[Coworking] Re: Co working - spreading the word
Hi Tabby, I'm in the process of starting Engineroom (also in JHB). You're doing a good thing by targeting individual freelancers but I'm not sure how big that market is in SA (in terms of creatives)? I think the numbers are in small 2-3 person actual businesses in their first 1-3 years of business. There is also a huge opportunity with remote workers, people whose offices are in CT or DBN but they find themselves in JHB a lot with nowhere really to go to get work done when they're not in meetings etc. I agree with you that coworking is definitely not a buzzword here and everyone I've spoken to has never heard of it. It's difficult because shared office space (which is a well known term or at least easy to understand) doesn't quite describe what makes coworking so great, and people tend to picture something like Regus/The Business Centre which is a completely different vibe. BUT, if it can work in CT it can work here! I have high hopes for coworking in JHB. People are getting fed up with traffic and spending 2 hours a day in it is not cool. Plenty of people are looking for options closer to their homes. I also think that as remote work becomes more acceptable in corporate circles, big companies will start allowing employees to telecommute to save on office space and ease traffic burden for their employees etc. As far as spreading the word, I think Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn ads are great and affordable (with really good targeting). Just make sure your website is very clear and understandable because if the concept appeals to someone that's where they're going to go to milk every bit of info that they can! Cheers, Kyle On Wednesday, 30 July 2014 11:07:13 UTC+2, Tabby Lorentz wrote: Hi everyone! I work at a coworking space in Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm sure we all think our coworking space is great - but REALLY The Common Room is great! Our furniture, prices, internet, coffee etc etc etc but I'm not sure how to spread the word without breaking the budget. I build databases of freelancers and contact each of them individually - this takes quite a bit of time and often doesn't yield great results. I think one of the problems is that coworking and shared office space is a new concept in Johannesburg and South Africa so perhaps people just don't 'get' The Common Room. Any advice? And check out our site and let me know if you can spot what the problem is (if there is one?) -- 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] Re: Strategies for showing which members are on-site on a given day?
Hi all, I'm in the process of implementing a technical solution to this for my new coworking space (Engineroom). We have a Ubiquity UniFi http://ubnt.com/unifi WLAN from which I'm able to get a list of users (through a 3rd party API) who are currently active on the network. This list is then published to a Firebasehttp://www.firebase.comdatabase and users can then view (in realtime) who is active on the network via a web app that pulls data from Firebase. Kyle McLaren Founder @EngineroomHQ http://www.twitter.com/EnginroomHQ On Friday, 31 January 2014 01:36:15 UTC+2, Eli Malinsky wrote: Hey all Wonder if anyone has novel ways of showing which members are in the space on a given day. Do you use table signs? flags? Pictures? Anything? I'd love to hear any creative ideas. We've tried a few things in the past but nothing's really stuck. I'd love to hear your experiences, see pics, etc. thanks! Eli Malinsky Centre for Social Innovation New York // Toronto -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [Coworking] Re: Strategies for showing which members are on-site on a given day?
Hey Alex, They are cheap, Ubiquity is famous for disruptive pricing. At maximum capacity we hope to have 100 members with 2 AP's running (may add a third). The AP's have some nice features like automatic load balancing of traffic and zero-handoff for seamless roaming between AP's. The nice thing about UniFi is they have a software controller (as opposed to hardware) that can even run on a cloud server, it's free as well whereas Cisco etc charge licensing fees for their software. Time will tell how they perform but reviews have been great. Many people reccomend them over Ruckus for instance and for a coworking facility, you probably don't need much more. (I have no affiliation with them :) Kyle McLaren Founder @EngineroomHQ http://www.twitter.com/EnginroomHQ On Monday, February 10, 2014, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote: Those UniFi AP's look pretty great, but are surprisingly cheap to me compared to the other enterprise options I've tested. It says up to 100 concurrent connections in the traffic management part, but I've learned the hard way that those numbers are usually theoretical :) How many people do actually you have distributed across each one? -Alex -- /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 5:49 AM, Kyle McLaren kyle.mclar...@gmail.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','kyle.mclar...@gmail.com'); wrote: Hi all, I'm in the process of implementing a technical solution to this for my new coworking space (Engineroom). We have a Ubiquity UniFi http://ubnt.com/unifi WLAN from which I'm able to get a list of users (through a 3rd party API) who are currently active on the network. This list is then published to a Firebasehttp://www.firebase.comdatabase and users can then view (in realtime) who is active on the network via a web app that pulls data from Firebase. Kyle McLaren Founder @EngineroomHQ http://www.twitter.com/EnginroomHQ On Friday, 31 January 2014 01:36:15 UTC+2, Eli Malinsky wrote: Hey all Wonder if anyone has novel ways of showing which members are in the space on a given day. Do you use table signs? flags? Pictures? Anything? I'd love to hear any creative ideas. We've tried a few things in the past but nothing's really stuck. I'd love to hear your experiences, see pics, etc. thanks! Eli Malinsky Centre for Social Innovation New York // Toronto -- 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.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','coworking%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com'); . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups Coworking group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/coworking/S7ZJ7Yf5WHA/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','coworking%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com'); . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
