Alex: For the purposes of our coworking definition "open" means the coworking facility will consider anyone within their target segment as a member, make it easy for anyone within that segment to apply and has a membership process such that anyone within the target segment could potentially be accepted as a member . It does not mean they have to accept everyone who applies.
I left out "target segment" in my post to save space, but should have included it. The reason we include "target segment" in this definition is because of the growing number of vertically oriented coworking spaces. These spaces, like Katherine's, are focused on members from a particular industry and because of this exclude people who don't fit in their vertical. We consider these open as long as their membership process allows anyone from the vertical to be considered. Your example - "fill out your info and maybe we'll let you work here if we think you're a good fit based on our criteria which we can't/don't publicly disclose" - is nicely chosen because it's both tricky and highlights the subjectivity of this criteria:). We exclude facilities we consider "invitation only". I think this would exclude many (but not all) of the spaces that would fall under your example. We would also exclude any facility we felt discriminated unfairly against any group. Fortunately, we've yet to see an example of this. But we give spaces broad latitude in terms of who they accept as members. If a space has an application process that looks open and a membership that appears to have been chosen somewhat openly, we would consider them open even if the membership decision criteria are murky. This is, obviously, subjective based on our view of the space's process. The good news, at least so far, is this "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" approach to coworking has worked. But we're the first to admit it's not comprehensive, doesn't work in all cases and is subjective. Also, the rapid hybridization of coworking means things are changing very fast - making any definition questionable in terms of accuracy. That's why threads like this are so useful. Steve -- 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.
