Well this is all rather exciting! ;-) My name is Eli Malinsky and I am the Program Director at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, Canada. I've been on this list for a few months now, occasionally posting but mostly following the conversations with interest. I’m going to lay out here our plan and respond to some of the comments that have been made. Apologies for taking up so much space – I hope this will be helpful.
The Centre for Social Innovation is a nonprofit organization that: 1) provides shared workspace 2) acts as a community centre for Toronto’s “social change” community 3) is an incubator of emerging projects and programs that are making a difference here in Toronto and across the country. Our shared workspace is 20,000 sq ft and includes a mix of offices (around 40), permanent desks (around 50) and Hot Desks (around 80 members). We have a lot in common with many of you, but we’re also somewhat distinct given our other (non-workspace) activities, our provision of permanent spaces, and our ‘social innovation’ lens (all members are vetted for this characteristic). Over the past two years we’ve been approached by an increasing number of people who want to “replicate our model” or learn from what we’ve done. Our challenges have been two-fold. First, we’re not big on franchising – we believe strongly in local knowledge, networks and independence, and we’re not trying to create other CSI’s around the world (we think the strength of this sector comes in part from its diversity). Second, while we have been offering fee-for-service consulting services, we are receiving a ton of inquiries from folks who just can’t afford to engage us on a long-term basis. Unfortunately, as a nonprofit organization – already stretched to the max like every other nonprofit you know – we just can’t spend dedicated time working with everyone for free. So we came up with the idea of making available all of the information we had developed for (what we believe to be) a very reasonable/affordable free. This way we would be compensated for the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars we’ve poured into this process, but more importantly, it would provide us with the resources we need for stage two. THE VISION Our long-term vision is a globally accessible resource that contains as much information (tools, templates, secrets, etc.) from as many “shared spaces dedicated to social innovation” as possible. We truly want this to be open source. For practitioners around the world to react to what we’ve put up, to put up there own materials, and to begin a dialogue about this emerging field. It is true that the co- working wiki is already doing much of this. But again, our model isn’t strictly a co-working one, and while there is certainly great overlap there are also great differences. As a first step, we’ve started with this current project. This is the 1.0 version which we are making available at a cost of $400. We hope that interested groups will join us – access this material and offer their feedback to make it stronger. These folks are “first-in” and will be part of our growing Open Spaces network. When we close the project at the end of the year, we’re going to take all of that feedback, redevelop our contribution, create a new platform, and make it available for free. This 2.0 version will hopefully be a vibrant space of people interested in the field. We’re going to take the revenue – and the contributions – we’ve received in the 1.0 version and make the 2.0 version as strong as possible. WHAT WE”VE DONE WRONG Based on some of the feedback we’ve received, we’ve done a few things wrong. And we are genuinely appreciative of the responses we have received so that we can improve this experiment. First, we haven’t communicated the long-term vision very well. It’s unclear precisely what our overall goals and intentions are. Second, we haven’t made it very clear that you have to pay to access the material. It was never our intent to “surprise” people with this – that wouldn’t have been a very bright strategy. It really was just poor design/presentation. We have done our best to rectify this by clarifying the messaging on our landing page: http://openspaces.socialinnovation.ca And seriously, if you have other constructive feedback, I’d love to hear from you [email protected]. (you can publicly post too, of course – we’ll keep an eye on this thread) But I would also like to address some comments on this list: 1. What’s on the site that isn’t already available out there/why does $400 get me that I can’t get elsewhere? I think for many of you, who are up and running with your space and familiar with the field, there might not be much that’s helpful. We provide copies of our lease agreements, policies, etc. Our pricing structure. Tips on design. Results of some research we’ve done. Many of you may not benefit from it. But I do know that this is incredibly value to folks who are getting started in this field and haven’t yet dealt with many of these issues. You can click on the “About this Project” link to get a glance at the Table of Contents. The co-working wiki is a great resource, and inside the site we acknowledge and credit the wiki and encourage others to make use of it too. 2. Isn’t this the same as The Hub? The Centre for Social Innovation is sort-of a “cousin” of The Hub. We are big fans of what they’re doing and we started around the same time. But we’ve headed in two different directions. The Hub has been working to build a global network of Hub-branded spaces. We’ve been really just focussing on our practice here in Toronto and exploring the non-space aspects of our work. This material is based on our own experience – not The Hub’s. As far as I know, only Hub members have access to their material. We are seriously big fans of their work and in total admiration of their success – we’re just on a different trajectory. 3. “I didn't see a way to be kept informed about what's going on that didn't include my credit card.” Again – a design error. If you went to the site through our website – www.socialinnovation.ca/openspaces - you would have seen a mailing list sign-up. This is a great idea and we’ll get this up on the main site in the coming days. 4. “You're putting it under a Creative Commons license which means one person could pay then post the contents to this list.” Yep. You can. 5. “I just don't like things which say they're one thing, but really they're another.” We are definitely sorry that we haven’t been as clear as we could, and we admit that the language around “open source” and “creative commons” isn’t as accurate is it should have been. We’ve tried to rectify this now. More importantly, though, I hope none of you interpret our “sharing” philosophy as bullshit. We are deeply committed to this practice and to an open source approach – have been since Day One. We have spent countless hours helping others create and improve their spaces. Any of you who have spent even a moment working with us (or for those of you who have visited our space) would know this. 6. “Hopefully not having to resort to trying to sell a $400 membership to keep the place going though” We are self-sustaining, staff of 7 and growing every year. This isn’t a money grab. It’s our attempt to manage increasing demand on our time in a way that recognizes our time/energy investment, and gets us on the road toward the bigger vision. -- Thank you for indulging such a long post! Is this a record? We appreciate the support we’ve been given and – independent of this specific project – hope we can continue to benefit from and contribute to the success of each of your projects. Eli Malinsky --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
