How many people are in a radius doesn't really matter, if none of those people care about or need Coworking.
We did something counterintuitive when we began: we put Indy Hall in a place where NONE of our community members already were. We chose a neighborhood that was easily accessible my public transit (something important to our community), but all of our early members lived in 3 main parts of the city and we chose to open in an area that was relatively central to all 3. If we had picked any one of those three parts, the other 2/3rds of our community would've felt more disconnected. Bur I say relative because that's important. There is ALWAYS someone who will say that you're too far away. In our case, that can be as "far away" as 4 subway stops. It depends on what people are used to. All of this stems from answering a bigger question and asking: who are your members? Not a demographic, or people you hope to reach...but who are the ACTUAL people that you CAN reach. Where are they, and where do they already go? Do they cross neighborhoods? How do they get there? What kind of work do they do? Can they work from anywhere? Do they have the power to choose where they work? Do they like the way they work, or is there a problem or set of problems? I'm a HUGE supporter of doing pop-up Coworking (aka Jelly, workatjelly.com) for a while before selecting any space because it's the ideal way of seeing who actually shows up, and where, and most importantly WHY. Is it because they need a place to work? Or...is it because they're lonely at home and cafes are awkward to be a professional. And you can find all of that our before ever wasting time on finding the "perfect" location (which doesn't exist, that's a fantasy) and without spending a dollar, unsure if you'll ever see that dollar again. -Alex ------------------ *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com On Wednesday, April 1, 2015, Cassidy <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: > What metrics do you all gauge to decide whether a location will work? > Like, > - at least 100,000 people in a 5 mile radius > - at least 100,000 small businesses in a 5 mile radius > etc. > > Thanks! > > Cassidy > > -- > 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. > -- ------------------ *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast -- 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.
