All of the spaces in our network are small. About half of them operate from a "spare space" kind of model, where the coworking space is not the owner/tenant. So the total space is larger than the space available for coworking.
It is certainly doable, how you do it depends very much on where the space is located. One of our spaces is in a village of 3,072 souls unless Mrs. Janssen has had the baby in which case it is 3,073. :-) Coworking looks very different there than in Amsterdam, even though the square footage is roughly the same. When looking at small spaces it is important to have a deep understanding of the location and the people who live there, and is worth quite a lot of research. But the very first thing I think is to do your very best to *divorce yourself completely from the rental arbitrage model of coworking*, because that model does not work in small towns or in small spaces,and go over to a sharing model. (Or something else, but sharing is what we have come up with). Think of your furniture as a prop on a stage and not as a permanent installation. Critical mass for us is this: if the space is 50% occupied on an ongoing basis -- not just on popular days but structurally -- it is time to start looking for a new space. At about 70% it becomes uncomfortable and inflexible and you lose the benefits of the coworking setup I think. On Sunday, October 15, 2017 at 4:09:59 PM UTC+2, Kyle Thibaut wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > We have about 600 sqft of open space in our coworking space. Is there > anyone else out there with a small space like ours? > > > - What have you learned to make it work well? > - Is it too small such that voices carry over and disturb others? > - Have you made any creative solutions to help out with having a small > space? > - Bonus: What sqft per person-desk is needed and how many members per > desk is normal? In this case, what would critical mass look like? > > Thanks, > Kyle > > -- 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.
