Sam, Welcome!
You can do many things, but the best thing you can do is get personal. When they walk in, greet them by name. Give them a handshake or a high five. Ask them what they're working on. Pay attention. Look for ways to help. Introduce them to new people or people working on similar stuff, or, if they're new, introduce them to everyone (within reason). Invite them (and everyone within earshot) to lunch or drinks after work. If and when they discover that they just found a business partner, or got introduced to a potential investor, or finally got to spend a workday with someone other than their potted plant in their apartment, they'll be hooked. You job is to facilitate all of that. While amenities are important, the primary service you are providing is access to a community of cool people. It's the ingredient that fundametally distinguishes coworking spaces from office rental establishments, so the better you execute on that, the more unique and effective you will be. The challenge is that this tends to be a time-consuming task, and since most space owners also have secondary occupations, this can be a significant distraction from your own work. I know several space owners who avoid their own spaces for fear of constant distraction because they need to focus on a deadline. Balancing your responsibilities is a constant challenge early on. The best way to mitigate this (and, consequently, to enable healthy scaling) is to empower your members and potentially part time employees to play this role of social facilitator as well. The more the community can be self-sustaining, the better. Also, I love your name. The name alone should go a long way in attracting like-minded people :-) Tony ------------ New Work City: http://nwcny.com I'm Outta Here! How coworking is making the office obsolete: http://imouttaherethebook.com Personal: http://tonybacigalupo.com On Jun 14, 2009, at 5:58 AM, FunkBunk <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all > > This is my first post on here - so first off - hello everybody! You > have a fantastic group here and it has been so valuable to us. Wish I > had come across it sooner. > > My name is Sam Cranwell and I set up a coworking space in the UK 11 > months ago called FunkBunk (http://www.funkbunk.com). FunkBunk is > based in rural Buckinghamshire, just 35mins train ride from London. > Our open plan studio is part of converted World War 2 Airforce Base, > with 15 seats for permanent and hot-desk workers. Plans to double the > size of our space this year. > > With the current economic climate here it has been a tricky year to > get things up and running but we have made it through. To help things > along we have upped our marketing effort to attract more drop-in style > hot-desk renters. > > My question to the group is: What to do you do to make your residents > feel special? > > We want people to come back again and again, so we want to make them > feel warm and fuzzy about FunkBunk. We don't have a huge budget so we > are looking for simple ways to make our residents feel welcome, so > they will spread the word and re-book a desk many times over. > > From welcome notes and gifts to the ambiance in the room - what do you > all do? > > Look forward to the response! > > Thanks all > > > Sam and all at FunkBunk > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
