Sean, As always, Jerome's comments are great. I've interspersed a few ideas below, too.
Barbara On Saturday, July 20, 2013 3:50:25 AM UTC-7, Sean Qian wrote: > > HI All, > > My name's Sean and I'm planning on starting a co-working space for my > colleagues and I in a few months. We're all newly registered migration > agents and are hoping to get our own businesses up and running. We've been > meeting at least once a month, usually at a restaurant, to talk over cases > and to catch up but I figure we'd be a lot more productive working together > a few days a week. > > Through a family connection I've managed to secure a premises on Collins > Street, which is one of Melbourne CBD's (Central Business District ie Down > town) premier street locations at a very reasonable rental rate. I've also > negotiated a free period which I'm sure will come in handy. > > The office is approx 90m2, has a large open area, 2 decent sizes office > rooms, a kitchenette and a small office which can be used as a private room > or phone call room. I've uploaded a quick floorplan I drew for those > interested. > In this space, you'll be doing conventional cowork -- nice open plan > layout with just a few breakout/team room spaces. > I've been doing a lot of research about the movement and am so eager to > meet all sorts of different people through the process of having a space, > but I've got a few beginner questions which I'm hoping can be discussed and > answered here. > > 1. So far, I think I'm going to have 3 membership packages - an all access > pass, 3 days a week, and the casual 1 day a week. How can I keep a track of > who comes in and when? Is the only solution to purchase/create some kind of > management software like Nexudus or Cobot? I'd like to not have to sit at > the front desk all the time. > We found that "days per week" made people feel like they didn't have > enough flexibility. We changed it to "days per month", and used "up to..." > . I like both Nexudus and Cobot. Our software, however, uses an RFID access > card tied to the web app to track usage. > > 2. Let's say the office has 85m2 of usable workstation space after the > kitchenette is taken out, how should I calculate how many members I can > there at any one time, and how many members I can have there overall? (Sorry > I'm talking English instead of metric) Figure 50 - 100 s.f. per person that > can be in the space at any one time. You can sell 3 x that calculation, > roughly, for memberships, since you won't have very many people in full > time. > > 3. Should I concentrate my advertising/marketing towards other migration > agents or similar professionals or be more broad? We believe in being > more broad -- why limit the market? We feel the thread between people is > that they've chosen to live (or work in) a particular area. There will also > be a certain type of person who likes your environment. In our spaces, our > members range from startups to financial consultants to writers to teachers > to counselors to grad students to web developers...I better stop... > > 4. What are some must have things? Photocopier/Printer? Couches? Water > tank? I will supply a small fridge, microwave. coffee machine, kettle, tea > and coffee beans. We like the Sharp MX series printer/copier/fax/scanner. > Easy to use. And we can program in codes for each person. Then we enter the > usage at the end of each month for billing. Pretty simple. Fast, reliable > broadband with failover is the main thing you need! We also have a VoIP > phone system. So we can add a new person on the fly, change plans, etc. > Really flexible, but you need a good one. > Let me know if we can help in any other way! Barbara > > Any feedback on the above would be greatly appreciated. I hope to have our > co-working space up and running soon! > > Cheers, > > Sean > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
