Re: [Coworking] Re: Basic elements for a definition of coworking
Re: clients vs. members. I would definitely agree on the philosophical distinction. Essentially,it's trying to tease out whether the space exists to build a community (members) or to earn a margin on real estate (clients). This is an important dichotomy, but it's also strictly false as we all exist on a sliding scale between these two extremes. I don't think we want to start to see client as a dirty word...at a nice restaurant the clients will be on a first-name basis with staff, have a special table, regular meal selections, and even Christmas cards in the mail (and may even be called patrons to distinguish the relationship), while at McDonald's clients are a mass of impersonal and transactional relationships. I find myself slipping interchangeably between terms when talking about The Office http://theoffice.rw, because as a coworking space manager and business manager I have to think both in terms of building and strengthening our community (membership) and in terms of making the numbers work and communicating with potential partners and investors (clients). When I'm thinking in terms of investment and expansion, I intellectual categorize members as clients...this is often sub-conscious and I used to even feel ashamed when I realized that I had done it, but I wonder if this is really such a horrible thing. Because, when I think about why I do what I do and the people I work with and for, I think of friends and members... What do you think? - Jon On Friday, 12 September 2014 13:15:23 UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote: In my opinion a coworking space -- being a *community* of coworkers -- always calls and treats its coworkers *members*. I like this one a lot!! -Alex -- 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.
[Coworking] Automating Processes and Hacking Internet - How to make coworking management easier!?!?
Happy Friday Everyone! We're looking for some advice, co-operation and co-creation from this amazing community! We're progressing with our expansion here in Kigali and having a lot of fun doing it. We just finished a big scrap metal art installation called The True Size of Africa in what will soon be our open plan hot-desking room: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=421619967912909set=a.380197505388489.89805.312772268797680type=1theater Our membership is growing fairly quickly, and so it's time for us to start thinking about automating processes and hacking our internet connection. Here are few things I wanted to propose as potential hardware and software tools for automation/improvement in any coworking space - if I've missed an area, please feel free to add: *1. Automatic phone answering system. * I'm looking into building a system that allows each member (and virtual member) to have their own voice mail box extension, and setting it up to the server to record the message onto a .wav file and automatically email the recipient. I'm checking out using NCH's Answering Attendant Software (http://www.nch.com.au/ivm/index.html). Has anyone tried that yet? Is it easy to use/reliable? *2. Membership management, Conference room booking and invoicing. *I've seen some recent posts about using cobot.me ...wow... the software looks awesome! Is this something other people are using. How is it working for you? I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the monthly overhead for the software, as migration away from the system in the future would give the software developers scope for increasing monthly fees. I don't have much of a tech background, is it easy to set up the pfsense to track wifi usage and therefore vacancy rates etc? *3. Multiple-WAN. *internet connectivity is one of the biggest constraints to doing business in Rwanda. Internet here is as unreliable as it is expensive. We are talking to telecomms about sponsorship, but in the meanwhile we are offering four wifi connections in parallel (each ISP has a different router), and so people can jump onto any connection and organically the load is balanced across the connections (one day internet was down on every connection but one, so we all shared a 3.5G connection). When we begin to have more people, however, it would be nice to add additional connections from existing ISPs to increase overall bandwidth at our location, and at that point it would be great to find a way to bond the multiple connections. It looks like hardware that does this is incredibly expensive (www.mushroomnetworks.com, for example is about US$4,995 for hardware that bonds 8 connections). I noticed that pfSense can be configured for multiple-WAN load balancing...is this easy to configure and does it work well in practice when the connections are incredibly unreliable? There is a lot of information that I'm lacking here. I think this thread could benefit a lot of us coworking space managers. If, however, people don't have the time to share for free, I'd be happy to hire someone on an e-lance type contract to advise us on the way forward on some of these areas. Thanks so much for sharing and caring! Jon www.theofficerw.com -- 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.
[Coworking] Re: Strategic Partnership/Sponsorship Package Help
Alexa, congrats on the new job. We'd be really interested to hear what others are doing in this space as well. We've not had time to work on this yet, but we're considering a few areas of sponsorship: 1. telecomms - phone internet 2. couriers - group discounts with a courier for members 3. hotels On Saturday, 26 January 2013 00:42:29 UTC+2, Alexa Lightner wrote: Hi all, I'm new to the coworking community and just started a job at Workbar in Boston. One of my first projects is putting together a sponsorship/strategic partnership package to attract higher-end sponsors (we have several snack sponsors and several partners that offer discounts, but we're looking to get a bit more serious and target larger, more serious corporations like cell phone providers and tech corporations). Any suggestions for approaching this? If anyone is willing to share a template they use, that would be amazingly helpful, but I could use any advice you have. I'm excited to be part of this community! Happy coworking, Alexa -- 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.
