Yes it is true. Coworking is going to evolve into “Free Coworking”. I predict that within the coming year you will see a marked increase in “Free Coworking” offers. What do I mean by “Free Coworking”? ”Free Coworking” means that as a coworking space user you do not pay for the use of the desk, chair etc. How is that possible? Someone else is going to pay :-) !!! Why would anyone want to pay for your coworking space usage? Because “this someone else” is benefiting from your work. This might be a customer or client, a member of your project team, an organisation, a small or large cooperation, a foundation, the state – in short “Financial Capital” will pay the bill.
Now this is what I call an achievement!!! 25 million books send to African children since 1988. That is about a million books per year. Great!!! Kevin Jones, one of our activists in our newly founded group , already works with this organization. Starting up, like we just did with this campaign, it is very useful to learn from other organisations and be inspired by very concrete examples. What could be the vision of the “Waste becomes Resource” Campaign on CoWorking News? Books For Africa writes very succinctly:”Books For Africa. A simple name for an organization with a simple mission. We collect, sort, ship, and distribute books to children in Africa. Our goal: to end the book famine in Africa.” If I would try to describe the “Waste becomes Resource” Campaign on CoWorking News in similar terms, it would read something like the following:”Activists from and for the Coworking Community join together to form a network that translates a “resource-oriented-approach” into concrete actions and projects. Joining the know-how and infrastructure of various coworking spaces, the magnitude and impact of a wide range of projects is hugely increased thereby magnifying the special nature and value of coworking for coworkers and non-coworkers.” The motto could be: “Positive actions through coworking power!”
For a long time coworking activists and space managers have been struggling to describe the “extra-value” you create and receive when working in a coworking space instead of working from home. I believe the sociological concept of “Social Capital” could provide this valuable description. In short, according to James Coleman, social capital is: “ … anything that facilitates individual or collective action, generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and social norms.”" And how do we measure or quantify social capital? Here the definition of Nan Lin gives us a clue. Social capital is: an “Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace.” To summarize, we are talking about a sociological concept with an economic focus. Following the thought of Nan Lin, we therefore need to take a closer look at “the financial return in the marketplace”.
Gerade haben wir erfahren, dass der Coworking Space Hannover wohl zum Ende des Monats “die Pforten schließen muss”. Wir bedauern dies sehr!!! Die gute Nachricht: Seit einigen Wochen neu am Start in Hannover ist Edelstall, denen wir viel Erfolg wünschen. Wir wollen jedoch nicht zur “Tagesordnung” übergehen, ohne die Gründe der Schließung zu beleuchten. Wir danken daher Jens Hansen, dem Initiator der Sandstrasse sehr, dass er der Coworking Community folgende sehr persönliche und offene Kurzanalyse zur Verfügung stellt, von der wir glauben, dass sie auch für andere Spaces sehr nützlich sein kann:
Very often when we speak of the culture in coworking spaces, we think of the way people communicate and relate to each other. We believe that shared values will attract the right people that we like to share our workspace and ideas with. Most of the time we find though that we run our own business or do our own job in parallel to this coworking space culture. I therefore ask myself what happens to the coworking culture when people that previously worked by themselves join in the coworking space to form a company? Can something like a company culture develop in a coworking space? When Brad Neuberg started coworking with Spiral Muse in August 2005, he wanted to “replicate exactly what it is like to work at a cool company” like Google. Since then many companies have started up like Foursquare (Start 2009) and Groupon (Start 2008) that have the potential to be as influential as Google (Start 1998) in the internet and maybe on coworking culture as well. On Monday at this years DLD, Dennis Crowley (Foursquare) and Andrew Mason (Groupon) gave an insight into their company cultures and the way they see the development of their business models of ”social, local & E-commerce”. Please comment whether you believe there is a new company culture that comes with these two firms and whether this culture will influence coworking culture.
