Hi Brian An ENORMOUS thank you to you for your tips. I love them. We have had two great articles, but like you have had trouble converting that casual buzz into clients. I love the open house idea. We have been doing them monthly and allowing tours, but definitely going to try the critical mass concept of once a week.
Will keep you and the community posted. -Felicity On Mar 3, 11:49 am, "Brian Del Vecchio" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Felicity, > > We're enjoying some growth in community here at betahouse, and here > are some quick observations on success factors. I hope you find some > of this useful. > > We got major press early last Fall with a front page story in the > Boston Globe. It led to a lot of interest both from people we already > knew, and new folks discovering coworking. But how do you convert > buzz into community? > > After the Globe article, we had a hard time keeping up with all the > casual interest, so we instituted a weekly Open House. It's really > just a casual social time where we serve beer and snacks, turn up the > music, and make sure that we can give visitors a warm welcome. When > people inquire about space, we invite them to Open House. It makes > for a very different impression than "walk quietly around the space > and try not to disturb the busy coworking people." And as Raines > said, coworking is about the people: if visitors have time to bond > with people they meet when they visit, they'll leave thinking of more > than cost per sq ft and the discomfort of sharing space with > strangers. > > But more importantly: we built betahouse to serve a community (web > entrepreneurs), and nearly everyone who has come join us at betahouse > has come from this community. People come to betahouse not for the > cheap office space, but to be around other people with similar > interests and challenges. > > We regularly attend community events where we tell everyone who will > listen about betahouse, and remind everyone we see that they're > welcome to stop by and visit during open house, or come work for a > day. > > We even go so far as to follow our friends on Twitter, and respond to > the frequent complaints about nomadic cafe life with invitations to > come work at betahouse. > > More seriously, we try to make betahouse a center for the community we > serve. We have invited the community in to betahouse for special > events, like the all-day hackfests we call DevHouse Boston. Several > of our resident coworkers discovered us through these events. > > We've also held a series of big parties (beer by the keg, endless > food, and live DJs). These are tons of work, but it's always a > pleasure when I see two people meet and recognize each other from our > parties. > > I'll conclude by saying that we've done all this without a blog. Of > course we know we should have one, and everything that Raines says is > completely right. But connecting to the community has been our main > strategy. > > I'll try to make this a bit more coherent and post it on the coworking blog. > > -- > Brian Del Vecchio | Virosity, Inc. | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > 617-899-0798 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
