Re: [Coworking] Need advice! We're building a page for growing spaces to look for coworking consultants easily!

[Jacob Sayles]

Good timing!  My wife Katie and I have our own coworking consultancy
business and we were talking about proposing some kind of Coworking
Consultants Unite talk in the unconference portion of the upcoming GCUC in
Denver.  Working together is my tool of choice when it comes to getting the
word out about our individual offerings and in helping us all succeed.  I'm
keen on getting this conversation as big as possible.  To that end I just
created a #consultants channel on the Coworking Slack Channel
<https://join.slack.com/t/coworkingleadership/shared_invite/enQtNDM0MTM4OTYxOTQwLTliMTYwNzdjYTgzOGU3ZDJjYmRmZGYyY2RlMzI1ZjQxZWU2ZTE3MWM1MmFmZGY5MDM2MzQwMTZmZDc2NzExMjg>.
What's next?

Jacob Sayles
Technical Director
Kanawha Design Studio
https://kanawha.design


On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 8:11 AM  wrote:

> Hi friends of the community!
>
> After running our coworking publication coworkingresources.org for quite
> some time now, we have received a good amount of feedback from our
> community that they find it *hard to look for expert advice* from
> coworking consultants objectively.
> The fact is, it is *super hard to find coworking consultants online*, and
> most of the time people depend on word of mouth or referrals. That alone,
> however, may not be the most suited to your needs nor the best, objective
> source.
>
> We decided to build an *unbiased platform that lists coworking consultant
> *with comprehensive information like their expertise and types of
> services they provide, as well as provide a review system where old clients
> can leave comments for the community to understand their services better.
> Right now, we have about 15 coworking consultants from the US and Europe
> who are willing to work together with us, and write expert pieces of
> content for the community to learn tips and tricks from.
>
> To make this page as helpful and unbiased as possible, what we need help
> from this community is an *introduction to more coworking consultants*,
> precisely because it is so hard to find them solely based on the internet.
>
> We want to build out this page with you guys, and let you be as involved
> as possible in this attempt at helping spaces at are starting out to get
> the help they need.
>
> Moving forward, we'll keep posting here as we build the page from mockup
> to fruition. Stay tuned, we're so so excited too!
>
> Please help us!
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: What is your favorite coworking management software?

[Jacob Sayles]

A topic close to my heart although I don't like to pick favorites.  Thank
you Jeannine for throwing out Hector's Big Bodacious List
<https://inztinkt.com/big-bodacious-list-of-coworking-software/>.

I've been working on an open source project, Nadine
<http://nadineproject.org>, for 10 years or so and I'm pretty fond if it.
My dream is to develop it in to a Drupal/Wordpress like platform with a
strong collaboration between a participating spaces.  It is a completely
different approach to the market than the many great hosted product out
there.  If anyone is passionate about open source software and excited to
explore this, please reach out.  I'm a free agent these days and
considering my next steps.

Jacob Sayles
Creative Technologist
Kanawha Design Studio
https://kanawha.design


On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 5:32 AM Jeannine van der Linden <
flexkantoorkame...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hiya!
>
> Here is a crowdsourced list that might be helpful to you, it covers I
> think everything in the world. And if it doesn;t, you can add what you
> don't see. It hasn a sorting function as well which is helpful.
>
> https://inztinkt.com/big-bodacious-list-of-coworking-software/
>
> There is also a Facebook group for questions about coworking software,
> once you have some: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coworkingsoftware/
>
> I have tried Nexudus and was thrilled with it, I think it is the most
> powerful software available. However its usability and accessibility are
> not quite as thrilling, and for several of my community managers the
> interface was a hard no, they would not even log in.  We had some startup
> issues as well, when I was considering hiring a dev to install it, I
> decided it was too much work for me.
>
> I have tried Cobot and I love the product and the company, but much of
> what I need is CRM and coworker related processes standardized for
> regulatory reasons, and I was not able to do that with Cobot.
>
> I talked to the folks at Office R, and they agreed with me that their
> product was not suitable for what I need, which I think deserves a
> compliment.  Well done, team Office R  :-)
>
> De Kamer which I run  is a network of spaces in the Netherlands, where
> English is a second language, and so we are a little complicated.  The
> problems I have to solve are unusual; I am not sure my personal experience
> will be helpful because of that, and it is why I included the links above.
>
> I went with Zapfloor HQ, we are, just like Joshua, just rolling it out and
> so I can;t give you great feedback in that sense; but they are so far
> stellar in terms of understanding my needs and setting the system up to
> accommodate them.  They are the only ones in the industry as far as I can
> tell who are aware of the requirements for onboarding under the new KYC
> regulations and prepared to automate that process to the extent that it can
> be automated.  This was important to me.
>
> Will report back as things progress.  :-)
>
>
> On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 3:01:34 AM UTC+1, ir...@plazida.com
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi colleagues!
>>
>> I am trying to automate my coworking management and would like to choose
>> the best software available. Which one would you recommend and why?
>> Thank you!
>> Irene
>>
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Re: [Coworking] US Operators: Is your space and/or membership doing anything to support furloughed federal workers?

[Jacob Sayles]

At Office Nomads we are giving memberships to furloughed workers.

https://officenomads.com/2019/01/18/shut-down-not-shut-out/

Jacob

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On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 4:43 AM Carolyn Cirillo 
wrote:

> Putting together a story for Allwork on communities that are reaching out
> to furloughed workers.
>
> Are you offering day passes? coffee? other support?
>
> If so, email me at caro...@carolyncirillo.com
>
> Thanks,
>
> Carolyn
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: Help - with new website

[Jacob Sayles]

I've done a lot of this kind of work and understand this process can be
frustrating.  I haven't run Nexudus specifically but I do know they have a
solid crew and are good people.  Let's start by giving them (and everyone)
the benefit of the doubt and look at what it is you are trying to do.  A
custom website, like the one you are describing, runs about $20-40K
depending on how fancy you are talking about.  I don't know how your
interaction went down but what I've seen the most is people assume the
software company should cover this and make it up (and then some) with your
ongoing business.  That just doesn't pencil out.  Even if they jacked up
your monthly fee by $100, which gets people very upset, it would take about
25 years to break even.  Nexudus isn't in the custom website business so
they are not the right people to talk with.  +1 for the suggestion you find
a developer you like to work with.  I bet someone in your community will be
happy to help.

Jacob Sayles
Creative Technologist
Kanawha Design Studio
https://kanawha.design
cell:  (604) 240-2780


On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 5:21 AM Nicolas Kint  wrote:

> Hi Dorian,
>
> Happy to help where I can. What is it exactly you'd like to achieve by
> building your website on top of Nexudus? Are you specifically looking at:
>
>- automating your content management (locations, photos, spaces,
>pricing,...)
>- integrating the lead generation processes (tour bookings, requests
>for quotes,...)
>- selling meeting room space (incl. payments)
>- offering community tools such as suggested by Jana (member front end)
>
> Cheers, Nic
>
>
> On Friday, January 4, 2019 at 2:09:39 PM UTC+1, Jana Greer wrote:
>>
>> Hi! What was the negative feedback from Nexudus on your integration?
>>
>> I personally don’t have experience with doing that integration , but do
>> have experience with Nexudus.
>> I believe you have to hire your own developer to integrate your website
>> and Nexudus. It’s not something they (Nexudus) does for you. Hiring a
>> developer, they can integrate and change things for you to customize it.
>> That is a big value in this type of software, as well as all the automated
>> billing, and member front end for community.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jana
>>
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Re: [Coworking] Member Business Licenses

[Jacob Sayles]

Yikes!  This falls in the category of people being confused about what
coworking is and what it isn't.  Have you heard the term
"transderivational search"?  This is where if you only know large farm
animals and you see a dog for the first time you miscategorize it as a
small cow.  Harmless misunderstanding until someone tries to milk your dog.


