Another update! It's been slow going to bring coworking to Fayetteville, NC. I've been talking with Robert from Bull City Coworking as well as Tony (from NWC) about the differences from what other cities have experienced.
- Last year when I started the group on Meetup, we had a new face every week and about 4-6 people per session, but when I left to go home to NYC for several months and await the decision of whether I was moving here or not, the group disintegrated. When I resumed coworking last month, no one new really came. So we decided to abandon Meetup, where the monthly fee was unnecessary, and we moved to a free, open Facebook group: http://facebook.com/groups/fayettevillecoworking. The thinking behind this was that everyone uses Facebook all the time. We already have 18 members on this new group because one of our members added a bunch of friends of hers she thought might be interested. Also, a woman from a different Facebook group I am a member of showed no interest in joining our Meetup group, but joined the Facebook group right away. However, only a few of the old members of the Meetup group have joined us on Facebook. So, that might provide some insight for someone looking to start a new community (but not coworking space) in the future. - I think the market for coworking here is almost zilch. Technology and the way of life is very stalled here, or at least compared to what I'm used to. In NYC, everything is modern, cutting edge, competitive. In NYC, I felt in the back of the pack as far as being a web designer/developer goes, and here, it's like all the design firms (there seem to be few or no freelancers) are 5+ years behind the times, and it shows everywhere. The American Dream is alive and well here, not the new ideals I'm used to seeing with creativity and technology and whatnot, and thus loving your work, having passions, forward-momentum... don't seem to be huge priorities. - The biggest obstacle is literally communicating what coworking is all about to new people. New people simply think it's networking, that we get together and chat for a few hours. Rarely do people bring work when we've met up at a coffee shop. So I've also found it difficult to work there, too, and we often abandon the session hours before we were scheduled to, because all we did was chat. - We still struggle to find people who work for themselves, as there's not much of that here. What I see in the coffee shops are students and army guys working on group projects. - I've become a bit demoralized as an organizer. I'm not culturally used to it here. It appears I have higher expectations for just about everything -- from work to friends to intellect to fashion, so I've gotten used to working from home and talking to friends up north, and am okay with trying this group out every other week or so. I thought I'd find more army spouses and girlfriends here like me, but the reality is that most people in the army aren't from cities, and spouses are more concerned with raising children than building independent business. - I realized something about myself too, which is that at NWC, while I loved being around people who did all sorts of different things all the time, my closest friends (who I usually sat with) all did the same thing as me. I've not been as interested in coworking/jellying here when I'm not sitting next to other developers who I can bounce ideas off of or chat client work with. So I realized that for me, coworking is not just about variety, but finding colleagues who you have a lot in common with. So, yeah, I just wanted to post what our progress is in case anyone else finds it interesting or has anything to share! Sorry it's not the most peppy or optimistic of posts. -- 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/d/optout.
