Beth, As someone who also has distanced themselves from "coworking" I can sympathize. Coworking as a fad has become largely about space owners trying to make money running their "coworking business" and/or propagating corporations are evil and freelancer nation will rule the world. All of these things make building community more difficult in the long run.
I think the initial incarnation of coworking was very much about community, but it became a victim of its own success and now a days its hard to distinguish most coworking spaces from shared office groups like Regus other than more modern layout/furniture. I think that Alex at IndyHall, Tony at NewWorkCity and the good folks at Office Nomads have made a great push in the last two years to try to get things centered back around community and many others have stepped up and started to turn the ship. So while many spaces sound like "true" coworking, they are still the minority. What can we do to fix this? -- Derek Neighbors Gangplank On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Beth Buczynski <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm confused...Benjamin goes to such great lengths to say that Grind > isn't a coworking space because it's not "an incubator or an > accelerator" and that the "chairs, the tables, the real-estate, > renting a seat or a desk are secondary to constructing a strong > community." That sounds EXACTLY like true coworking to me! While > coworking spaces can act like incubators, the spaces that exist purely > to facilitate this aren't necessarily committed to the community > aspects that set coworking apart from every other type of work space. > On a related but unrelated note, Grind's pop-up coworking space during > SxSW was really great. Anyone else check it out? > > Beth > @gonecoworking > > On Apr 3, 8:07 pm, David Singer <[email protected]> wrote: > > David Judson, the proprietor ofwww.mystartstory.com-- long form > > interview of founders of starups has included two piorneering > > coworking/collaborative workspace founders in his series: Benjamin > > Dyett, founder of Grind [www.grindspaces.com] and Jenifer Ross, > > Founder of W@tercooler [www.watercoolerhub.com]. I highly recommend > > these reads -- both of these individuals have inspired me to do a deep > > dive into exploring coworking on multiple levels. The links to the > > interviews are here: > > > > Benjamin Dyett: http://mystartstory.com/benjamin-dyett/ > > > > Jenifer Ross: http://mystartstory.com/jenifer-ross/ > > > > David A. Singerwww.twitter.com/davidasinger > > -- > 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.