I suspect all you need to do is respond rationally and try to get more
people involved, which you are doing.  The suggestion of a lawyer is a good
one.  I doubt the law is so black and white and this will quickly become
apparent with a little more extensive review.  It's easy for her to assert
that this is your problem but that's just her trying to take a shortcut.
Is she threatening any specific action against you?

Jacob Sayles
Creative Technologist
Kanawha Design Studio
https://kanawha.design
cell:  (604) 240-2780


On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 5:18 AM Jana Greer  wrote:

> I am sorry you are dealing with that. I would consult an attorney. You are
> offering a membership and are not responsible for how they operate their
> own businesses. Whoever is going after the members can go after their
> businesses not you.
> I have had experience with regulatory organizations coming in to check on
> a business—that wasn’t doing business according to the way it should but it
> did not affect our space.
>
> Cheers,
> Jana
>
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Re: [Coworking] VIdeo Conferencing Hardware

[Jacob Sayles]

Alex touches on an often overlooked element of coworking vs a standard
office.  In typical office environment the IT department controls the
laptops as well as the meeting room equipment.  In a coworking space that
is not the case.  Anything that requires extra software to install is an
extra step members  will need to do and extra help your staff is going to
need to help them with.  While it may seem "easy" when you do it once, it's
more like death by a thousand cuts.  And of course there are always members
that bring in an old dusty laptop with outdated software and you have to
find a way to support that as well.

I had the opportunity to buy fancy systems and instead opted to put a nice
camera on the TV and extend USB + HDMI to the middle of the table.  This
leaves the door open for any system they want to run on their computer.

Jacob Sayles
Collaborative Systems Designer
Kanawha Design Studio
https://kanawha.design


On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 5:09 AM Alex Hillman 
wrote:

> I would strongly challenge the idea that this is a "must."
>
> It's something to break, to maintain, to replace, and to worry about
> training people to use. We've tried several "meeting room" boxes and have
> sent them all back in favor of Zoom and Zoom rooms for our own stuff and
> letting everyone bring their own.
>
> Plus, like you said, everybody has their own platform preferences and
> requirements. So whatever you choose, you can expect a large % of people to
> NOT use it.
>
>
> Choosing hardware and systems like this makes more sense for an office who
> has their own space, but far less so for shared resources.
>
> The two most high value improvements I've seen for video conferencing is
> adjustable table lighting to help people look nicer on camera, and
> dedicated Ethernet cables and adapters to ensure people can and do plug
> their computers in for the most stable internet connection possible.
>
>
>
> -Alex
> On Nov 19, 2018, 4:35 PM -0500, Carl Sullivan ,
> wrote:
>
> Hey Guys,
>
> In the 7 years, we have been running coworking, I have noticed a shift
> from meeting spaces that have the optional extra video conferencing system
> to it being a must in almost any meeting room that is 3 people or more.
>
> The challenge is selecting the right video conferencing hardware that can
> support a wide range of solutions since every company who is a member of
> our space has a different software stack they prefer.
>
> SO... what are your recommendations for video conferencing hardware? If
> you would like to expand to your complete physical tech for a meeting
> space, I am also very interested in that. And what programs do you notice
> your members using most often for video conferencing?
>
> Carl
>
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Re: [Coworking] Credit Card Processors and Gateways

[Jacob Sayles]

I was very excited when I found Helcim.  Weird name but I really like how
they operate.  They don't have a pushy sales team and do have really great
APIs for integration.  Good rates too.  https://www.helcim.com

Jacob

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On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:59 AM Brad Attig 
wrote:

> We're pretty happy with the Stripe integrate but interested in what others
> are doing.
>
> Brad Attig
> CEO at Foundry Collective
> Phone  541.812.1911
> <541.812.1911+?utm_source=WiseStamp_medium=email_term=_content=_campaign=signature>
>
> Email  b...@corvallisfoundry.com
> Website  www.corvallisfoundry.com
> 
>
>
> 
> 
> 
> Learn about the Foundry Startup Resource Fair Sept 13th 4 - 7 PM Corvallis
> Odd Fellows
> 
>
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:24 AM,  wrote:
>
>> I am using Nexudus and will be collecting all membership fees via online
>> processing. I understand I need a gateway and a credit card processor. My
>> bank wants to do it all :) Of course they do. They say they match all
>> prices and my deposits will be available in 24 hours. Is this standard or
>> an extra benefit?
>>
>> My bank would prefer to use Authorize.net as the gateway. Can I do
>> better? Nexudus integrates with most processors.
>>
>> How do you handle your processing?
>>
>> I would like to figure this out upfront instead of having to correct it
>> later.
>>
>> Thanks for your response!
>>
>> Brian Burgett
>> Queen City Coworking
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: WiFi HW recommendations

[Jacob Sayles]

I'm a fan of both UniFi and Ruckus.  At Office Nomads, we use UniFi and at
312 Main we use Ruckus.  One key thing with UniFi is to get the PRO access
points and run a controller.  You can buy one of theirs, or run it on a
machine of your own.  99% of the time when I hear complaints about UniFi
it's because they are using the cheaper 2.4ghz only APs with no controller.


Jacob

---
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On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 8:58 AM, Glen Ferguson 
wrote:

