On Feb 8, 2010, at 1:00 PM, Alex Hillman wrote: > I can't see us aligning with the goals or values of an executive business > center organization, and so, I can't see us working with one. This feels like > potential for serious confusion for prospective coworking communities, and a > distraction for ones that are already in progress.
I completely agree. As is typical, Alex said it better and more succinctly than I could. On Feb 9, 2010, at 9:41 AM, Eli Malinsky wrote: > For what it's worth, I definitely don't think an association with ABCN > is the right move...i think it confuses the picture and also situates > the coworking movement within a very typical association model (and > subordinates it to a larger industry). i think an annual conference is > great and the idea of doing something unique, unconferencey, and > distributed is directly in line with coworking values. +1 > By the way, a few exec biz centers are adding/converting spaces over > to "coworking". I doubt they'll have the events and collaboration, but > nonetheless, they think that having a few desks constitutes coworking > and they're labeling themselves as such. This will add confusion to > the public. My thoughts are that is a really good reason not to have the coworking conference at ACBN because we need to differentiate ourselves from business centers that are rebranding themselves as coworking and I couldn't see ACBN hosting that discussion. I could be wrong but I think most people who opening coworking spaces do so for very different reasons than people who open business centers. I just don't see those two mindsets being compatible. On Feb 9, 2010, at 4:41 AM, Jerome Chang wrote: > I spoke to the head of ABCN today and got some good feedback and assurances, > so please let me know if you're open to the following: > 1. A national coworking gathering this October (2010) in S.F. They > already have a 3-4 day conference for about 150 people for exec suites, but > would dedicate 1-2 full days toward coworking. This location seems so ideal > given that SF has the most # of coworking locations, let alone Sacramento, > and the entire West Coast cities that are just an hour or two away by plane. That works great for West coast people, awful for East coast and Europe. Not that I'm against SF, it might be right for a first one, but I'd hope it wouldn't always be there. Personally I've been to SF so many times to attend conferences that every time I have to go back I wish I could be going somewhere else. > 2. The ABCN team already is organizing the conference and could > accommodate us with our logistical needs (actual scope should still be > clarified). BTW, I have run a conference company in the past and in one of my businesses with an event planning partner we plan to launch some conferences in 2010 in Atlanta. It the issue is running the conference, we can consider doing it. Just as a consideration, I have connections here in Atlanta where I can get a great venue that handles 400 attendees with a 220 person auditorium and all A/V for around $1000. > B. ABCN always strives for a high ROI for every single > activity/presentation, on the order of 10x the cost to attend. This ensures > each attendees feels the trip/attendance was worth every penny. For us > coworking people, ABCN can see a need to gauge the worthiness of a conference > by a sort of ROC, return on community. What that is is up to us to determine > now or later. > C. ABCN estimates about $300-$450/day for most professional activities, > including snacks, lunch, etc. Even though that might seem high to us > coworking people, ABCN insists they almost never break even on these > conferences, but know they should still have these conferences. Still, their > last conference in NYC was $745, which included a gala dinner/party and open > bar on some cruise. We could of course cut out the gala and/or figure out > our own conference fee. Those are exactly the types of approach and fee structure I'd want to avoid. > E. ABCN already has something very similar to our Coworking VISA, with > which members of one location can utilize another location, including > reservation and payment systems. Typical exec centers earn 10x their > $225/monthly dues. We could of course set out our own monthly fees, if any. > We of course would NOT have to join ABCN and form some monthly dues for > coworking facilities, but should WE WANT TO, it's there for us to utilize. Don't understand where "Typical exec centers earn 10x their $225/monthly dues" comes from. > F. As much as we like to think that coworking is entirely new or > distinct, I still believe we do have enough common traits with exec centers > to LEARN from what them, sort of like learning from parents/grandparents. In > fact, the exec centers thought they themselves were all so new way back when, > and as a result, made mistakes that they could've easily avoided had they > learned from others. Ie., they were all initially collaborative between > "brands"/companies until a lot of facilities opened up next door to another > and competition set in. Had they figured out how to maintain that > collaboration/friendliness early on, they wouldn't have the cutthroat > competition they have now. Learn from them yes, but not assimilate ourselves into them. On Feb 9, 2010, at 8:05 AM, rachel young wrote: > Oh, I meant that it include things like the way some co-ops here are created > they can only have members from Canada and not individuals or