My own coworking space is entirely pivate, we only have non-members in on a very occasional basis. And I know that when I made that decision I was very worried about whether they would throw me out of Open Coworking. Because that is of course closed.
So I of course brought it to this group and it turns out that openness is the least clear of the values, prbably because of a certain amount of founder bias. The original people involved in open coworking were mostly in IT and they think of openness as in, open source code. Not as in, anybody can come in. Though in many spaces that is true also. To unpack that a little, openness includes ideas like transparency of operation and the ability for the coworkers to make their space, their commnity, what they want it to be. My coworkers bring in their own furniture, decorations, pictures, whatever, and may use the space in any way they like (assuming compliance with building codes). We had a circus once. We had a yoga class once. It's a tabula rasa office, and the coworkers get to color it in. That's what Openness means. (They didn't throw me out of Open Coworking. Yet.) Here's Alex Hillman on the subject <http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2011/08/coworking-core-values-3-of-5-openness/> You are right, Open Coworking as a community has always been dominated by space owners. Or as long as I have been around anyway. And the dicussion and prjects tend to focus there also. Though we do have several very dedicated coworkers on the Wiki who maintain the listings for their cities. So while coworkers are always welcome, as are space managers, I think it is indeed correct to say that the group is dominated by owners. I thanks you for your time and thoughts, and hope to hear from you some more! > > -- 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.