> I should pile on as a UniFi fan too. Want a separate guest network with 1
> hour free for member meetings with clients, and an option for daypass users
> to pay online via Stripe to get access? No problem, that's built-in.
> There's even a phone/tablet app to manage the network, which comes in handy
> when I forget to turn on our Events WiFi network for special events.
>
> Tying in with Tony B's post a couple days ago, I just set up UniFi to send
> an email when a member device connects to the network. Zapier cleans up the
> email and puts the results in an AirTable-like service. Now I have stats so
> I have answers to questions like "How many people are here on an average
> day?" and "What are your busiest/slowest days of the week?" and I don't
> have to do manual head counts to get the numbers.
>
> Adding to Alex's comments, the Security Gateway also has a RADIUS server
> built-in which you can get access to via the controller or Cloud Key.
>
>
> *Glen Ferguson*
> Phone: 301-732-5165
> Email: g...@coworkfrederick.com
> Website: https://www.coworkfrederick.com
> Address: 122 E Patrick St, Frederick, MD 21701
> 
> 
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 11:34 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski  > wrote:
>
>> Unifi has changed my life. I do an even simpler setup in my 2,500 ft2
>> spread over 4 floors. We have just 3 of the unifi AP pros sprinkled around
>> and they go to a PoE switch (off brand) I got for $50 on amazon. I don't
>> use any of the analytics or dashboard or cloud stuff unless I'm adding
>> another access point. They JUST WORK. Any issues we have with our internet
>> trace back to comcast ALWAYS. The unifi APs never fail. Sometimes I unplug
>> them and replug them every few months just b/c and that seems to keep us
>> humming along.
>>
>> I just ordered another 3 to add in for our upcoming expansions and I love
>> knowing that I'll be able to set them up and have them going in about 10
>> minutes/AP. I am as non-technical as you can get.
>>
>> Angel
>>
>> On Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 6:07:43 AM UTC-6, Ramesh Agarwal wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello Everyone,
>>>
>>> New to the group but I saw similar posts earlier and hence posting.
>>>
>>> I am setting up a 2000 sqft space in Bangalore and I am lost trying to
>>> get an optimum WiFi solutions for the space. The space can accommodate a
>>> max of 45 people so I am thinking a total of 90 Wifi devices (laptops and
>>> phones) will hook on to the network. I intend to put 3 access points, a
>>> router and a switch (have about 16 ports of LAN) to run the network. If I
>>> can get recommendations on the equipment to use that would be really
>>> appreciated.
>>>
>>> Also there are some managed WiFi solutions that are available (
>>> http://griggi.com/) but would like to get feedback on the usefulness of
>>> such solutions and feedback if anyone is using it.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Ramesh
>>>
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Re: [Coworking] Network, Server, Authentication Recommendations

[Jacob Sayles]

Chris,

It sounds like you need dedicated IT help and I don't think a remote
consultant will cut it.  I know that's a tall order but what you are asking
for is extensive.  It's too much to expect Nexudus (or any software
platform) to pick up the slack or that you can just hire someone to build
it and then it will hum along without maintenance.  I know most spaces do
not have an IT person and run in to similar issues.  The best strategy I've
seen to operate without help is to greatly simplify things.  That means
giving up on a lot of the things you are asking for here even though they
are pretty straight forward.  But hosting a dinner for 200 people is
straight forward... if you are a catering company.

When I get more settled up here in Vancouver I'd like to pull together a
collective of IT professionals helping Coworking spaces.  If anyone is
interested, please reach out.

Jacob

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On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 4:02 PM, Chris Adams  wrote:

> Hello, my name is Chris Adams. My business partners and I recently opened
> a coworking space in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I'm looking for some
> advice on network setup. Any suggested companies or people that have an
> understanding of coworking and/or are recommended by space owners are
> welcome as well. A little bio: We've been open since July 2017, and I have
> tried multiple solutions found online without finding the solution that I
> believe is right for me. I'm hoping to get advice or information from other
> owners and space managers to help determine our space's precise needs, and
> we are looking to hire for services and/or professional advice. However, we
> are a young company, and I'm trying to waste as little money as possible
> and avoid paying for things I do not need.
>
> *Our Current Setup:*
>
>- Nexudus Software to manage users, billing, etc.
>- Mikrotik router with hotspot for Nexudus wifi checkin
>- 1 Managed Ubiquiti Unifi 24-port Switch
>- 1 Managed Ubiquiti Unifi PoE Switch
>- 4 SIP VoIP Polycom Desktop Phones
>- 1 SIP VoIP Polycom Soundstation 5000 Phone
>- Xerox WorkCentre 6515 DN MFP connected via LAN
>- One on-site Ubuntu server
>- Ezeep for printer management w/ Nexudus integration
>- Five VLANs (all w/ dedicated subnet & DHCP):
>   - Our admin VLAN w/ dedicated SSID
>   - Hotspot VLAN w/ dedicated SSID
>   - Client1 Admin VLAN w/ dedicated SSID
>   - Client1 Staff VLAN w/ dedicated SSID
>   - Client 2 VLAN w/ wired ethernet access only
>
> *Current Setup Notes:*
>
>- I hired an IT engineering firm based in Austin to help remotely
>because I was having problems with the MikroTik/Ubiquiti combo (i.e. Unifi
>software completely stopped working after a couple of weeks, MikroTik
>hotspot was buggy) and they fixed those issues at a pretty hefty price.
>They hinted that they though my network setup was unusual, but I wanted to
>be sure of exactly what needs to change before hiring them (or someone
>else) to assist with the process.
>- I have a Unifi Security Gateway which was replaced by the MikroTik.
>USG was purchased before I chose Nexudus as my management system.
>- All users are running either Windows 10 (desktop & mobile), Mac OSX,
>and have various mobile devices.
>- I chose VLAN setup because my clients brought their own
>printers/copiers and wanted to be able to share the printers and files with
>each other without the risk of unauthorized access.
>- The MikroTik/Nexudus Hotspot is set up to block traffic between
>clients connected to that subnet. I could program everything EXCEPT the
>Polycom SoundStation to bypass hotspot authentication and connect to the
>internet on the hotspot network. I did this to prevent users from
>connecting their devices directly to outgoing ethernet ports in the phones
>to bypass hotspot authentication.
>- I have no ability to track and charge for copies or received faxes
>on the WorkCentre. I mistakenly thought the model I purchased supported
>document codes and accounting features. It does have user management with
>very limited permission options, a very disorganized event log, and support
>for common authentication protocols such as LDAP.
>
> *Plans and Goals:*
>
>- We're switching from Nexudus to Proximity Space soon, which will
>eliminate the eZeep integration and various other features built into
>Nexudus. I have two old Microsoft Server boxes with decent storage, ram,
>and processors that I would like to use for file and print servers (with
>central user authentication, group policies (shared folder size limits,
>print limits and policies, etc.), and a CRM.
>- I think the server should be Linux based due to the required
>compatibility with Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and mobile device clients. I
>

Re: [Coworking] Unisex Toilets

[Jacob Sayles]

I think unisex toilets are important.  In many subtle ways it reinforces
the sense that we are all in this together which is a good foundation to
build on.  The presence of a few grumbles does not mean any idea is a bad
idea and even further from the truth that "the other way" is the right way.



Jacob

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On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 6:40 AM, Harald Amelung  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Am 03.05.17 um 15:35 schrieb Angel Kwiatkowski:
> > Can you clarify? Are these large bathrooms with multiple stalls or just
> single user rooms?
>
> Sure. These are separate single user rooms, each with a toilet and a
> small sink. We have three of them in our space.
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: How RFID reader writer works?

[Jacob Sayles]

At Office Nomads we fully integrated our access control system with our
member management system (Nadine) although we chose not to use RFID for
checking in.  We've made it very simple to walk up to the iPad at the
front, find your name by first letter, and sign in.  Slowing down the
process has many advantages.  It gives us a second to say good morning and
chat a little bit, and we can display important information on the screen
like an expired credit card, or an upcoming event.

Where it is integrated is in alerting the team if someone came in on the
weekend, when we don't have staff, and forgot to sign in.  We then talk
with the member the next time we are all in the space and let them know
they need to sign in on the weekends as well.  Sure we could just sign them
in, but the human interaction is invaluable and there are many cases when
just using the door shouldn't result in a charge.

