Hmm, "many" of us? I'm not sure I've heard of any...! At least from a "come one, come all" sense.
Our tenants have 24 hour access but only because we give them keys. In reality people are in the office from around 10am - 6pm during the week, less on the weekends (it's like a regular work schedule!). Occasionally folks will stay late, or we'll host evening events, but we certainly don't advertise or offer our space to drop-ins past 6pm unless a key-holder happens to be staying late and doesn't mind the company. Citizen Space also doesn't "staff" the space -- that is, we don't make our tenants responsible for keeping the place open for drop-ins. We learned that lesson the hard way with our first space: it's better to charge folks for a consistent service that they're going to use than to try to also get those same folks to take up responsibility for running the place. That said, if your model is to offer open doors and charge, say, hourly, then having dedicated staff to do so is probably a good idea; in that case, however, due to both the "changing of the guard" and the element of randomness in your patrons, it's sometimes harder to predict what might or might not go wrong (hence the need for insurance and whatnot). We've been very fortunate to have found reliable and responsible people to fill our space; we carry insurance of course, but also know that we can trust our tenants. We haven't needed to invest in any additional security (knock on wood) and instead rely on each citizen to treat and protect the space as they wood their own office. Judging from your website, your model seems a bit different from ours, in which case I'll condition my comments by saying that what we do won't necessarily work for everyone. It's really more important that you figure out and define for yourself what kind of culture and community you want to create and nurture and then make your decisions accordingly. We still don't require agreements (of any kind) with our tenants and in the 10 months that we've been running our space, haven't had an issue. We've maintained this aspect of the space as a design decision in order to enculturate a sense of trust and responsibility in our members. We treat them like the adults that they are, and we expect the same in return. Not surprisingly, the culture of Citizen Space, at least to me, seems to exude trust and pride. If you set up rules and protections against what might (or might not) someday happen, your potential customers will treat you the same way -- and will potentially shield themselves from you and from investing themselves in your space. Every little decision that we make in setting up our coworking spaces has ongoing consequences, and that's why it's worth reconsidering everything that you've been told you should do. Just because it worked for someone else before, or because someone else got screwed in the past and says that you should protect yourself in such a way as to distrust by default, doesn't mean that it's the right thing for you to do (and I'm not making any assumptions, only pointing out a general principle). So, with that, I'm not sure trying to stay open 24/7 makes sense. Or, if it does, play it by ear -- and if you suddenly have 15 people showing up wanting access 24/7 that they're willing to pay for, make a move then. There's no sense in prematurely optimizing at a great expense for situtations that may never arise in practice. Chris On 9/19/07, Sasha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Many of you made your spaces with 24/7 access. What's the secret? How > do you pull that off with insurance and general security for members? > Has anybody have any problems with it? > We're trying to decide whether to make it 24/7 or just open till 10pm > (staffed)... > > Thanks! > Sasha Vasilyuk > Sandbox Suites > > > > > -- Chris Messina Citizen Provocateur & Open Source Advocate-at-Large Work: http://citizenagency.com Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog Cell: 412 225-1051 Skype: factoryjoe This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
