Especially when just getting started, there's a lot of power in "keeping it simple". It's tempting and easy to create a membership to fit every person, down to half days and hourly. The problem I've seen with this is that it creates overhead both for you (in the fact that you need some way to keep track), as well as your members (they are always watching a clock to make sure they don't go over).
Having spoken to people who've been members of both models, *membership* is preferred to be as simple as possible. The only thing that people really, really appreciate in granular hourly pricing is meeting space - which totally makes sense, it's rare to have half and full day meetings. I also like to think about this in terms of membership vs. renter. It's hard to become a community member an hour at a time - within that hour you need to do what you're there to do AND start to get to know people. Inside of a full day, there's far more opportunity for serendipity and social interactions to happen in addition to a productive work day. The people who have that full spectrum of experiences are the ones who tend to fall into the camp of community member. The ones who ONLY want a place to work and have no interest in community participation are welcome, of course, but tend to stick around for shorter durations. This also means lower retention, which means more resources spent on recruiting new butts into seats, and draining your time and money from focusing on the members you DO have. No right or wrong here, of course. As Rachel suggested - having people to ask how THEY would use the space is really helpful. The trick here is to ask, but not necessarily do exactly what they say. Sometimes people think they know what they want, but when it comes down to it, they have no clue because they've never had it before. The IDEA of hourly usage sounds great to somebody, but they end up not being the one who uses it. The Henry Ford quote "if I'd have giving people what they asked for, I would've built a faster horse" comes to mind. You have to have people who you can not only speak to, but who you can actually *understand* and develop your model around their needs, not just *what they say* their needs are. -Alex /ah indyhall.org coworking in philadelphia On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 1:42 AM, CAJ <[email protected]> wrote: > Rachel, > There are a four of us, which is where the discussion comes from. > There are diffrent ideas on the subject. So I thought I would bring > the topic here for feedback. Since this is a new concept that we are > just begining to push. We have the space which we consider phase one, > with two workstaions and 12 basically "hot seats" Phase two is a 3000 > sq ft renivated warehouse. We began by consideing a daily rate as well > as monthly memberships, but thought that people might be more > comfortable with hourly or even half day rate. > CJay > > On Jan 13, 4:43 am, rachel young <[email protected]> wrote: > > Do you have some existing folks from your community that are interested > in > > joining together to form a space? If so, ask them and average out their > > responses. They are the ones that will be paying after all. > > r. > > On Jan 13, 2012 12:03 AM, "CAJ" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Coworking Group, > > > > > Planning coworking space.....Need feedback on hourly vs daily rates. > > > We are in a rural/suburban area outside St.Louis and this is indeed a > > > new concept for most businesses. The concept of coworking is needed in > > > this community. Any suggestions? > > > > > -- > > > 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. > > -- > 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. > > -- 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.