As for the Pi, we did something similar to bridge the cloud gap although I
used a BeagleBone.  Same concept, but I've found the BeagleBone to more
stable in the long run.  I used a Pi to build a custom door controller for
a hotel down in San Francisco and it's not as robust as I'd like it to be.
Then again the Pi that runs our twitter alarm has been up for a few years.
Your milage may vary.

Jacob

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On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 6:56 AM, Jacob Jay  wrote:

> Whilst PINs are easy, RFID is much more suitable, and a little plus is
> that you can let users scan an existing card instead of carrying an extra
> one (or remembering a PIN).
>
> Unfortunately I'm frankly surprised that nobody has apparently developed a
> solution that covers all the RFID use cases. Several of the hosted apps do
> have their own options for using RFID cards, Cobot for example integrates
> with PC-connected USB RFID readers for logging/checkin (
> https://www.cobot.me/guides/rfid-swipe-card-check-in), and if your
> management app has an API (e.g. Nexudus), you can hack together a quick
> script to poll your own RFID reader and query/update that app.
>
> The most flexible system is to connect an RFID reader to a $20 RaspberryPi
> board computer or similar which can even be embedded in the wall near a
> lock to control it too. This runs a small program ('script') that receives
> the card number, checks it (e.g. against a provided list of IDs, or by
> querying your hosted management app) and then (optionally) uses a relay
> also connected to the RaspberryPi to provide current to the lock. (It gets
> quite complicated if you have multiple doors.) At the same time as querying
> the validity of the ID it can of course also check the user in or at least
> log that they used the card at that time. Here's a (technical) example of a
> slightly better setup like this with feedback LCD.
> https://www.hackster.io/nile-mittow/rfid-front-door-access-control-88d7cd
>
> The complexity of the script that acts as the controller for the RFID
> reader depends entirely on what it is being integrated with, how IDs are
> provided, and how you set feedback such as when expired. Pretty darned easy
> just to read and write to text/spreadhseet files though.
>
> The disadvantage of validating against a hosted application is that it is
> both slower to provide feedback/unlock which leads to a common scenario of
> multiple checkins or a checkin in followed by a checkout, and requires
> internet as mentioned by Matt. Both issues can however be avoided.
>
> For access control, most commercial door locks are fail-secure electric
> strikes which open/release when a current is applied to them (the buzz
> sound). Any system that grants access is simply arbitrating between an
> input (RFID/PIN) and the current to the bolt. Often such doors only have
> the access restriction on the outside with a simple release push button on
> the inside which gives current to the lock directly. Adding an additional
> controller or replacing one, is thus as simple as wiring the lock's current
> input cable to the controllers current output. Same principle is used with
> residential interphone systems.
>
> Unless not having 100% accuracy is fine, I think that an RFID checkin
> system when not also linked to access control is unhelpful, but even still
> if multiple people arrive at the same time one slips the door behind the
> other without swiping, you'd still need device/WiFi checkin to achieve 100%
> coverage.
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: What does everyone use for checking users in?

[Jacob Sayles]

With all things it's about balance and striking the right balance between a
number of different factors.  At Office Nomads we do have members sign in,
using an iPad at the front that's hooked in to Nadine, our management
system.  We tie this with membership packages that don't do hourly, only
daily which means you don't need to sign out.

This creates an important touch point when members arrive.  It funnels
people to the front and slows them down just enough that we can catch them
if there is something we need to talk about.

In general, I'm not a fan of automating everything as it removes
opportunities to talk with members.  But of course it's about balance.
I've seen it work, only because other touch points were introduced and
emphasized such as around the coffee/printing areas, or with better team
mingling practices.

312 Main, up here in Vancouver, is going to be much larger
(understatement), with multiple points of entry/exit.   Scale shifts the
balance so we have a lot of work to do to make adjustments to what we've
learned over the years.

Jacob

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking <
baut...@gmail.com> wrote:

> We never use a check-in system because members don't like it. I find it to
> a barrier that reminds them that this is more of a tracation and ruins the
> flow of them just coming in, working, and thinking of it as their own
> space. I know there is a temptation to collect data as much as possible but
> reallly just noting busy day, average day, slow day will give you enough
> data to detect patterns. Don't over complicate it.
>
> If you want a door access system that is different. I'm becoming a fan of
> Proximity Space.
>
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Re: [Coworking] Managing email in a coworking environment

[Jacob Sayles]

This looks very interesting Andy!  How easy would it be to integrate with
Nadine ?  Are you open to integrations like this?


Jacob

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 5:48 AM, Andy Soell  wrote:

> Hi all! Just wanted to drop a quick note about a project that I've been
> working on that I think some people here might be interested in—
>
> I've been helping operate The Salt Mines  coworking
> community in Columbus, Ohio for the past several years, and in the time
> since we opened our doors things have grown to the point where it's more
> than a single person can manage. Our community has done an awesome job of
> stepping up and helping out with tasks like giving tours, doing the dishes
> (most of the time), and making sure new members feel welcome, but one area
> that we've struggled with is making the process of addressing incoming
> emails a collaborative effort.
>
> To that end, we've been slowly building a new product to help out with
> this sort of thing. It's called *Saffron
> *, and it's something I definitely
> would have wanted to know about when we first started out. It's essentially
> a shared inbox application that you can open up to some of your trusted
> community members, where you can discuss and assign out incoming email
> before hitting the "reply" button. There are already a few other tools out
> there like this—and some of them are actually really great—but what makes
> Saffron different is that we're trying to structure the pricing around the 
> *volume
> of email handled*, and *not on the number of users* in the system. This
> way you can bring in your whole community to help field questions about how
> you do coworking, schedule tours, and generally let your members'
> enthusiasm shine through.
>
> We're just now rolling it out to a few groups who are interested in
> helping us refine how things work, and I wanted to see if this sounded
> interesting to any of my coworking brothers and sisters. You can find out
> more about it at https://saffron.email/for-coworking or just let me know
> if you'd like a personal tour and I'd be happy to show it off in a screen
> sharing session.
>
> Thanks all!
>
> Andy Soell // The Salt Mines
>
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Re: [Coworking] Does your coworking space use a firewall?

[Jacob Sayles]

I've set up a number of firewalls for spaces and usually go with PFSense.

