I have a thousand thoughts on this as Cohere has been through every iteration in its life. For 2 years, we've had 2-4 reserved desk members. I have loved it. Those members provide a refreshing consistency to the membership and the nature of their jobs just require them to have more "stuff" around. Our reserved desks are also blended in next to the flex desks so it's impossible to segregate away from the other members.
We had a brief experiment where we put a new member who had large equipment in a semi-private space next to the main space and it was terrible. He would come in, head down, and not say hi to anyone or stop to chat and then be in his space (literally 10 feet from us) but never interacting. After 2 months he said he didn't feel like he was part of the community and moved on to a real private office down the street. Since leaving he's more involved with Cohere now and attends our social events. Funny! Some of you might remember that I've spoken out strongly against having private offices in coworking spaces and now I have to eat my words...with a caveat. As Cohere was preparing to move in to a new space, 2 of our founding members told me that their businesses had evolved and grown and they both needed private offices for equipment, pair programming and storage/ergonomics. Rather than cut them off, I searched for a new space that could accommodate them. Our new space still has a majority of open format working but now includes 4 private offices. Those offices rented out immediately and are now the most profitable part of Cohere. The best part is that our founding members are still with us and are getting exactly what they need. They're SO happy. The other 2 offices have brought new members with refreshing diversity that I never could have planned. We have our first non profit that does international service learning trips for high school students as well as an online radio station run by high school students, for high school students. With the recent addition of college memberships, our members now range in age from 16-50. So the moral of the story-as always- is to make sure that you're paying attention to ALL of your members and listening to what they need. Accommodate if you can, be flexible where needed and try to say YES! Angel On Jan 18, 7:54 pm, Tom Brandt <[email protected]> wrote: > At Workanitle, we only have shared desks. We have been kicking around > offering permanent desks, but wondered about possible differences in > expectations and assumptions between permanent and shared deskers. > > Specifically, we wondered if permanent deskers would develop a sense of > ownership and territoriality which could conflict with the shared deskers. > We have a really cohesive community here and don't want to disrupt it. > > So, for those who offer both: > > 1. Have you seen a culture or expectations clash between permanent and > shared deskers? > 2. Do permanent deskers want a different desk configuration than do > shared deskers? For example, lockable drawers? > 3. Any other things we should be thinking about? > > Thanks! > > -- > twb > member, Workantile Exchange <http://workantileexchange.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.
