Re: [Coworking] Rural Coworking: Raise Your Hands!

[Alex Hillman]

Congrats on 6 years! 


--
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On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 4:39 PM, lhtorres  wrote:

> Hello hello all -- it has been a long time. I'm happy to report that Local
> 64 in Montpelier, Vermont is going into our sixth year (we'll turn six on
> 6/4). As we head there, as members of that elite corps of rural coworking
> spaces, I'm keen to know who are compadres are.
>
> Montpelier is the capital of Vermont, with a population just under 8,000
> with a median household income of $62,000. Much of the economic life in our
> town is driven by government and nonprofits. But we do have small and
> growing creative sector, particularly where communications is involved.
>
> Local 64 (http://local64.com) fluctuates between 20 and 25 members, as do
> our bills in the winter and summer. We try to provide both an excellent
> work environment as well as a modest rhythm of events -- mixers, art
> openings, and third party events. We don't really serve entrepreneurs and
> startups -- yet!
>
> Anyone else out there working to build a coworking community in a town of
> 8,000 to 20,000? If so I'd love to hear your story -- and perhaps we can
> connect as a subgroup, to share ideals, experiences, and tactics to sustain
> vibrant spaces in limited markets.
>
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[Coworking] Rural Coworking: Raise Your Hands!

[lhtorres]

Hello hello all -- it has been a long time. I'm happy to report that Local 
64 in Montpelier, Vermont is going into our sixth year (we'll turn six on 
6/4). As we head there, as members of that elite corps of rural coworking 
spaces, I'm keen to know who are compadres are.

Montpelier is the capital of Vermont, with a population just under 8,000 
with a median household income of $62,000. Much of the economic life in our 
town is driven by government and nonprofits. But we do have small and 
growing creative sector, particularly where communications is involved.

Local 64 (http://local64.com) fluctuates between 20 and 25 members, as do 
our bills in the winter and summer. We try to provide both an excellent 
work environment as well as a modest rhythm of events -- mixers, art 
openings, and third party events. We don't really serve entrepreneurs and 
startups -- yet!

Anyone else out there working to build a coworking community in a town of 
8,000 to 20,000? If so I'd love to hear your story -- and perhaps we can 
connect as a subgroup, to share ideals, experiences, and tactics to sustain 
vibrant spaces in limited markets.

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[Coworking] Re: How to market to non-office needing coworkers?

[Kevin Haggerty]

Kevin,

As with the first video, I greatly appreciate the time you put into thinking 
through this and making this for me. Very humbling.

I appreciate and agree with your insight.

The only thing about your comments in regard to the tabs and layout is that our 
site is through Nexudus, so it's a little more difficult to edit certain 
things. I'm actually a web designer myself, and so we could just have our own 
site (and we did for a long time, previously), but the nice thing about the 
Nexudus site is how it integrates with our system, etc. I'll see if I can 
figure out a workaround.

Thanks again!

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[Coworking] Re: Now that pot is legal in many states....

[Jen Thoemke]

Thanks Hector! I appreciate your response. 

On Wednesday, April 11, 2018 at 1:56:51 PM UTC-6, Hector Kolonas wrote:
>
> Hey Jen, just popping in with my own 2 cents.
>
> Although many of the countries I've worked in/with coworking spaces don't 
> have legalised marijuana, and sometimes even the opposite, I think of it as 
> 'alcohol' in a way.
>
> When working from a coworking space in London, the team next to me ran a 
> 24/7 alcohol delivery service, but they were never found to be passed out 
> on their desks after a long night of drinking.
>
> I think if you treat the consumption of pot like you would smoking, 
> excessive drinking or even something silly like hula-hooping, in a fair and 
> community-acceptable way, it should sit nicely with both past and future 
> customers.
>
> (And as the protector of your community, you're allowed to turn away, or 
> redirect customers who wouldn't be the right fit for your space. Just like 
> you might not want a youtube 'vlogger' who pulls impolite pranks on people 
> around them all day, working from within your space; or someone selling 
> timeshares/MLM/etc)
>
> Hope that helps in some way :)
>
> On Monday, 9 April 2018 16:11:56 UTC-4, Jen Thoemke wrote:
>>
>> Hey All!  This might be a sticky topic. I searched for past conversations 
>> about this and couldn't find any.  I have a Coworking space in Colorado 
>> that I opened 3 years ago.  With the legalization of recreational marijuana 
>> I have had a few people that work in the industry apply to become a member. 
>>  I am curious if any of you have run into this and if 1. you have a policy 
>> 2. if it has become an issue. I know there are a lot of opinions out there. 
>> I also know that this group is international and I am not quite sure what 
>> other country's laws are. What I am looking for is if there has been any 
>> impact to your community.  Thanks so much for your help!
>>
>

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[Coworking] Re: How to market to non-office needing coworkers?