On Thursday, October 20, 2016, Alex Hillman 
wrote:

> Jon Markwell has a great (and thorough!) article about how they set up
> internet at his spot.
>
> http://jonathanmarkwell.com/2014/11/22/best-coworking-wifi/
>
> Since reading it, we've switched everything to the hardware/software setup
> he recommended and it's been *awesome*.
>
> Besides basic firewall defaults built into the gateway, we aren't blocking
> anything specific. It's a HUGE drag on support (and a really crappy member
> experience) when folks go to use something and it doesn't work but they
> don't know why.
>
> Instead, we focus on making issues easy to spot and diagnose. In our most
> recent move, we added some new Unifi hardware, notably their 24 port switch
> and their USG router/gateway.
>
> The best part of using the gateway is that now I have this amazing
> dashboard that I can access from anywhere, including my mobile phone:
>
>
>
> If we're having any sort of network issues, I (or my team) can easily see
> who's potentially causing the issue and go talk to them.
>
> 99 times out of 100, the person who is doing something that causes issues
> on the network has no idea that what they're doing is causing trouble, or
> even more often, what they're doing is part of their work so BLOCKING them
> entirely would be counterproductive. File syncs over dropbox, Youtube
> uploads, even scheduled cloud backups among a few other things come to
> mind. Other times they just forgot to turn a program off that's sucking up
> tons of bandwidth.
>
> Unifi's Gateway also has a new feature called "Smart Queues" which we've
> been using for a few weeks and has all but entirely fixed these kinds of
> problems for us automatically.
>
> A single Unifi Gateway + 6 of their Unifi AP Pro wireless access points
> are supporting 100-120 people daily without breaking a sweat.
>
> We built some extra monitoring tools (mostly because our internet
> provider, Comcast, is f'ing terrible but we don't have other options) that
> we will be documenting and open sourcing very soon, along with a more
> detailed schematic, shopping list, and config suggestions.
>
> At this point, I wouldn't fool around with any hardware except for Unifi.
> They've given the enterprise tools a massive run for their money at a
> fraction of the cost, and give the most flexible and friendly tools for
> managing that my non-technical team members are comfortable helping folks
> with basic network issues.
>
> -Alex
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
> Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org
> Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com
> My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 2:34 PM,  > wrote:
>
>> Hoping to get some input on cable Internet setups. Specifically, do you
>> use a firewall as part of your system? What was the decision-making
>> behind that? We're thinking we might be better off without one, or at least
>> to make it an opt-in.
>>
>> Thanks for sharing,
>> Alison Klejna, Click Workspace, Northampton, MA
>>
>> --
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Re: [Coworking] Re: Standing desks

[Jacob Sayles]

Nice build!

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 6:40 AM, Aaron Mader  wrote:

> I ended up building my own sit/stand desk. The ability to switch easily
> from sitting to standing makes me SO much more likely to change up my
> position through the day. I can't overstate it.
> Here's a link to the build: http://imgur.com/a/FWcxT
>
> It's a fairly simple build.. constructing the desk just took a day.
> Finishing it on the other hand.. that took several days.. but maybe that's
> just because I didn't know what I was doing. If you wanted to build 6 of
> these, it wouldn't take you much longer than building one.
>
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Re: [Coworking] Standing desks

[Jacob Sayles]

I wrote about "standing desks on the cheap
" over
at Ikea Hacker way back when (2011) and someone even added a variation
.  We
have 9 or 10 of these around the office.  They don't work well in the
middle of the room but if you have spaces against a wall they work great.
We have a few 1/2 walls that are nice as members can still look out across
the room.

Jacob

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Carolyn Cirillo 
wrote:

> If anyone is considering adding standing desks to their space, I've been
> doing a lot of research on the topic.
>
> Here's the first of a few blog posts on the subject:
> http://bit.ly/25LXaDa
>
> Best,
>
> Carolyn
>
>
>*718 283 4025
> <718%20283%204025>*
> *   caro...@carolyncirillo.com
> *
>
> *marketing research | strategy | content*
> * for design driven companies*
> *   in interior environments*
>  *carolyncirillo.com
> *
> * LINKED IN
>  | 
> INSTAGRAM
>  | PINTEREST
>  | UNTETHERED
> *
>
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Re: [Coworking] Has anyone else used RoomZilla for conf rooms/phone rooms?

[Jacob Sayles]

We have not used RoomZilla as we rather like our Flintstone system for
reasons you've heard me go on and on about.  That said, I'm interested to
see how your trial of roomzilla goes as I'm always looking for solutions
that are simple and human focused.  Too many things that get "fixed" by
technology are worse off then if they were left alone in the first place.

I hear you saying some variation of that in your question here. If you are
interested, it may be useful collaboration to work on Nadine together.
That's the platform we've been working on quietly at home for years now.
Yes, my first paragraph was talking about how I'm skeptical of technology
and my second paragraph is talking about the platform we've built.  It's
not a contradiction if you understand where we are coming from and what
we've built.

We've open sourced Nadine from the very beginning so you can pick it up and
run with it if you like, but it fails your test of being super easy to
setup.  I can help with that as I'm looking to finding people who are
interested in helping me build it in to a more complete system.  If you, or
anyone else, is interested, please let me know.

Simplistic project page:  http://nadineproject.org

Jacob

On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Alex Hillman  wrote:

> It took 10 years but we're finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style
> approach to conf room reservations. :) We're still looking for ways to keep
> the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting
> rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at
> some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
>
> *Has anyone here used RoomZilla?* http://roomzilla.net
>
> On my first pass it's by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key
> features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we're
> going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on
> experience with this tool in particular?
>
> -Alex
>
> P.s. as I'm looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking
> spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes.
> I don't mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour
> configuring things before I can make my first reservation...yikes!
>
> There's still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
>
> --
> *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
> Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
> Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast
>
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Re: [Coworking] How would you improve coworking software?

[Jacob Sayles]

This is how we do things in Nadine here at Office Nomads.  It's really easy
to automate things but from the very beginning we specifically pointed all
automations at staff so that we can connect with members personally.
Nadine sends us reminders when there are tasks that need to be done like
take a member's photo, or take their photo down from the wall when they
leave.  It also reminds us on member's anniversary and other "special days"
so we can celebrate with them the next time we see them in the space.  On
the member side it's pretty simple but it does allow for member to post a
little about themselves and check out what is going on.

All of Nadine is open source and I've love to build out the development and
user communities if anyone is up for collaborating.  To date I've spent
more time referring people to Nexudus and Cobot then I have recruiting
people to use nadine but if people are really interested in developing an
open source tool, this is a great place to start.

Jacob

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Alex Hillman 
wrote:

