Archiv für Februar 2012

Situated in the “Northern Quarter” of Manchester (UK), MadLab offers a new kind of  “coworking” experience. Aimed at both creatives and technologists, the facility provides a space and resources for collaboration, professional development and discovery. As the primary focus of the laboratory has never been “coworking only”, it possesses a foundation or business model that, as it proved in Manchester, is possibly more sustainable than a space that is offering “paid coworking” only. Started in 2009 by Rachael Turner, Asa Calow, Hwa Young Jung and Dave Mee, MadLab has also been the host to the coworking cooperative “FlyThe.Coop“. The “paid coworking” though had to terminate its operation after one year. Ben Gibbs, one of the founders of  “FlyThe.Coop” had to change the concept and is since then organizing a casual coworking event called “Manchester Jelly”. The Event is free, like so many others at MadLab and is now being offered every Friday. Great!!!  

Wow, this could be a world premiere!!! People from all over the world analysing a world movement right from the beginning and thereby shaping the development of things to come! Everyone can take part as the database is open. You can download the database to your computer and start to analyse. And then? Then starts the innovation! By asking the right questions, the data will yield extremely interesting results. But even better, we look and go beyond the results. We start to change, what needs changing to improve the value of the “Free Coworking Skill Sharing” (Input), (Output) for everyone involved.  

Filtering of the entries in the “Free Coworking Skill Sharing” is very easy. If you use a mobile device, like an Ipad, you get the filters directly by clicking on the Output Sheet. You can now filter every column, eg. by City, Country, Broad Domain etc. If you use a PC, Mac or other computer you should download the data. Here I will give you a short instruction how this is done:  

It is new ! But you already know how to use car sharing!!! It is the same process…,
but you do not need a car ;-) !!!
A) If you have a project, think of it as a car. You invite others to join your project, just like sharing a car.
B) You do not have a project yet. Find people in your city who offer skills that you need.
C) How do you pay? You pay with money, or you pay with your skills offered. And the system? The system is for “Free”, because we believe Coworking should be “Free”. For more information on “Free Coworking” have a look at our “Resource page“.  

As Darren MacDonald from Canada says it in his TEDx talk:” It is the team, that produces the breakthrough!” I fully agree with him. Another entry in the “Free Coworking Skill Sharing” yesterday, Jerry Stärker from Austria noticed, that there is no “extra field” for videos. Thanks to these very valuable responses, we now have this “extra” Input Field for Videos, Talks etc. in our Input Form. The field is completely voluntary, but I think extremely useful for everybody. Have a look at the videos below and I think you will agree with me, that this is a huge step forwards towards more and better collaboration. For more information on “Free Coworking” and “Skill Sharing”, please refer to our Resource page.