> Jonathan said: > > for local/regional/state/national groups interested in coworking, to support > > the cause and show people the real value using numbers as opposed to the > > more ephemeral attributes that we're talking about here.
Alex said: > To what end? *Sounds* great but most governments and coworking space > owners/operators/founders won't have a clue what to do with these "metrics" > other than throw them at the EDCs and, well, I've already written about > that: > http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2010/12/on-economic-development-centers-and-coworking/ I think its more about communicating the value of this new model to the people who hold the purse strings in communities when it comes to. In Madison, our city economic development champion "gets" coworking and sees it as the future, but recognizes that few of the people who are generally involved with economic development decisions and about how to spend government money really understand it the way we do. Some of the questions I've been asked: - How many sqft does a space need to be successful? - How quickly does membership typically grow? - How many members can be supported per sqft? - How many "jobs" and "businesses" are generally created and over what period of time? Answering these kinds of questions will give "EDC's" information that they can understand in the context they're used to. These folks are used to things like business plan contests (not coworking), "incubators" (not coworking), and tax subsidies for small businesses (not coworking). If we want them to understand the value of coworking, we have to present information about it in a way that they can "get". I was hoping that by gathering metrics we could do this, but based on feedback from many people on this list, it sounds like a problem that we perhaps shouldn't even try to solve ... for now. But to answer your question - To what end? To the end of getting funding, tax breaks, etc from cities to promote the growth of coworking. _jonathan yankovich -- 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.