> I'm extremely skeptical of the leap to automation, especially when it's
> paired with the idea of "matching."
>
> If relationships came down to a simple has/needs equation, maybe. But it's
> much more nuanced than that. Dating sites have proven this for years. And I
> say this as someone who met his partner on a dating site.
>
> There is an insane amount of low hanging fruit before we need anything
> that looks like automated matching.
>
> Community Building isn't a game of matching, it's a game of trust
> building. The best way to build (and maintain!) trust at scale is to be
> looking for excuses for conversations, and keep track of what you learn
> over time. This helps individuals stay on top of things and teams "call the
> ball" before something happens, good or bad. It's these conversations
> that help members feel felt, appreciated, heard, and understood.
>
> - "it's been 2 weeks since Mary joined. Have you checked in with her to
> see how she's doing?"
> - "if you checked in with Mary, reply with a couple of notes about your
> convo so the rest of your team knows how she's doing too."
> - "have you talked to any members this week who is having a tough time? Is
> there anything your team should know about that could make their lives
> easier, or conversation topics that might be worth avoiding?"
> - "next week is John's three year anniversary anniversary of being a
> member. Let's plan something special for him!"
> - "has anybody heard from George? It's been 2 months since I saw any notes
> on his account. He might be looking to cancel soon if we lose touch."
> - "these 25 people mentioned you on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram recently.
> Some might be members - remember to say thanks!"
> - "your event calendar is looking pretty empty next week. Maybe a good
> time to suggest a happy hour?"
>
> Basically, I want a robot assistant that reminds me and my team to be an
> awesome human with our members and friends in the ecosystem. Light
> automation on top of data that a membership platform should have on hand.
>
> We've barley started to cobble these kinds of reminders together along
> with our operational processes (
> http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2015/01/6-automated-workflows-that-make-our-coworking-space-better-every-day/)
>  and
> it makes a HUGE difference for the team and their ability to support the
> community in ways that I know create MUCH more lasting, scalable value than
> a matching engine ever could hope to.
>
> You're right - it's silly to expect that people keep this stuff in their
> head. But "matching" isn't even on the list of tasks for our community team
> - that's an outcome of doing the other stuff right.
>
> -Alex
>
> On Monday, April 11, 2016, Brian Crotty  wrote:
>
>> Hello Alex,
>>
>> This was one of the topics that came up at our bi-annual Cobot
>>  retreat too.  We have always had the tagline "*More
>> Time for your Coworkers*" - because we feel that the primary way to
>> build community is getting out there face to face and building community.
>> But over the years, we have the feeling too that it is time to be more
>> active on adding the community building and personal matching tools right
>> into Cobot (coming soon to a software near you).
>>
>> But that being said, I think that there are also a lot of ways to built
>> it within the space with events and the matchmaking that comes through with
>> it. That is also one of the keys of co-up , our own
>> space.  We have been hosting meet-ups, especially programming oriented
>> meetups and don't charge room rent as long as they don't collect fees from
>> the attendees.  For us it has been perfect because we are know throughout
>> the community for being the host, and for being a space where people can
>> run into each other. We know who to refer questions too and there is
>> something for everyone (who programms). 

Re: [Coworking] members only messaging/posting

[Jacob Sayles]

You may want to connect with Ashley Johnson from Cowork Unite
.  Sounds like a very similar concept.

Jacob

On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 8:45 AM,  wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I am the new director of a brand new coworking office called Valley.Works
> in vermont. I would like to develop a members only messaging tool that
> would appeal to free lancers and designers looking for side jobs or new
> clients and be easy to use for small traditional businesses looking to hire
> by project. I have in mind something a little more elegant than a google or
> yahoo group and where postings can be archived. Also it would  be great it
> members could create brief profiles and add images or portfolios.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thank you!
>
> Samantha
>
> www.valleyworksvt.org
>
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Re: [Coworking] Co-ops and Coworking: the best-kept secret in coworking.

[Jacob Sayles]

I'd love to know more about this. I'm certainly sold on the value alignment
but I don't have a sense for how it works.

On Thursday, February 18, 2016, Trevor Twining 
wrote:

> Apologies. I used an internal link. 
>
> Here’s the real link
>
>
> http://coworkniagara.com/blog/2016/02/10/why-co-operatives-and-coworking-go-hand-in-hand/
>
> Trevor Twining
> trevortwin...@gmail.com
> 
> 416-201-2254
> twitter/skype/linkedin: trevortwining
>
> On Feb 18, 2016, at 9:40 AM, Trevor Twining  > wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> When we were developing the business plan for our space two years ago, a
> prospective member asked us if we had considered setting Cowork Niagara up
> as a co-operative. We didn’t know what that was, so we checked it out.
>
> It was the best thing that we could have done. We’re the only co-operative
> coworking space in english-speaking Canada (there’s one other in Quebec).
> I’m now convinced that if more spaces use this model it will help create
> stronger, more resilient coworking communities. I’m sharing this in the
> hopes that it piques your collective curiosity.
>
> I wrote a post about it on our newly-launched blog. If any of you have any
> questions about this, feel free to ask.
>
>
> http://cowork/blog/2016/02/10/why-co-operatives-and-coworking-go-hand-in-hand/
>
> 
> Trevor Twining
> Cowork Niagara
> http://coworkniagara.com
> Home of Niagara’s independent workforce
> twitter: @coworkniagara, @trevortwining
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: % of revenue beyond rental

[Jacob Sayles]

At Office Nomads we are 100% coworking memberships.  This is for a couple
key reasons.  We want a model that is simple to manage, simple for our
members, that deemphasizes the financial transaction and helps us maintain
a sense of "home".   I have seen many other models that achieve a similar
"feel" and come at the challenges in different ways.  For us, simplicity is
our primary strategy.  We could introduce additional revenue streams with
events, private offices, or add-on services, but we choose not to.  This
helps us stay focused as we are less scattered.  It also allows us to have
weekends which is essential.

And finally, we intentionally don't call it "rental" as that undermines the
real value of our membership.  I know wording can be a tricky beast filled
with nuance, but another benefit of our tight focus is that we can take the
time to evaluate how people respond to the various marketing angles people
take.  And since we rely on one source of income it's very important we get
this right... for the market we are looking to bring in.

Jacob

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 7:35 AM, Felicity Maxwell 
wrote:

> We do meetings and events in addition to the normal coworking.  Our goal
> has been to have desk rental / coworking / day passes to cover the majority
> of our ongoing expenses.  And then use events and meeting room rental as
> supplemental income.
>
> I would say it has taken a while to get the right mix, but now that we are
> about 8 months in, that goal is coming into sight.  If nothing else hosting
> events and meetings has helped us to build our coworking community.  So the
> benefit to us has been more than monetary.  But broadening your offerings
> does mean addition work / costs / distractions.  And honestly if we had not
> found a facility that made hosting events and meetings fairly
> straightforward, we would not have included it in our business plan.
>
> HTH
> -Felicity
> fibercove
> Austin, TX
>
>
> On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 6:45:45 AM UTC-6, M Saltzman wrote:
>>
>> I am considering opening a local coworking space, and am interested in
>> hearing from existing coworking space owners and what percent of the
>> revenue comes from sources beyond the basic office space rental.
>> Can you provide some insight as to additional ways of generating revenue
>> and what percentage of the overall revenue is generated from these avenues?
>
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Re: [Coworking] IT questions for people that run coworking spaces

[Jacob Sayles]

This is a very interesting topic for me... as the IT guy for Office
Nomads.  I've found that most spaces I talk to do not have a dedicated IT
person and struggle when things go wrong.  If all you have is your internet
provider, or your 14yo cousin, to ask for help, things get dicey really
fast.  The larger spaces often have the funds for dedicated help and I've
thought about offering some form of "help desk" option for smaller spaces
but haven't worked out the details in a way that is affordable to most
spaces.  If you have ideas I'd love to brainstorm and I'd love to hear how
it's working out for you.

