The way we usually act towards strangers or something new is with suspicion. Is this a “poisoned apple”? Why do we think that? Because we are usually brought up this way. If someone gives you something for free, he must have an ulterior motive. And this is usually true, but it does not have to be a bad thing. If you understand the motive of the other person and you can go along with it to enter into a win-win situation that can be Ok. Concerning “Free Coworking” I have some benefit from it, because it sets the “law” of social capital in motion. When I promote and develop something like “Free Coworking”, provided it is good and beneficial for others I will receive some return from it. This might be a social capital return or a financial capital return. And it is precisely this process that I am trying to promote with “Free Coworking”. The benefit or return is not just for me, but for everyone involved. By entering your name and skills/projects in the “Free Coworking” Skill Sharing not only you, but everyone involved has an immediate return and benefit. You can easily and effectively promote and share your skills now with everyone on the open spreadsheet.

This is a new kind of economy. I would call it a connected economy. This means you are and feel connected to your fellow coworker. Because your are connected and share the same values, there is no problem to accept the “free apple”. It is only when you are not connected that you prefer the “paid apple”. The “paid apple” system though has a major drawback. It promotes distrust and alienation. It hinders creativity and free exchange of ideas, products & services. Instead of growth it produces more and more fake financial and fake social capital.

This is why “Free Coworking” (connected and open)  is more sustainable and more effective than “Paid Coworking” (fewer connections, less open). It is therefore my strong conviction that we have to evolve coworking from the “paid system” to the “free system” as soon as possible to reap the real benefits for coworking and our society as a whole.

Act today and start your local “Free Coworking” Campaign. We now have a “Free Coworking Resource” page to support you in this endeavour. “Free Coworking” is not against “Paid Coworking”, “Free Coworking” is just the next step in the evolution of Coworking.

A free economy is a connected economy. Only if you are connected, can you receive services for free.

The (R)evolution – Cultural Creatives 1.0 from Frigyes Fogel on Vimeo.

There is now a great variety of coworking spaces some of which are based more on a “commons” foundation and some more on a “corporate”  foundation. The work that is being carried out by the coworkers in these spaces tends to correlate to the foundation of the spaces. This means people working in more “corporate” coworking spaces tend to work more by themselves than people working in “commons” coworking spaces.

By means of deduction from the fact that there is very little to no common infrastructure between coworking spaces and coworking spaces (applies also to infrastructure between coworkers to coworkers) , it seems likely that the majority of work performed by coworkers in coworking spaces is individual or corporate in nature.

In contrast their is a lot of expression about collaborate coworking on platforms like Facebook. The danger I see is that the desired collaborate coworking I observe with a growing number of coworkers will not manifest effectively that way. As long as collaborative coworking rests in the realm of “expression” very little concrete collaboration takes place.

To change this and to evolve coworking the Free Coworking Group was set up. While still based on a corporate infrastructure like Facebook, the Group stands a very good chance to grow very quickly to gather the critical mass or momentum to build its own infrastructure.

To develop this process a number of tools will evolve in the same way as the Group will evolve. Two tools are already in place. The “Open International Coworking Calendar” to announce and promote Jellies and Free Coworking Offers. Secondly the Skill-Sharing list which evolves today from a Facebook document (via a Piratepad) into a GoogleDoc (Input), and Spreadsheet (Output).

Please use these tools and develop new ones!!! Free Coworking evolves by freely and actively using all tools that help to strengthen the Free Coworking Evolution.

To set the context for this list, I like to refer to the goal of our “Free Coworking” Group: To produce a breakthrough for “Free Coworking” and Coworking in general we want to join more than 10.000 committed coworkers which equates in my calculation to about 15.000.000 € in Social Capital. This Social Capital will attract the respective Financial Capital to finance the physical infrastructure of free coworking spaces for these coworkers to work in together. Join the group, start “Skill Sharing” in the group!

Here is your chance to be a first follower. Join the “Free Coworking” Group and enter your “11 o´clock community challenge“. Dare to make a fool of yourself. You can only win!!! You win freedom, that is for sure. And on top, you might get some very useful creative input for your project. Freedom of choice :-))) Freedom to change :-)))

For fairness and growth of our Social Capital I set up a schedule rotating through all the “full hour” time zones starting tomorrow (Wednesday, 11th of January 2012) through to Tuesday, 14th of February 2012. This is a full cycle once around our globe, split into 25 challenges. In total no one needs to invest more than one hour during the whole period, if  you contribute 2 to 3 minutes per challenge.

