Wow...thank you all for the great advice! :-)
I'll know in a couple of days if this will happen (I'm psyched, just
need to convince my wife). I'll let you know....
Thanks again...
Mike
On 2/3/2010 6:41 AM, Alex Hillman wrote:
I'd also point out that, anecdotally, I've seen spaces have to work
much harder to fill coworking when they offer both options (private
offices and open coworking layouts). The problem, I think, is that
private offices are familiar, and people will gravitate towards the
things that are most familiar to them.
Culturally, giving people a chance to even see a familiar option
inhibits their ability to walk into a coworking space open
minded...something that we've found helps get people acclimated to the
"different" ways of working. Anything you can do to make the first
moments of seeing your workspace be strikingly different, to elicit
the "ok, I'm ready for anything today" feeling from your new
prospectives will mean they are likely to get more out of their first
day, and more likely to join as coworkers that contribute to the
culture of the space that you're trying to engender.
There's some chaos that comes with open spaces, and they aren't for
everyone. We do turn people away who are looking for private offices.
But we've also tried having private offices and the value their
inhabitants added as contributing members of the coworking community
were much lower than the average.
From a business perspective, since that is worth considering,...open
floorplans also mean more flexibility and therefore opportunity for
revenue. Offices have a fixed price, a market value that's hard to
change in your members' eyes. Even if you're introducing all of the
"warm fuzzies" of coworking, a desk is still only worth a certain amount.
Whereas coworking space and open, flexible floorplans provide an
opportunity for creating new price points. Flexible space means that
optimizing for growth is much easier. And finally...while anchor
members are important for establishing your revenue base, having
flexible desk options means that so long as you can fill them, your
revenue potential per flex desk is likely to be higher than your
anchor desks! In our case, a flex desk has a maximum revenue potential
of $300/month (our most expensive monthly plan). But a flex desk with
a basic member at it every day is has a potential of $600, and a flex
desk with a drop in at it every day has a potential of $1000.
-Alex
/ah
indyhall.org <http://indyhall.org>
coworking in philadelphia
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:38 AM, David Troy <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, I need to put in a big vote for "open" here as well. Walls
are barriers to culture. To the extent that you want coworking to
engender common culture, you want it to be able to flow freely.
We have two large rooms, and two small offices that hang off the
one largest room. Invariably people want to be in the large main
room because that's where the energy is. The folks in the two
offices are constantly poking their heads out to be a part of
what's happening in the main area.
The secondary room is more of an overflow room at this point and
it only gets used occasionally or for meetings. If it was used
every day all the time, it would invariably have a different
cultural "feel" to it than the main room.
IndyHall, in its version 1.0, had two floors and Alex has remarked
that the main floor and the mezzanine folks had two different
cultures; not vastly different but enough to notice.
That all said, Beehive Baltimore's space is something we took over
as-is. If we get the chance to design our own space, it'll be
primarily open space with perhaps a couple of meeting areas and
possibly some tiny spaces appropriate for phone calls.
If you're doing nothing but private offices I think it devolves
into being executive suites pretty quickly, and that's a different
thang.
Dave
--
Dave Troy
Organizer
Beehive Baltimore
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 3:41 AM, jesse <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Open. We've got 20 dedicated desks in a large open plan space.
Probably self-selecting, but the folks here seem happy with
it. Easier
to start or join a conversation with neighbors, and lots of energy
seeing other people excited and working on their projects.
Occasionally we have bizarro moments where it seems like
everyone is
on a phone call with a client, but usually it paces out fine.
The fact you would also have dedicated private space for
meetings and
private calls is valuable.
Jesse
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Jesse Taggert
Citizen Space
San Francisco, CA
http://citizenspace.us
@citizenspace
On Feb 2, 1:43 pm, Mike Pihlman <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> OK, we have a chance (as our 1 year anniversary approaches)
to move to
> the office space next to ours. Ours has a nice open area
maybe 12 x 12
> (The Patio). The rest of the space has a hallway with
offices 5 of them
> on either side, and storage. I took the doors down on the
left side to
> encourage openness, but, use the right side offices (with
doors) for
> cell phone use, private meetings, etc. See floorplan
here:http://www.tracyvirtualoffice.com/cool-links/floorplan/
>
> The next door space has three offices (the same as the old
space on the
> right) that can be used for meetings, cell phone etc, but
the rest of
> the space is wide open. The space looks and feels huge even
though it
> is "only" 200 sq ft larger.
>
> Our (mostly gut) feeling is that the open space would be
better. But, I
> was wondering if you had advice or thoughts?
>
> Thanks, Mike
>
> --
> Mike Pihlman
> TracyVirtualOffice
> "A Coworking Community"
> 95 W. 11th Street, Suite 203
> Tracy, CA 95376
> Mobile: 209-608-4340
> Web: TracyVirtualOffice.com
> Twitter: @TracyVirtOffice
> Skype: tracyvirtualoffice1
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