Jacob

On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Jay Smith 
wrote:

> Hello everyone. I'm the IT Manager for a coworking company out of
> California. I'm just curious as to what the average internet connection
> speeds are at most of the coworking spaces in this group. Do you find that
> your speeds could be faster, but you don't really have the option to obtain
> more speed at a decent price? Or are your speeds adequate for your members
> needs?
>
> How many of you have a dedicated IT person working for your company that
> you have full access to during the work day? If you don't, do you have an
> IT service that you call when things start to work improperly?
>
> Our slowest location has a 50/20mbps copper connection,
> but our fastest location is a 300/300mbps Fiber connection.
>
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Re: [Coworking] Rewards/Check-in System

[Jacob Sayles]

Any feedback yet?  I'd be interested in exploring this idea if you give me
a little more to go off of.  And how is everything going at Hera Hub?  I
was talking with Felena and Janelle awhile ago about systems and operations
and I'm long overdue from connecting with Jangle.

Jacob

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Sarah Bacerra  wrote:

> Hello, coworking aficionados!
>
> We hold a lot of weekly and monthly member events to boost business acumen
> and foster community. I am exploring ideas for an event check-in/rewards
> system to measure engagement in these events and have a reward system in
> place to encourage more members to attend (think Plenti card or something
> similar). It MUST be automated and simple for both the members to use and
> the space manager to manage (e.g. no paper sign-in sheets that have to
> manually be entered by someone). Is anyone doing this already? If so, what
> are you using and how is it working for you?
>
> Thanks for your feedback!
>
> -Sarah
>
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Re: [Coworking] Looking for a "Member Data" Platform - Any advice appreciated!

[Jacob Sayles]

Two threads going at once!  I just chimed in on the other one about Cobot,
Nexudus, and Nadine.  Cobot and Nexudus are hosted services and Nadine is
open source software that you, or your IT staff, run on your own hardware.

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 1:48 PM, Elizabeth Barno 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> As a quick introduction, my name is Liz Barno and I am the Community
> Manager of Greentown Labs . We are a
> cleantechnology focused incubator/coworking space based outside of Boston
> in Somerville, MA.
>
> One tool I have been looking for, and struggling to find, is a
> database/CRM - type platform to collect, store and analyze all of the data
> we collect on our members. I have briefly looked into IncuTrack
>  and MemberClicks
> .
>
> What we currently have is a basic CRM for company and contact information,
> survey data collected quarterly from members in many excel files, and notes
> from meetings and interactions. When it comes to finding a specific piece
> of information, for example: "How many jobs were at Greentown Labs in
> 2014?", it involves combining and sorting many data sets and a lot of time.
>
> What is everyone else using for member data? Any leads are appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
> Liz
>
> --
> *Elizabeth Barno*
> Community Manager
> 
> *Powering a Community of Energy Entrepreneurs *
> +1 617 752 2217
> 28 Dane Street
> Somerville, MA 02143
>
> [image: Facebook]  [image:
> @greentownlabs]  [image: YouTube]
> 
>  [image: LinkedIn]
> 
>
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Re: [Coworking] Re: Our first 18 months: we doubled our revenue, and we're still losing money.

[Jacob Sayles]

We use our own system, Nadine, and Xero, and Excel.   I like the idea of
the dashboard, but the monthly meeting really is key.  It takes a little
time and attention to look through the numbers.

Some time ago I was pitching the Open Coworking Database where we all feed
numbers in to a central, neutral repository for data analysis.  I even
started working with Steve King on this but we found people have a hard
time being so totally open with their data, even if their identity is
shielded.  I still like the idea and think there is a way to do it.

Jacob

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 4:48 AM, Matt D.  wrote:

> Thanks, Tabari.
>
> We use a few main tools to track our data:
>
> First, we use Cobot to manage our coworking space, and Cobot does provide
> us with some basic analytics. We export information about the number of
> members we have, and we've just begun to make use of their accounting
> codes  to allow us more
> granular tracking of how our revenue breaks down.
>
> Second, as I mentioned in the post, we hired an accountant this year, and
> we use a mix of Xero and Google Spreadsheets to keep track of our
> financials on a regular basis. Our accountant does his magic in Xero, and
> then once a month we dump the data in a Google Spreadsheet so we can talk
> about it. In this spreadsheet we track revenue, expenses, and much of the
> data you saw in my blog post. (I plan to share some of our Google
> Spreadsheets soon... stay tuned.)
>
> I would love to create some sort of dashboard software that magically
> pulls all of this info together, but, alas, I don't think it exists. For
> now, it's a combination of some custom reporting from Xero and Cobot, some
> manual entry in a Google Spreadsheet, and a monthly meeting to make sense
> of it all.
>
> Holler if you have additional questions. Happy to answer!
> -Matt
>
>
>
>
>
> On Saturday, January 9, 2016 at 8:59:06 PM UTC-6, Tabari Brannon wrote:
>>
>> Excellent read. One of the goals I have for 2016 is to track everything.
>> I would be interested to see what systems you have in place to track all
>> this data. Thanks!
>>
>> On Friday, January 8, 2016 at 4:21:04 AM UTC-8, Matt D. wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey everyone.
>>>
>>> We just hit the 18-month mark, and we decided to take an honest look at
>>> how we're doing. Turns out we've had some nice growth, but were still
>>> losing money.
>>>
>>> We've laid it all out - data, financials and some honest analysis of
>>> what's still gotdoing we're in our coworking business/operations in order
>>> for us to find profitability - which we will! If you're interested, please
>>> take a read:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.theskillery.com/blog/2015/12/29/we-doubled-our-revenue-in-2015-but-were-still-losing-money-heres-why
>>>
>>> Hope you find it useful. Let me know if I can answer any questions!
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> -Matt @mattdudleytn, from The Skillery @theskillery
>>>
>>> --
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Re: [Coworking] Checking out the new coworking space that just opened up in your town - friend or foe?

[Jacob Sayles]

Yes, go as yourself.  Also, don't be too prepared at all, that just makes
it feel pressured.  Just go in and say hello and check out the space.
Invite them over to see your space too.  It's only weird if you make it
weird.

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Rachel Young  wrote:

>
> I say go as yourself with the idea of encouraging collaboration over
> competition. When you start a relationship wanting to work together, then
> there isn't an automatic barrier between you. It's not that much different
> than bringing coworking members together in a space.
>
> A number of other spaces in Toronto and other parts of Ontario received a
> message from me when I noticed they were opened or about to open, and I
> started the conversation wanting to communicate and collaborate. It freaked
> out some of them but most realised my intentions were genuine, and others
> welcomed it no problem. This other space could be your next best friend, a
> chance to band together and help the freelancers and small businesses of
> Burlington/Halton. Maybe you can offer a joint membership in time. Maybe
> you can swap meeting rooms between members of both spaces. Maybe together
> as unit you can talk with City Hall about funding programs for small
> businesses, co-sponsor events together, or co-write a press release
> together, and there is strength in numbers.. Maybe you can become
> comfortable with the owners of that space to be able to talk freely about
> your frustrations about running a space and you can be therapy for  one
> another. None of that will be as easy to do if you do in under a different
> pretence.
>
> Also, every space is different and has its unique strengths and offerings,
> and maybe that one member that you "lost" to the new space found something
> they wanted/needed. Be happy for that member that they can be productive in
> a great space. Or, perhaps the new space will suck and that member will
> realise what they had with you and come back.
> r.
>
>
>
>
> *rachel young*rac...@camaraderie.ca
>
> *We're located at 2241 Dundas St W*
> *(between Bloor and Roncesvalles)*
>
> *Find us online:*
> Website/blog  and Newsletter
> , Twitter
> ,
> Facebook , Google+ ,
> Yelp , and LinkedIn
> 
>
> *New Camaraderie locations:*
> Artisan Market  (Toronto) - now open!
>
>
> We're a proud member of CoworkingToronto 
> ,
> CoworkingOntario , and CoworkingCanada
> !
>
>
> On 8 January 2016 at 10:29, Kaylyn Gelata 
> wrote:
>
>> There is a brand new office that opened up very recently in close
>> proximity of our coworking space. We have already lost one member to the
>> space. I want to go check it out but I'm debating whether to go as a
>> prospective member, or as honest-to-goodness me who is checking out our
>> competition.
>>
>> My gut says to go as myself and be honest about why I am there - this is
>> what I would prefer. What can I go there with to be prepared? Partnership?
>> Offers? I'm sure many of you have gone through this.. what did you do to
>> make the meeting a positive experience for everyone?
>>
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Re: [Coworking] Our first 18 months: we doubled our revenue, and we're still losing money.