corporations > from outside of Canada (and other countries may do it the same), or if it > were an association and there were dues/membership fees to pay then taxation > laws might restrict some countries from allowing those dues/fees to be > written off if the association was a "national" association in a nation that > was not ours. > > Yes, maybe, but depending on where the association is set up, the laws of > that country might state that if the association were to include > international individuals or corporations as members then the association > must be structured in a particular way. I ran into this when consulting with > a client who formed a co-op and they wanted to include international members > but couldn't because they structured their co-op in a particular way when > they incorporated, so we had to make a change to their corporate filings to > restructure their co-op. It was quite a hassle. Okay, I think maybe my email implied details already figured out that I hadn't intended. The idea was to discuss a co-op in concept, not any specific type of legal entity. IANAL so I'm not an expert on those details anyway. > Hrm, I can't find it now, but I thought someone had voiced some concerns > about the cost of a separate conference, and so it doesn't matter if the > money is going directly to conference costs or to conference costs by way of > dues, it is still money leaving our pockets. However, to answer your > question, if funds were going directly to the conference, it would be > airfare, accommodations, food, ground travel, wifi time to blog about the new > body scanners at the airport, etc. If the funds were going to dues/fees, > then it could be just as expensive. And of course, back to taxation, > conference fees would likely be treated differently by your accountant than > membership fees. I guess then my proposal wasn't clear. In a co-op the members share profits as well as they provide expenses. So if there were 25 members and the conference made $25k, we'd each get $1000 to pay our own expenses (these are not projections, I'm just using simple numbers for the purpose of making the math simple.) On Feb 9, 2010, at 10:07 AM, Alex Hillman wrote: > First, I want to say I appreciate you doing the legwork on this > communication, I know it's time consuming and you've done a great job of > relaying information back to the group. Agreed, thanks Jerome. > That said, I have a bunch of issues with the direction this is heading. Among > them, the biggest is that we've gone from talking about a collaborative, idea > sharing, peer learning, and mentoring event to one that incurs large per-head > costs to cover unnecessary overhead, to have people "talking at me". I've > been on all sides of that coin: attendee, organizer, and speaker, and it's > never of as much value as having something mentorship and discussion based. > > Mentoring is why this group is so strong, and that needs to be the tone of > this "conference" or event if it's going to be a success, in my opinion. > > Rather than being able to convert the fact that we get people in our doors to > bring "big name speakers", that should be able to be parlayed into our > attendee base. That entire pitch feels off to me. > > Long story short, I see ABCN having much more to gain from being the > organizers than us, the community, and that always raises a red flag for me. > > I DO believe that this event, whoever organizes and leads it, should have > some degree of "return TO community" effort...it in some way should be able > to give back to the community members who could not attend. I could not agree more with this. > I'm still unclear who this event is for, though: people interested in > coworking, people who cowork, people who lead coworking communities, or > people who own coworking facilitates. Obviously there's overlap, but defining > the "why" will lead and inform the "who". I'm going to assume it would be: owners of spaces and people wanting to open spaces including community economic developers and larger corporations looking to downside facilities for the same number of staff. > The people who *really need this conference* won't be able to attend if > there's big price ticket attached to it, and the people who show up are > likely to gain the least because they don't need it as badly. That's a shame, > but a very real challenge we need to creatively overcome. Further, I'm going to add to my proposal that there be multiple classes of membership, one for each type of member and that the members who are not affiliated with an entity that subsidizes them (i.e. not affiliated with government of a fortune 1000 company) are the ones that are able to participate in the profit sharing as the others are the ones that would end up providing the needed funds. > > Bottom line: as Eli points out below, this needs to align with the coworking > values or else it's not worth it. Accessibility is one of those things, and > introducing $500 ticket prices to what could easily be facilitated for MUCH > less removes that quality. > To quote some new friends we made at Turnstone a few weeks back, "this > shouldn't be about reducing the price, but increasing the attainability". Exactly. Anyway. JMTCW (and not necessarily the views of my partner at Ignition Alley; he's been preoccupied lately so haven't discussed with him.) -Mike Schinkel Ignition Alley Atlanta Coworking http://ignitionalley.com -- 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.
