Hi, Kaan, A lot of people do this, including me. I think poor Alex is going to wind up with it on his gravestone: "Build the Community First!". :-)
I also went with the space first. Here's my advice: have yor space and your members as they come along participate in community events which align with your values. In our case, this includes: 1) providing ongoing PR and Social Media Support for a local nonproft which organizes free music events twice a year. Kamer52 maintains their Facebook/LinkedIn/G+ pages, does all their Twitter communication, works on their press releases and so forth; 2) Taking part in an annual event organized by another nonprofit which matches up nonprofits with businesses who provide bsiness services to nonprofits at reduced cost or free; 3) Hosting an annual Art Exhibition of local artists in the space. We are now considering two additional projects: organizing a local event as part of a national project for professional translators in the fall, and organizing cashmobs for local retail. This does several things: it gets your name out there, and it also gives small businesses and individuals the chance to participate in these kinds of events where they might not have been able to before. Sponsiring events is a great way for businesses to raise their profile int he community, but just handing over a pile of money is just not an option for many small businesses and indivisuals. But doing it together, they can make a real difference.. And of course you have to tell everybody you are doing all this: you have to do it and you also have to be seen doing it. But you probably already figured that out. :-) The more you participate in the community, the more you meet the needs of the community, the more people will hear about you and come to participate. But it is important that you choose events which align with the values of your space. For us, this has to do with the events being local and grassroots, the events being accessible to everyone in the community, and the events being supported by the community. I will send you an invite on Facebook, a lot of people here in the NL go to Turkey for work and family as you probably know. Here's<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Flexkantoor-Kamer52/133200870061618>the FaceBook page of my space if you want to check it out. Jeannine On Tuesday, June 5, 2012 2:38:47 PM UTC+2, kaan aksay wrote: > > Hi everybody, > > I am Kaan from Turkey. you kno where Turkey is? :) > > I am the president of the board of The Young IT Pro Association. we > have setup Ankara's (capital of Turkey) first coworking space. we are > financially supported by the Ankara Development Agency. this coworking > space is also an innovation project for the city of Ankara. you can > see the pictures of the space. the name of the space is İşkalesi > (means Workcastle). > > > http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.233593536756870.50524.191731087609782&type=1 > > > now we have to gather the freelance and entrepreneur community of the > city together. i want to hear advice and recommendations from > coworking community. i know there are many post about this topic but i > want you to share your recent experiences and combine all of the > anwers in a single topic. this ould be very helpful for the new > spaces. > > i know Alex will angry about me. he always says first community then > space but we have setup the space first and know have to create the > community :) there is no coworking culture in Turkey. thats why Agency > supported us. we have convinced them there can be created a coworking > community. > > now i want you to share your experince and advices about creating the > coworking community from scratch. please help me this project should > not fail. > > thank you for your interest > > Kaan AKSAY > http://www.facebook.com/kaanaksay > http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top > > www.iskalesi.com (will be open this week) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/coworking/-/Vo7I0ZAsk7sJ. 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.
