I think we mostly all don't like the idea of people co-opting the word. If someone has a reasonable solution to offer, feel free to share. One hint, the answer is not to try to create an authority which must decide who gets to use the word and who doesn't.
The issue is that "coworking" is more of a concept than a brand. Spaces that truly embody the *concept* behind the buzz are the ones that will benefit the most from the trend in the long term, even if others try to jump on the bandwagon and water down the word itself. We're all probably sick of hearing about how everyone's "going green," but the companies that really get it and embrace environmental sustainability in their practices are the ones which are going to win out in the long run. People have a growing need for real coworking. People that provide something that fulfills that need will find success. "Coworking" is a wonderful word, but we can only rely on it to take us so far. We are building organizations which we hope to be sustainable in the long run, I hope, and should therefore be able to continue to thrive in a future world in which there's an untold number of coworking, cobaking, colaundry, whatever spaces everywhere. New Work City will still be around down the road not because it's coworking, but because it's New Work City. The concept behind coworking is of course at its core, but if the word itself gets watered down or goes away, we'll still be here. There's been talk in the past about what the future of coworking is, and I posited that one day it will just be "working." Whether the word gets used or not, the concept behind coworking is being woven into how we think about work and life in general, and that's awesome. We get to help build that. Aside from the lower-case "coworking," the concept, we've also described capital-c "Coworking" as a movement, and movements have their own life cycle of growth, peak, and decline. But this email's long enough so I'll leave it at that for now :) We got off track from discussing specific actionable things. What can we do to advance the discussion of a license/badge to a place where a decision can be made and we can move on? Tony --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Work City - Work with, not for. Web: http://nwcny.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/nwc Email: [email protected] Phone: (888) 823-3494 On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Mike Schinkel <[email protected]>wrote: > On Mar 2, 2010, at 4:57 PM, Alex Hillman wrote: > > I could see it make some sense in theory, but I think falls more into > traditional business paranoia than any scope of reality. > > > It's not business paranoia, it's a concern about branding. > > > If someone going to run a space branded as "Coworking" I would think that > someone would want to make sure that brand means something and it means what > they offer. If there's no guarantee that it won't be diluted and come to > effectively mean nothing then I think they'd be better off coming up with > their own term and promoting that instead. > > > -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]<coworking%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en. > -- 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.
