Kategoriearchiv: Gesellschaftliches, New Work, New Life

The „Summer of Smart“ in San Francisco is reaching its final with the last event on the 6th of October 2011. The Summer of Smart is a „new model for how citizens and government can work directly together to address urban issues. Developers, designers, city officials, urbanists, journalists, community members, and more are building rapid innovation prototypes and presenting them directly to government.“ The event next Thursday probably marks the first time in US political history that hackathon teams will present their projects to candidates in the course of an election.  

It is summer time. Your funds are low as you invested a lot of money and time  in your new project. Financial return will certainly not materialize before the end of the year. Does that mean that you cannot have a nice holiday this year? No!!! Of course not. Workaway.info the site set up to promote fair exchange between budget travellers or language learners and families, individuals or organizations can help you out. If you are prepared to work 5 hours a day, you receive free food and accommodation in return. Consider an exotic place like Caños de Meca in Spain (see Guardian article) or any other place in the host list.  

Who is influencing who? In January we asked ourselves whether companies like Foursquare and Groupon (or for that argument Google and Facebook) could influence and shape a company culture within a coworking space. Obviously the process could also work the other way round. AOL is now hosting start-ups, coworkers and students at Palo Alto. According to Jefferson Graham, USA Today, „Across the street from Stanford University, AOL’s West Coast campus is a technology facilitator. AOL occupies only about one-third of the new space….The goal is to draw creative, entrepreneurial energy from the start-ups, AOL says, by working with them on various projects. In return, young entrepreneurs benefit from being housed alongside the likes of AOL, Disney and other start-ups.“  

Am Sonntag trafen sich Vertreter deutscher Coworking Spaces in Hamburg im Betahaus. Besprochen wurden Themen wie Abrechnung/User Erfassung, Wirtschaftlichkeit von Coworking Spaces, Coworking Week 2011 oder „Cloudsters – mehr Coworking als Space“. Das Protokoll entsteht gerade auf dieser Seite.

Am Anfang war eine Idee, … und dann kamen die Menschen. Als einer der „Coworking-Opas“ der frühen Stunde in Deutschland habe ich vorhin mit Erstaunen im Wikipedia-Eintrag für „Coworking“ gelesen: „Ein Treffen von 13 Leuten in Meiningen besitzt nicht wirklich deutschlandweite oder gar weltweite Relevanz„. Ich kann anhand der IP-Adresse nicht nachvollziehen, wer dies geschrieben hat, daher nutze ich diesen Artikel, um als „Zeitzeuge“ meinen Standpunkt darzulegen.