Mike, great stuff... I would love more of your thoughts if you get the chance.
On Jul 6, 2010 5:47 PM, "mark gilbreath" <[email protected]> wrote: Kudos indeed to Elizabeth and her team. On the topic of engaging sponsors (ie other large established organizations) behind coworking facilities and the community as a whole.... this is a realistic objective and something that individual facility owners and the community as a whole should aspire for. Many of the underlying tenets of the coworking movement (the increasing mobility of work, sustainability, energy conservation, economic development, economic efficiency) are consistent with the values and strategic directions of large organizations, both public and private. The challenge/trick is to frame the relationship with a partner entity in such a way that it reinforces what they want to talk about to their market audience. Think of your community as an ecosystem. Visualize your coworking operation at the center of this ecosystem and consider who your members are... freelancers, consultants, startup companies, non-profits... the seeds of the future pillars of your business community. Now imagine orbiting around you: - local/regional economic development organizations (such as chamber of commerce, state econ dev board etc) - they want to lower the barrier for the formation of more new companies... they can be a partner. - your local elected official (mayor, councilman, congressman) - they are looking to support any initiative that results in the creation of jobs... they can be a partner. - your technology provider... companies like IBM, Cisco, Google, MSFT are all espousing the concepts of smart work, mobile work, connected work... look at your technology provider list... they can be partners. - your local power company... in our local community, Idaho Power got behind our project because we created a smart green space that used less energy. they became a partner - your members... you are helping your members get connected...you are enabling their success... they are your partners So what can "partnership" mean? Well in our case, in the above examples it meant such things as, co-marketing, press releases, case studies, sharing in the promotion of special events, special pricing on goods and services for us and our members, scholarship grants to subsidize memberships. Bit of a ramble here when i should be working...apologies. I can polish this up with a more complete and thoughtful post if this is of interest to anyone. Best Mark On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Tony Bacigalupo <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Hey hey everyone, > > > > TechCrunch just wrote up about Google funding TechHub in London... they > ev... > > > > > -- > 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. > -- Mark Gilbreath PO Box 2830 Ketchum, ID 83340 mobile 208-720-8107 skype mfgilbreath twitter markgilbreath -- 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.
