Great discussion and I really like the restaurant analogy. We use the following criteria to identify a space as a coworking space:
- self-identifies as providing coworking space or uses language close to this. - offers a range of membership options such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc. (does not need to offer them all) - offers facilities broadly consistent with other coworking spaces including some form of community space - offers open membership, or membership available via a process that is open - offers activities that encourage community with the word "activities" being broadly defined - coworking is an important part of the facility offering - is actively in use. There is a fair amount of subjectivity in these and we've found identifying coworking facilities is a bit like identifying pornography - you know when you see it, but different people see it in different ways. But overall they've worked well for us. Interestingly enough, they've worked well not because they identify what coworking is, but because in combination they're pretty good at identifying what coworking is not. For example, many startup accelerators more or less look like Parisoma coworking in terms of look, feel, activities and membership demographics. But the accelerators tend to have some combination of a closed membership process and/or limited or no membership options. The prolific Ray Lindenberg (where does he find the time to produce so much content?) has been publishing a lot on segmenting and defining different aspects of the office as a service market over at the GWA LinkedIn group and elsewhere. He's doing this from the office business center point of view, but it's been quite interesting and is well worth looking at. -- 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.
