Kategoriearchiv: CoWorking Kultur

Coworking Week 2011 is starting today with 43 events in 10 German cities. Judging from last year (113 events), we expect a lot more events, as the Coworking Week unfolds.

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”.  

Start coworking, you do not necessarily need a regular coworking space to do so.  In Wuppertal, a city close to the urban Ruhr-Area in Germany, there is a growing Coworking Community, not yet with a fixed coworking space. But for the second time CoWorkingWuppertal starts an intraregional project: After having initiated a European JellyWeek in January 2011, Coworking Wuppertal now hosts a  Barcamp on Coworking  (open conference) on July 8th-10th 2011 (also see Open International CoWorking Calendar)  

Wir freuen uns sehr mit den neuen Coworking Spaces in Nürnberg und Göttingen zwei Projekte, aus unserem “Coworking-Inkubator” dem CoWorking Starter Verzeichnis,  ins Deutsche CoWorking Verzeichnis übertragen zu können. In Nürnberg läuft der Beta-Betrieb bereits, in Göttingen ist offizieller Start am 6. Juni.

Mit dem Freiraum Lüneburg freut sich ein neues Projekt auf den Platz im Starter Verzeichnis, geplante Eröffnung Herbst 2011. In Summe befinden sich im Moment 30 Projekte in der Entwicklung, von denen hoffentlich alle bald zu den bereits 56 Projekten dazu kommen, die bereits realisiert wurden.

We always strive to offer our readers a new service and extra “coworking value”. After establishing the “European CoWorking Directory” and the “Open International CoWorking Calendar“, we launch today our format ”Project of the Week“. The idea is to present once a week a project that is of special interest for the international coworking community. It can be a planned project, a project that needs support or financing, or a project that has already been running and has now reached a new level of operation like the CLUBOFFICE-MemberCard we present today.