[Kevin Whelan — Everspaces]

Hi Kevin,

I created and shared a video a while back as a follow-up to this thread, 
but apparently, it didn't get approved maybe because it looked 
self-promotional or I used a link shortener. 

Anyway - here it is again with no short links - hope it finds you well and 
let me know how it goes!

Video: https://www.useloom.com/share/eaa8670e5ecf4a028d850c94cd7243d6

Kevin C. Whelan
*Everspaces* 



On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 5:49:50 AM UTC-5, Jeannine van der Linden 
wrote:
>
> Our tagline for this is (translated), "Where the space adjusts to fit your 
> work and not the other way around"
>
> It is snappier in Dutch, because "adjusts to fit" is one verb.
>
> Aaanyway, for people who want a bespoke solution we have a "tell us what 
> you need" button which brings them into the email so we can make them a 
> bespoke offer. Often these are the folks who are perfectly happy working 
> from home in general, it is also small and medium sized businesses with 
> expansion plans into the Benelux.
>
> As a subset of that last it is often international businesses with a 
> distributed team.  Also, online retail.
>
> But I think it depends very much on your location, the Netherlands is I 
> gather choice in Europe as a point of entry for import/export and the 
> associated logistics.  So online retail is already looking here.  You have 
> to look at your location to work out who is looking there and if it is a 
> good fit with your own community and offerings.  Your local chamber of 
> commerce will probably have good data on that.  What you want to do for 
> analysis is work out 1) who is already there, then 2)  what barriers to 
> entry exist for their competition, and 3) look at whether you can sensibly 
> sweep any one of those barriers away.
>
>
>
> On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 2:19:15 PM UTC+1, Kevin Haggerty wrote:
>>
>> Since this original post, we've taken all of the feedback from all of you 
>> to heart, and we've made significant changes.
>>
>> You'll be glad to know that we've narrowed our membership options down to 
>> 3. It was hard, but I think it was needed and will be fruitful.
>>
>> I'm still curious about those of you who have been successful in selling 
>> those "in-between"/hot desk memberships.
>>
>> What's been a strategy that has worked to promote that? Who have you 
>> specifically targeted and how have you targeted them? Is there a specific 
>> niche or industry you've noticed are most interested in this kind of 
>> membership?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>

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Re: [Coworking] Re: We are setting up a podcast studio. Any advice?

[Alex Hillman]

Trevor's advice is rock solid. You can go CRAZY with recording equipment,
but a lot of it comes down to your goals. I also have the weird perspective
of having had a brief career in audio engineering when I was a lot younger,
so I learned a lot about how to suss out the best on a budget.

We don't have a dedicated studio but we do have all of the gear available
in one of our meeting rooms, which we've also given some light (but
essentially invisible) acoustic treatment.

We decided to keep it simple and focus on people recording 1 or 2 people
max (but the same setup would be easy to upgrade to 4x)

- This Tascam 2x2 Audio Interface

is
$150 USD. It takes approx 60 seconds for any mere mortal to learn even if
they've never used a piece of audio gear. The quality is very good for the
price, you can get slightly better for more but not that much better
without spending way more.
- We got a pair of these Shure 87A's

and they are incredible. You want the *super-cardioid* style because they
are VERY directional, basically only picking up the person directly in
front of the microphone. This removes crosstalk of your people being picked
up on each others' microphones, and even more importantly, makes it so you
don't need an isolation booth to keep the outside world out of your audio. Good
microphones make everything else easier. We've had ours for 3ish years now,
there might be a newer option out there but I'm very very very happy with
these microphones.
- Basic XLR cables to go between the Tascam and the microphones are pretty
cheap, you can get whatever Amazon recommends.
- Since we use the room for things other than recording, we learned that
the spring loaded boom stands are in the way the rest of the timeand
frankly the cheaper ones fall apart quickly anyway. More recently we opted
for tabletop microphone stands like these

.
- Get pop filters
.
Trust me.
- This is a "nice to have" but a good idea: we got one of these headphone
splitters

so
that at *least *the host could put on a pair of headphones on to listen in
live and make sure the audio quality is good. Some guests like wearing
studio headphones too. Many don't (it's weird AF to listen to yourself in
real time as you talk and takes practice getting used to). I like having
both options and for $7 yeah.

