I'm not sure how helpful my advice/experience will be, but #1 if you run the space, it's your job to set the mood/tone/standards for behavior. Therefore, if there's someone unruly or who is generally affecting negatively the atmosphere of a coworking space, it's up to you to protect the space from this kind of unwanted intrusion.
It's the same with an online community or social network. The host of the venue is more or less responsible, at a macro level, to make sure everyone feels comfortable and is taken care of. That's not to let off each individual coworker from managing their own happiness and contentedness, but when things go wrong, it is important to know in advance who can make things right. For Citizen Space, we actually have no contracts with our tenants. Instead we employ an emergent mutual-respect model. In others, we treat people like responsible adults and expect them to do the same to us in return. In nearly a year of running our space this way, we've not had any issues with our tenants. The one issue we did run into was with a community wine-tasting event. At the time, we didn't charge any money for such events to use our space. Ironically, this lead to a strange kind of attitude of entitlement about the use of our space. After the first event (which left the space unkempt and rather dirty), we put the event planner on notice. After the second event where the planner was rude to the coworkers, we disinvited him and told him to go elsewhere. It was a painful experience, but in order to protect the positive atmosphere of the space, we had to intervene and cut out the negative influence the event was having. After that, we started charging a basic $25 fee to use the space for non-profit or small interest groups; more for folks who were charging access to their event. We never entered into any legal agreements with anyone who used the space in this way either. Now, I'll contradict myself a little and suggest that you do clearly spell out expectations and roles. Everyone who visits a coworking space or hosts and event at one should have some boundaries and those boundaries should be clearly stated and ideally written down. We have some of these expectations and responsibilities on this page: http://citizenspace.us/pricing/ Anyway, it's different for every place, but what I do know is that trying to predict everything bad that might happen in advance and guarding yourself against it will invariably decelerate serendipity (we emphasis *accelerating serendipity*), will potentially reduce trust and will also leave you bound by rules that may not actually apply or make any sense after 2 or 3 months. Again, after almost a year, we only have one or two things that we could have made rules against, but still we've decided to go with lower overhead and spend more time getting to know and building trust relationships with our community and with our tenants. I won't speak for Citizen Space coworkers, but I think that this has resulted in much more positive energy for the space and greater and more widespread sense of ownership and pride in the space that, as far as we're concerned, is as good as any kind of legal protection. Knock on wood, right?, but if I were you, I'd try to keep it light and focus my energies on a document that captures clearly what my expectations are of coworkers, but also what coworking tenants should expect of me and of the space. Chris On 10/13/07, Fernando Maclen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I see the coworking spaces pictures on their websites and everybody > looks happy and having a great time, but what happens when there's a > member that makes trouble? > > Does the contract he/she signs has any topic about canceling the > membership? Is it legal to kick him out whenever you feel it doesn't > belong to the space? Do you need approval from the rest of the > members? Are you protected against a lawsuit from this trouble member? > > I would really appreciate the advice on this, I'm about to meet a > lawyer in a couple of days but I want your opinion first. > > Thanks! > > ------- > Fernando Maclen > * Starting a space in Buenos Aires (Argentina) > > > > > -- Chris Messina Citizen Provocateur & Open Source Advocate-at-Large Work: http://citizenagency.com Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog Cell: 412 225-1051 IM: 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