How is the system going to operate? You can enter your challenge for consideration in the schedule. Something that concerns your project like what do people in the world think about the product or service you offer? You can enter a challenge that you or your coworking space has in your time zone (see schedule for date). For example a problem concerning the local legal situation. You can also suggest a challenge for a particular time zone, that you are not part of, but which you feel belongs to that time zone. For example, if you like to get input to a subject like global warming (by the way challenges do not need to be as challenging as that ;-)), you write it in for “Time Zones (UTC-4) Wednesday 8th February 2012 (Reference Cities: Manaus, O´Higgins Station (Antarctica)) Time: 11 AM”. Any questions?

I am sure there are many questions. The first one that comes to my mind, how do we decide which challenge we pick for the day. A simple solution would be to vote by means of the Facebook Like buttons. Voting could start at 10 AM and should finish by 11:11 AM every day . What do you think, any more questions?

Please post them in our Facebook Group “Free Coworking” or below. The first challenge will be for Time Zone (UTC=0 or GMT) Reference Cities: Dakar, London, at 11 o´clock local time tomorrow 11th of January. Use the “11 o´clock community challenge” for your projects and to advance coworking in general!!!

How are the coworkers and the coworking spaces going to attract this “Financial Capital”? It is the “Social Capital” that attracts it! What is the “Social Capital” in terms of a coworking community? Coworkers love the work they do. They love the people they work with. They believe in cooperation, teamwork and last but not least they believe that there are more good people around than bad!!! Why is that important?

Because this touches a frame of mind that many people have. Many people believe that good intention is a scarce resource. The contrary is true. Check with yourself and adjust if necessary. Translated to work and work output we find the following: To produce and distribute excellent services and products you need a special quality of cooperation. Only people who love what they do and who can work with the people they love can provide this. Coworking spaces can provide these excellent services and products more often and with a higher likelihood the more widespread “Free Coworking” will become. The key is an evolution of every party involved in the process. Only trust, openness, dedication, patience, fairness, sweat, fun and love will lead to “Free Coworking”. And the great thing is that it will work!!! It will not only work in one or two places, it will grow and grow.

The number of coworking spaces is rapidly going to increase because people just want to work this way!!! “Going to work” will have a totally new, fresh and positive connotation. Whereas before people dreaded to go to work because they had to do something they did not really like in an environment they felt not particularly comfortable in, now in a coworking space it is just the opposite. You can choose the people you work with and the work you do. How is that possible?

“Free Coworking” means working in teams and a community you choose. To be productive and happy you have to be able to say yes to everyone in your team and environment from the bottom of your heart including yourself. In many instances this will require an evolution for everyone involved. But once the team starts to evolve it does not take very long for it to become a “dream team”. Imagine the experience of working in a “dream team” once! This is great, but imagine you can do it again. Another day another “dream team” is going to form and more people are going to learn what it takes. And this goes on and on and everyday the social capital grows.

Still in doubt whether this might work? At the moment the setting up of a coworking space is largely a process of “Pull”. You tell people how great coworking is and you hope to convince them to come along and try it. This can be quite trying at times and aims to fill your space nothing more. Imagine people could work for free in your space and a “Push” process would start. People would want to push into your space. For someone to enter the coworking space for free, he or she would have to go through a certain “registration” process. This process would involve setting up a profile for this new coworker. What are the skills, experiences, interests and projects of this person. What would be an ideal team for this coworker etc.

Thanks to an internet platform coworkers could indicate when and where they were available and interested to participate in a project. The client and/or the project representative would invite the coworkers in the coworking space or the area of the coworking space reserved for “Free Coworking”. The team building and the project could start.

This is how I see “Free Coworking” to develop in practical steps. There will be existing coworking spaces that will offer some areas of their operation for “Free Coworking”, while there will also be some new spaces that will start with “Free Coworking” from the word go. To support both types we will set up an additional coworking directory called the “Free CoWorking Directory”.

If you look at the enthusiasm for the upcoming Jellyweek (16th to 22nd of January) you get a good indication that the time for “Free Coworking” has definitely come. If you want to lend your support to “Free Coworking” beyond the Jellyweek join our Facebook Group “Free Coworking“. The aim of the Facebook Group is to raise in excess of 15.000.000 € in Social Capital which equates in my calculation to more than 10.000 committed members to this cause. Join and spread the word for “Free Coworking”!!!

If you are still in doubt whether this might work get inspiration from the video below.