Since we hardly did any community-building before we opened our space, if I could do it over again, I would address certain topics like kitchen use/rules, some basic bathroom usage/rules/etiquette, ideas for improving recycling/sustainability, member guest policy, open space noise policy (like whether phone calls will be allowed in the main space or whether people should use phone booths and meeting rooms for calls, as people talk very loudly on cell phones and video chat calls), getting the members to help you keep the bills down (turn off lights in rooms when not in use, etc), and how many of your members would potentially want private offices (build as many as you can).
As far as specific recommendations I would make for some of the aforementioned topics (some might be relevant to you, some might not be): — NO seafood in the microwave, EVER — Any food left in the fridge at 6pm each Friday is up for grabs for anyone because it will get tossed that night. — Rinse the sink after you've emptied food, coffee grounds etc into the sink / disposal (basic common sense stuff that people are too unconscious to think about sometimes) — Have a sign you can hang on the dishwasher telling people that it's running so DO NOT OPEN while running — Tell members to go ahead and load toilet paper if it runs out and not have to wait and go tell you that TP is out — Ask them, if they'd be open to pitch in and clean a toilet once in a while if it needs cleaning (cuz you're going to end up cleaning them daily unless you hire a service) — We set up 3 separate recycling stations in our space but we need to do a better job about telling people to do small things like remove the plastic lid and paper sleeve from their coffee cups and recycle those (better yet, I think we're going to establish a new rule for our regular members – no more plastic/paper cups from the local cafe, use your own washable coffee mug instead) — We set a 2 hour member guest policy, after that they need to buy a day pass — We have a ''quiet culture'' in the open space, we built 3 phone booths and we let our members use the meeting rooms too for short calls if the phone booths are full. — We give each of our members 20 free hours of meeting room use per month, so they can book meeting rooms either for a long phone call that they have in their schedules or for meetings or whatever they need. You may or may not be able to afford this so, do what works best for you. — I'm constantly turning the lights off in the phone booths, meeting rooms etc, we need to put signs up telling people to turn them off (even though the rooms have automatic sensors, the lights stay on for a while after the room or phone booth is vacated) so you might want to consider the same thing. Some people when entering the office in the morning turn on the entire panel of lights automatically without thinking whether that is really necessary. It never is, so several times a week I'm turning off about 50% of the lights someone mindlessly turned on when they let themselves in early in the morning. — We built 2 private offices originally, we're looking at converting our largest (and most underutilized) meeting room into 5 small private offices and another nook we have into 2 more meeting rooms, plus converting one meeting room we have now over to a private office, giving us 8 private offices and 4 meeting rooms total That's all I have off the top of my head. Alejandro Moreno S. <alejandro@venturepad.works> Cofounder/VP VenturePad <http://venturepad.works> On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 8:11 AM <keystol...@gmail.com> wrote: > In addition to what the other experts here suggest, research what Mark > Eaton of the Cochrane Corner did. I believe it was based on Angel's advice > and it was clearly successful. I recently spoke with Mark and he is looking > for a second location. Not bad for a semi-rural operator. > > > On Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 2:46:33 AM UTC-7, superio...@gmail.com > wrote: >> >> Hey Guys! >> >> Tomorrow is my first meet and greets for my coworking community. I am >> building the community before acquiring the actual space. What are some >> topics or processes I should cover tomorrow during the meet and greet? Any >> advice for topics to be discussed? Ice breaker techniques? >> >> Thanks, >> Trey >> > -- > 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. > -- 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.
