Lars, We wanted to move Word Camp to one of the cities we partner with. We struggled because the infrastructure for wireless internet was not up to par for what we needed. We were able to work with the city, venue and local broad band provider Cox to come up with a solution that benefited the center for the arts as well as the downtown municipal campus including the library.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/20110311chandler-library-wifi-spot0311.html Another policy issue we tackled was zoning clearances for home based businesses. Many cities in our region do not allow for home based business (even independent contractor). Here is the resulting work to allow clearance of zoning for a home based businesses. http://www.chandleraz.gov/content/HomeBusinessApplication.pdf We realize that it is still far too restrictive, but believe in baby steps. We are working with a number of cities on downtown redevelopment through the use of Enhanced Municipal Services Districts that allow taxing authority generated by property owners for improvement of the district. http://www.azleg.gov/ars/48/00575.htm We are currently working on state legislation policy for a number of number of topics including urban development, freelance workers, early stage entrepreneurship and industry clustering. I suspect in the next 12 months we will have a lot more stories to share. -- Derek Neighbors http://derekneighbors.com Mobile: 480-335-9746 Skype: derek0108 Co-Founder of Gangplank : http://gangplankhq.com Partner at Integrum Technologies : http://integrumtech.com President of Downtown Chandler Community Partnership : http://downtownchandler.org Connect With Me Linked In : http://linkedin.com/in/dneighbors Twitter : http://twitter.com/dneighbors On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 8:30 AM, lars hasselblad torres <[email protected]> wrote: > > Derek, great stuff - I'll look into it more. The specific context is that we > (Local 64, a game developer group, and the regional economic development > corp) have a state legislator luncheon/open house and I'd love to be able to > share some stories of collaboration at the local, state, etc level. I'm not > looking to reproduce anything - we have good relationships and our own > footing with local government in two towns - but am looking for illustrative > stories that speak to policy leadership (for example, we have prohibitive > state laws around contracting we'd like to see reinvented, we're pro single > payer at the state level, and there are tax structures that can be improved > for teleworkers). I hope the stories I can learn from you all here will point > to one thing, and one thing only: coworking communities in-state can be > valued nodes for partnership, collaboration, and policy guidance. Cheers! > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com
