Hi Felix, I have been a part of several free or "subsidized" collaborative work spaces. The first FREE space was in 2004 at the LA Brewery, me and a buddy (Freeman Murray http://wheresfreeman.blogspot.com/ ) had both just had exits from our companies, and started a 100% FREE coworking space mainly for creative types (designers, sculptors, film makers, etc), but we had a nice mix of technical folks in there as well because we both are pretty technical guys.
We ran the LA space from Summer of 2004- Early 2005, then handed it over to a manager for the duration of the lease. We both then moved to India in early 2005, and started building a community of freelancers, and startup founders. I left India at the end of 2005, but he stayed there ( http://jaaga.in ) and is still running a FREE space in Bangalore. My next project when I got back from India (in Santa Cruz, Ca in 2006) started off as a free coworking space, but I soon took a job over the hill, and had to close the Santa Cruz space in Dec 2006. After my contract day job was over, I wanted to start another collaborative work space (Semantic Seed www.semanticseed.com ) in San Jose, this was Sep 2008, and 3 years before taking over Citizen Space. Now Semantic Seed is a tenant of Citizen Space in San Jose, and we (Citizen Space) still support the community by offering "coworking grants" from Semantic Seed that we subsidize. Hope this information is useful, and feel free to drop me an email if you have any other questions about the pros and cons of running a "non profit" space, I have been running these type of spaces since 1998 before we had coined the word "coworking". Kind regards, Toby Morning Citizen Space Chief Evangelist Direct: 415-501-9155 Skype: citizenspace http://www.citizenspace.us Twitter: http://twitter.com/citizenspace Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/citizenspace "A Nicer Place to Work" -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Felix Schürholz Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 6:24 AM To: Coworking Subject: [Coworking] Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona offers “Free Coworking” Do you know of any other coworking places that already offer or intend to offer "Free Coworking"? Please share. Thx Greetings, Felix new article>Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona offers “Free Coworking” bit.ly/xXSJHq -- 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.