I also really like the ATR2100's as a microphone to keep in my backpack for
doing things like intros and ad reads, but for the studio I wanted
something that would make editing easier and better mics 

[Coworking] Re: We are setting up a podcast studio. Any advice?

[Trevor Twining]

Hey Craig,

There's no easy options here, just trade-offs. So you're going to need to 
understand your intended use more. 

Our first studio fit in a rubbermaid box and cost less than 500 Canadian 
dollars. We added things over time as people expressed interest. Now we 
have mobile kit and a studio kit. We just make the room available to our 
subscribers. No extra charge. First come, first served. Treating the room 
also made it better suited to hosting and participating in webinars, 
conferences, and video recording. So we also got a light kit, a green 
screen, and now we're getting into more video work as well. 

Add some versatility to your mic setup by going with the ATR 2100s. You'll 
get a great-sounding mic that works in rooms with some noise, but can also 
just plug into a computer using USB. This makes it easy for someone using 
the studio solo to just hook up direct. 
https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATR2100-USB-Cardioid-Dynamic-Microphone/dp/B004QJOZS4/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics=UTF8=1523530223=1-1=atr2100

A mixer will make it easy for people just getting started to use the audio, 
but you'll need an audio interface rather than a mixer if you want each mic 
to be on a separate track. A mixer will take each of those tracks and 'mix' 
it down to two stereo tracks, which then goes into the computer's typical 
sound card. An audio interface takes each input and brings it directly into 
the computer. This means you can enhance each track independently. The 
trade-off is that it's more complicated to edit the audio in some ways 
(more than we have time for here). The long and the short of it is that 
producers will all have different expectations, and you'll need to be ready 
to cater to them and explain how your setup works so that they can decide 
if it's suitable. We found that people with existing shows were already set 
in their ways about how they wanted their setup to operate. One way we 
moved past that at first was we targeted people who had no podcast 
experience and helped them get started. So our gear was the first gear they 
used.

Lastly, you're going to get more bang for your buck by spending some of 
that budget on sound treating the room. How's that set up? 


Happy to assist further if I'm able.


On Monday, April 9, 2018 at 7:26:34 PM UTC-4, Craig Baute - Creative 
Density Coworking wrote:
>
> I just had a coworking friend from Charlotte stop by and he mentioned how 
> much their podcasting studio is adding energy to his space. So I talked 
> around and I can feel some of the same excitment building in our community 
> when I bring it up here.
> So we are converting an interior office into a podcast studio. I want it 
> to have professional equipment that is easy to use. This isn't going to be 
> the highest end but good for business to make quality podcasts that sound 
> great. We are doing this for a few reasons:
>
>
>1. The community wants one - granted not many but three members would 
>use it
>2. Offices aren't exciting to me. 
>3. Competition is high in Denver for offices so this interior one sits 
>up 2 to 3 months out of the year and doesn't pull in much money, $500, 
> even 
>when it is rented.
>4. It's new way to get people to create is fun and is a driver to 
>building a community
>5. Anytime you give your community a tool to create it builds an 
>opportunity to bond over.
>6. It should bring in revenue than the office. I'm hoping for 50% 
>higher.
>
> I'm coming at this from a fairly naive perspective right now so I would 
> love some feedback. Here is what I'm thinking. The podcasting studio will 
> cost me around $700 in new furniture, purchased from IKEA. I'm looking into 
> this equipment which will cost me about $1500.
>
> 4 of these mic set ups, 
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Rode-Procaster-Booming-Kit-cable/dp/B00D390QZO/ref=pd_sbs_267_5?_encoding=UTF8_rd_i=B00D390QZO_rd_r=DZAKK8A0ZPHPCEQ2QSS0_rd_w=mr88U_rd_wg=fpqG9=1=DZAKK8A0ZPHPCEQ2QSS0
>
> 4 channel mixer
>
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EDRUQXC/?coliid=I9QYQX1O17AXM=PMLMWDDYP2ZY=0_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
>
> *Does anyone have any experience with a podcasting studio, things to try, 
> pitfalls to avoid, etc?*
>

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