[Coworking] Who loves their website?
Hi all, It is time to work on my website, and so I need some community inspiration! Do you love your website? Do you love somebody else's website? Link it for me! I want to admire them all! And also have a good think about best practices for a coworking website. Tell me yoru stories about your website, what really didn't work and what surprisingly did? Cheers, Jeannine -- 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[Coworking] How to save a once-successful coworking space if it loses the community that helped make it successful?
Dear All, *The challenge: *I need help figuring out how (or whether) to save a coworking space that lost it's key ingredient for success (it's community). I hope/think it provides a nice example of a more recent kind of problem that existing coworking spaces will be facing as this kind of business matures. I also think it provides a good lesson about potential dangers of expanding even when your first location is a success. *Here's the story:* About two and a half years ago my (small) coworking space was full and I had to decide whether to expand or to just stop accepting new members. Long story short, I decided to expand. I thought about how many members I'd need at the new space and how many would move from the old space and it seemed to me like both spaces would be sustainable soon after opening the new space as long as growth continued as it had been for the short term. I expected growth to be a little faster with the added value of an extra location in a great new neighborhood, so I thought I was being safe(ish). A couple months after making that choice the original space went from being full to being less than half full. It no longer had the sense of community/buzz that made it an attractive coworking space in the first place. *Back to the challenge: *is there anything I can do now to restore the missing key element of community once the community is lost other than to close the one space and focus my attention on making the second space the best coworking space I can make it? *Some important factors in thinking about the problem:* - *Please accept the premise *that this threshold community size really is the key difference in whether this space is attractive to new members (even though it's definitely a simplification). - *Couldn't I just repeat the formula that made it a successful coworking space in the first place? *When I first opened, I already believed a largely-empty coworking space had only a fraction of the value of a full coworking space, and so I set my prices, very explicitly, at half the price I expected to charge when the space became more lively. This worked well. People knew I would increase the prices and they knew they were getting a great deal to be an early supporter, and I got a lot of early activity for that reason. When I doubled the prices, there were no big hiccups. But I cannot reverse that now for a few reasons. Most importantly, I have another coworking space that is doing well at the prices I currently charge (and I am not over-charging), as well as many members who work from the non-sustainable space who paid full price. There's no simple way I can see to dramatically lower the prices at one location to get it back to the threshold community size without either alienating a lot of existing members or giving them back a lot of their already-paid membership dues which would be a big financial burden (at least over the short term). Plus it would creat a strange double-pricing structure for two spaces that otherwise are part of the same community. - *Why don't I ask my members for a solution? *I have, but so far no one has had a good solution other than to just close the space, even though many people would be very upset by it. - *Why did I lose so many members after the expansion ( isn't that the real problem)? *The answer is a lot less straight forward--and was a lot less predictable--than you might think. - Obviously, a lot of existing members moved to the new location. But I knew about that in advance and that alone would NOT have changed the original space for the worse. - Right after committing to the expansion, I found out that about six full-time members were leaving as a group. One of them got his own private office with room for all of them, and they moved there to work together. Six members wouldn't have been the difference, but with the space already having lost a lot of members, the loss of this group who all worked in the same area of the space was noticeable. - I made the commitment to expand at the end of May. I didn't have enough experience at the time to know it, but summer is a killer for coworking in Prague, and my membership shrunk by maybe 30% over those next three months just as a result of the usual seasonal fluxuation. - Because the expansion itself was stressful and time consuming, the quality of the community management at both spaces dropped significantly. I was there half as often as before, and when I was there I had a lot less positive energy to give to the space. People noticed and several people were openly upset by the change in quality of the space/community management. - I raised my prices for new members at the time of the expansion, and in retrospect I think that
Re: [Coworking] How to save a once-successful coworking space if it loses the community that helped make it successful?
Tricky indeed! We ran in to this twice in our history so I can relate. The first time was when we were exploring the idea of opening a second Office Nomads across town for the same reasons you mentioned. With our diluted attention our first space wasn't what it had been and we received our first (and only) negative yelp review. Remember when Susan sent a similar letter out to this group? To weather it then, we pulled back from our expansion plans and ended up scrapping the idea. Turns out that was a good move for us because soon after another floor in our building opened up and we did expand in this location. We doubled our size causing everyone to spread out and then our membership dropped significantly. They call that the empty disco effect. You need a certain amount of activity or people just move along. This time we powered through it but did incur more debt than we originally projected. As for what we did to power through it was really about presence and intention. It's the same kinds of stuff you do to make any space great. The critical component is the community managers. Who is there to know what is going on and make adjustments as needed? Who is there to say good morning or go for a walk with a member if someone needs to just cry it out? Who is helping smooth out the process of becoming a new member and keeping things fresh for the long timers? If the answer is no-one, or you are trying to do it in two locations, then that is your issue. Each space needs it's own team. That is all I have for now. Hope it helps! Jacob -- 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: [Coworking] Abridged summary of coworking@googlegroups.com - 2 updates in 1 topic
Liz...emailed you. Aaron and Kelli Schuit are my son-in-law and daughter who live in Portland. I have worked at Think Tank there. Call me. Where is the San Francisco workshop next week? I can't find confirmation e-mail. Alex, Tony, or Adam? Thanks. Becky On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:13 AM, coworking@googlegroups.com wrote: coworking@googlegroups.com https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email#!forum/coworking/topics Google Groups https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email/#!overview https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email/#!overview Today's topic summary View all topics https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email#!forum/coworking/topics - Professional service co-ops? #14ddc87b0ef0721c_group_thread_0 - 2 Updates Professional service co-ops? http://groups.google.com/group/coworking/t/fc5b1a1fd240dc9?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email Elizabeth Trice liztr...@gmail.com: Jun 09 09:41AM -0700 I own a coworking space in Portland, Maine and we're talking about forming a professional services co-op - we want to both share staffing support, and have a better system for exchanging ...more http://groups.google.com/group/coworking/msg/c9cc361dbeebcb35?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email Ky Ekinci (Office Divvy ™) askpalmco...@gmail.com: Jun 09 09:55AM -0700 Hello Elizabeth, A friend of mine, Phyllis Dealy is working on a similar concept out of New York City. Her twitter handle is @ShinyGirl if you want to see any synergies are there, especially ...more http://groups.google.com/group/coworking/msg/f1cf010a84086492?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email Back to top #14ddc87b0ef0721c_digest_top You received this digest because you're subscribed to updates for this group. You can change your settings on the group membership page https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_source=digestutm_medium=email#!forum/coworking/join . To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. -- *Becky H. Smith, Ed.D., Founder* *Blue Ocean Innovation Center* 1820 W. Lincoln St. Bozeman, MT 59715 406-551-1262 406-579-2849 becky.sm...@vistage.com bsmith...@gmail.com i...@blueoceaninnovationcenter.com *[image: https://view.vistage.com/images/brandcentral/signature/US_Signature.gif]* This e-mail is a private communication and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please note that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the information contained in or attached to this e-mail is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender of the delivery error by replying to this message and then delete this e-mail. Thank you. -- 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 coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
