I was talking with one of our drop in visitors yesterday and he asked if there were any coworking locations in his city (Madison Wisconsin). I explained that he could go to the wiki and do a search (which I did for him; Madison-- when will you be up and running?). I also mentioned there had been work on a Google map listing of coworking locations around the world but the development on it was dormant.
And that's how we started discussing similar concepts to Chris' proposal for federated coworking. I explained that to date the coworking movement has been grass roots, enabled by online and social media. And that, in my opinion, there needed to be some organizing in order to move efforts like the Google Map or the Coworking Visa forward unless some "heroes" come forward to make those and others efforts happen. I've worked in volunteer and professional associations for a loonngg time. Heroic action can get things done. And the disappearance of the heroic actor(s) can cause the great activity to end (the Google Map.) Our visitor comes from the slow food, community agriculture movement. He totally got the challenge we face to organize disparate local communities into one cohesive whole. This forum is a great place to learn from early leaders and exchange ideas. It is a great organizing entity. I am indebted to everyone here for what I've learned. (And likewise guilty about not sharing as much as I have learned.) Each of our individual coworking locations have more in common than are different. What makes us unique is how we take the common elements and utilize them in and for our communities. As an international coworking community we may have reached the tipping point where there needs to be some organization, adhoc or otherwise. Federation is a nice starting term. And rather than invent how this is organized I'm sure we can look to other grassroots movements (food policy, transportation, etc.) about how they "formalized" their "association" between their local community groups. Chris, I will vote for your session to be sure. But SXSW does not have to be the only organizing platform. I have some ideas I'm working on in that respect. More later. Cheers! Todd O'neill Partner, C4 Workspace San Antonio, Texas --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
