6, Jeannine van der > Linden wrote: >> >> This right here. >> >> I opened my first space just as the last recession was hitting -- though >> it was a slower, shallower curve here in Europe, the sudden shift to >> mandatory entrepreneurship came in like a bomb. Suddenly people were being >> confronted with doing the same job they always had done as an employee, as >> a freelancer. They were nervous and worried and not at all sure they were >> up for this Brave New World. >> >> I intentionally made that space homey and personal and intimate. A >> shiny, corporate environment was exactly what they did not want. We had a >> guy from the tax office come in and give lessons on how to keep books and >> records as a freelancer, we had intentional freelancers come in and talk >> about what it's like to freelance, we had folks come in and talk about how >> to manage your retirement now you are a freelancer. >> >> We are now two cycles away from that and have changed a lot of things >> since then. I sort of miss it sometimes, though I am glad those folks are >> settled now mostly. >> >> Tip for Coworking in a recession: keep your costs low and your powder >> dry. :-) >> >> On Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 6:09:25 PM UTC+1, Alex Hillman wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Another thing is that when we opened (at the beginning of the last >>> recession) we had an INFLUX of people who were "newly independent" - some >>> by choice, many by force. They weren't looking for an office, they were >>> *looking >>> for people* who were already independent and they might be able to >>> learn from. That was literally the foundation of our first wave of growth. >>> >>> In our next economic downturn, I expect we're going to see something >>> similar except that a decade later the physical and social infrastructure >>> to support a newly minted independent is WAY better. I think this will >>> likely be a good thing for coworking spaces, with a caveat that people see >>> and feel a sense of connection to the other members. If not, the coworking >>> space is simply a cost that can be removed/reduced. And I think *that's* >>> going to hurt a lot of spaces, especially the larger ones. >>> >>> >>>> -- 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.