[Coworking] Re: Strategic Partnership/Sponsorship Package Help
Accidentally sent that unfinished. ...Hotels, Gyms, Restaurants, Banks. Any other areas with a natural fit for group discounts and partnerships? On Saturday, 26 January 2013 08:07:05 UTC+2, Jon Stever, The Office RW wrote: Alexa, congrats on the new job. We'd be really interested to hear what others are doing in this space as well. We've not had time to work on this yet, but we're considering a few areas of sponsorship: 1. telecomms - phone internet 2. couriers - group discounts with a courier for members 3. hotels On Saturday, 26 January 2013 00:42:29 UTC+2, Alexa Lightner wrote: Hi all, I'm new to the coworking community and just started a job at Workbar in Boston. One of my first projects is putting together a sponsorship/strategic partnership package to attract higher-end sponsors (we have several snack sponsors and several partners that offer discounts, but we're looking to get a bit more serious and target larger, more serious corporations like cell phone providers and tech corporations). Any suggestions for approaching this? If anyone is willing to share a template they use, that would be amazingly helpful, but I could use any advice you have. I'm excited to be part of this community! Happy coworking, Alexa -- 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.
Re: [Coworking] Joining the international coworking movement
Thanks very much Chad, The international news on Africa is well-known for its bias. This country deserves more positive publicity. Rwanda is developing so fast - think East Asian growth miracle speed (poverty fell by 12 percentage points in the last 5 years and real GDP growth has averaged above 7%) - and the business environment is improving really rapidly (I registered this business in 6 hours; Rwanda is considered by the World Bank to be the third-best business environment in Africa behind only Mauritius and South Africa and is the 8th easiest country in the world to start a business). The Office is hoping to become the innovative and creative and enabling physical environment that mirrors Rwanda's ambitious reforms and growth vision. I agree with your comments, and we are definitely focusing on building the local community first. Our first 12 members are an excellent cross-section of small business owners and professionals in Rwanda - it's almost a complete entrepreneurial ecosystem already (a web designer, a creative museum outreach officer, a general construction manager, a graphic designer, a mobile app company, accounting firm, tech support company, and a financial literacy consultant). We're also already looking at ways to engage the wider community in Kigali. For example, during Global Entrepreneurship Week (mid-November) we are partnering with a local organization that has set up entrepreneurship clubs at highschools across Rwanda to have an open house at The Office to let select highschool students engage with our members and contacts and to broaden their horizons. But, is there much to be gained from joining international groups in terms of raising profiles, learning from experiences, and hosting coworkers from across the globe? Is Creativespace a member any of the international groups/lists, and has it had much benefit from joining them? Also, does the community here think it would be worthwhile for us to attend the Unconference in Austin next year? Cheers Jon p.s. Glad you like the view from the space - Kigali is a ridiculously beautiful city and we have a great view of its trees and hills from our balcony (and our roof terrace that we will turn into a funky cafe next summer!). *Join our community today on Facebook (www.facebook.com/TheOfficeRW) and Twitter (@TheOfficeRW)* On Monday, 29 October 2012 17:16:09 UTC+2, creativespace wrote: Hey Ron, I'm sure there is good stuff happening over there all the time! The media tends to feature one side. Bad news is good news for news. SO nice to see some real good news coming out of Rwanda! Congrats! No harm in joining the list and networks, but your main market is your local community. Best to spend the time working those relationships then broadcasting on the global bulletin board. As it's been said many times in this group; build the community first. Our biggest success are groups of little wins and losses that happen along the way within our community and organically grow which provides greater sustainability. Hosting events around your focus market are great ways to get people into the space. It's always the greatest sell to see and experience the space and the community in it. Host a JELLY or IGNITE: Kigali, to get the tech/media/geek crowd in or a meetup for journalists, etc. Your local media should be jumping at this kind of news. Free press! Love the trees out front! Show some of the surrounding area on going - location/ environment are key. That said - continue to use this international group - there are lots of great people willing to share stories, ideas, cautions, etc. Peace! Chad Chad Chad Ballantyne 705.812.0689 ch...@thecreativespace.ca javascript: On 2012-10-29, at 10:47 AM, Jon Stever, The Office RW wrote: Hey everyone, The Office RW is a new coworking space in Kigali, Rwanda. We opened two weeks ago for 12 crash-testers, and will open officially in December (www.TheOfficeRW.com). I've seen various groups (league of extraordinary co-working spaces, loose cubes, deskwanted, goodcoworking, etc), and was wondering if we should be trying to join or get listed on any of these sites/groups to help integrate ourselves better into the global coworking community and movement? Is the coworking un-conference something that many people would recommend us travelling to attend? So far we've found the coworking wiki and this google group very useful (our terms of use agreement, for example, borrows heavily). But, any other thoughts on how we can reach our hands out to the international crowd for sharing experiences would be really welcome! Cheerios Jon -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
[Coworking] Joining the international coworking movement
Hey everyone, The Office RW is a new coworking space in Kigali, Rwanda. We opened two weeks ago for 12 crash-testers, and will open officially in December (www.TheOfficeRW.com). I've seen various groups (league of extraordinary co-working spaces, loose cubes, deskwanted, goodcoworking, etc), and was wondering if we should be trying to join or get listed on any of these sites/groups to help integrate ourselves better into the global coworking community and movement? Is the coworking un-conference something that many people would recommend us travelling to attend? So far we've found the coworking wiki and this google group very useful (our terms of use agreement, for example, borrows heavily). But, any other thoughts on how we can reach our hands out to the international crowd for sharing experiences would be really welcome! Cheerios Jon -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
