Thanks a lot Jeannine for such a thorough and we'll crafted email and for once again taking the lead . Thanks also to all the rest for your thoughtful contributions.
For the discussion about the coworking week I would like to suggest a new and separate discussion, so that things don't get mixed up. You can count on me to work and on the support of Betacowork and the European Coworking Assembly. I would suggest a task for the first year that we can discuss in the coming coworking conferences too: write our definition of coworking and use it in Wikipedia articles and everywhere. We already had a few discussion about this in the Google Group and it lead to the one we are using for the Coworking Week Belgium and the European Coworking Assembly: http://coworkingbelgium.be/2014/05/22/belgium-coworking-spaces-map/ (link to original group discussion in text). Not all Collaborative and shared working spaces are coworking spaces. If we dilute the core and the target too much we will be irrelevant, and we want to have impact. Regarding the target, I think that for most of the properties we are talking about space operators. Coworkers can benefit of the wiki and spalecially the visa, but mixing everybody in the Google group only ads noise, making it harder to contribute, help and have meaningful conversations. If people absolutely want to have coworkers discussing, it should be in a different group that could be also created and managed by Open Coworking, but I think this is too much work for little value. I think that for them it is much more interesting finding out about the coworking visa: creating personal links around the world will do much more than any online experience (as we all have experienced in the conferences, and as a former AFS participant I reckon). An idea for the visa would be to add a voluntary longer exchange, that could be as easy to signal as adding an asterisk by the name). I was thinking about one week. When it comes to mentoring we do a lot in the conferences and through the connections we make there. On top of it there's Andy's seminars and podcast, the Coworking Handbook, many people doing consulting, and other ressources. I don't think personalized free tutoring is needed, but I would love to participate in some scheduled open hangouts. It is important to have a legal structure with motivated and hard working people in the board to move forward and to manage some visit financial operations, such as renewing the domain name registration and taking he members fees. Those that want to be part of the organization should pay an annual fee. Ressources can still be open, but the more committed and those that walk the walk should decide. The cooperative idea sounds good specially if it is a non profit. You are the lawyer, I trust you know well this :) What is important to me is that the people taking the lead are not personnally liable, as it would be the case without any kind of organization. Limited liability please :) If a new entity is created, the old one should transfer assets to the new one. It is important that he ownership of he domains, group, and the wiki is transfered to whatever legal entity we use. I've seen too many cases where not knowing who had to renew the domains and inaction have ended up in losing them. They are too valuable to loose them. To participate you don't need membership, but some things have to be limited to the members, who have a higher engagement and commitment. And basic commitment equals annual fee :) Cheers, Ramon Suarez Founder Betacowork.com Author CoworkingHandbook.com President CoworkingAssembly.eu Founder CoworkingBelgium.be And coworking apasionado :) -- 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.