[Jacob Sayles]

This is great stuff Matt.  We just came through our 8th year and I compiled
98 months of data to present to an advisory group of members next week.
Susan is taking the data and making it all in to pretty graphs.  I gained a
lot of inspiration from your post.  We are discussing succession planning
so the focus is a little different, but this kind of analysis can really
help us frame the conversation in the right way.  Thanks for the great post
and the perfect timing.

Jacob

On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:23 AM, Alex Hillman 
wrote:

> Another really insightful post, Matt!
>
> I have an adjacent question...how are you doing those awesome graphs?
>
> -Alex
>
>
> --
> *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
> Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
> Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast
>
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 7:21 AM, Matt D.  wrote:
>
>> Hey everyone.
>>
>> We just hit the 18-month mark, and we decided to take an honest look at
>> how we're doing. Turns out we've had some nice growth, but were still
>> losing money.
>>
>> We've laid it all out - data, financials and some honest analysis of
>> what's still gotdoing we're in our coworking business/operations in order
>> for us to find profitability - which we will! If you're interested, please
>> take a read:
>>
>>
>> http://www.theskillery.com/blog/2015/12/29/we-doubled-our-revenue-in-2015-but-were-still-losing-money-heres-why
>>
>> Hope you find it useful. Let me know if I can answer any questions!
>> Thanks!
>>
>> -Matt @mattdudleytn, from The Skillery @theskillery
>>
>> --
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Re: [Coworking] Re: iPad Receptionist

[Jacob Sayles]

Haven't used that app but our system, Nadine, does that as well.

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Adrian Palacios 
wrote:

> Hi Todd,
>
> If you are using Nexudus, you can use the iPad app which comes with it:
> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nexudus-spaces-check-in-for/id933010341?mt=8.
> Not as feature-full, but it will let you collect visitor information, add
> it to your subscriber list or MailChimp campaigns and pull visitor reports
> showing you when and how many times each visitor was in the space.
>
> You can also use it to check members in and out, let visitors browse the
> member directory and message them from within the app to let them know they
> are at the front desk.
>
> Adrian
>
>
> On Monday, November 16, 2015 at 7:35:06 PM UTC, Todd Greer wrote:
>>
>> Greetings:
>>
>> Has anyone used "The iPad Receptionist" to run the front office for their
>> space? THis looks like it could fit some of the things we have been looking
>> for here, but didn't want to drop the cash until I heard feedback from
>> others.
>>
>> https://theipadreceptionist.com/
>>
>> Any other ideas if not this?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Todd Greer
>> The Exchange@202
>> www.exchange202.com
>>
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Re: [Coworking] Locks! (Smart and not-so-smart.)

[Jacob Sayles]

Lots of thoughts on this one as I've helped The Red Victorian coliving
hotel in SF, Creative Blueprint here in Seattle, and of course our
coworking space, Office Nomads. Your setup is going to cost a fair amount.
For a real integrated system I don't see how you are going to get away with
anything less then $5K.

For Creative Blueprint we are going with simple residential keypad solution
on 2 doors.  We will have to program each code at each door and that will
get annoying fast but the price point ($250 for 2) is right for getting
started.  Can't give you a review yet as the hardware is coming in the mail
this week.

You can use the Lockstate Remote Lock like Angel uses.  They have a central
system so you don't have to program each door, but you rely on their
servers and their hardware gets poor reviews.  These are $250/door.  They
have a beefier model that is more expensive but also maybe more robust?
Haven't played with these systems so I can't say much.

For The Red Victorian we created our own system.  This ended up costing
about $1K/door.  This has the most flexibility as I wrote all the code, but
they have had some reliability issues.  I've only ever made one door
controller so I'm not surprised I didn't get all the bugs worked out on my
first try.  The flexibility is important for that application though as I'm
issuing unique codes for each reservation and expiring them right away.
Eventually we will use remotely programable residential units at each room
for around $250/door.  30 doors, so that is going to get expensive.

For Office Nomads we originally dropped about $4K on an ISONAS system.
This is only for 2 doors but each door needs a strike and a commercial
grade lock.  We've expanded it to 3 doors now but I strongly do not
recommend going ISONAS.  After years of dealing with their software and
their company we are jumping ship.  We are currently in the process of
switching to HID Edge Solo hardware ($1K for 3 doors minus door strikes and
installation).  I'm going to be able to program these from Nadine, our
coworking management system, and I'm pretty excited about the
possibilities.

Not sure if that helps or answers specific questions.  I've gone 4
different ways in 3 different installs.

Jacob

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 10:36 AM, Jerome Chang 
wrote:

> Most lock solutions are $. I would recommend limiting access to just one
> door per floor, and make the others either exit-only, or entry during biz
> hours only.
>
>
> *JEROME CHANG*
>
> *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire*
> 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | ph: (323) 330-9505
>
> *EAST: Downtown*
> 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | ph: (213) 550-2235
>
>
> *NORTH: Pasadena (Opening 2016 Q1!)600 E. Colorado Blvd. (@Los Robles)*
> 
> On Oct 26, 2015, at 10:17 AM, Carly Nix  wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> Wanted to resurrect the topic of locks. I saw some past threads about
> this, and wonder if there are any updates to what folks would recommend
> since last year. At Industry Lab we've been looking into different lock
> upgrade options, and haven't settled on a best bet yet. Here's our
> situation:
>
>- We're in a building with 2 exterior entrances
>- Our space spans 3 floors with 8 points of entry
>- We share the building with other tenants
>- Don't have tons of money to throw at this problem.
>
> Any thoughts? What's worked for other spaces?
>
>
>
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Re: [Coworking] Music in your coworking space?

[Jacob Sayles]

We have KEXP playing all day long.  We keep it at a reasonable volume and
it's an important element to keeping the buzz going.  This isn't a library
so dead quiet isn't a good thing.  We've opened the discussion up at times
but at some point you just need to make a decision and stick with it.
Everyone has their opinions and you can spend a lot of time going round and
round.

On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Ahoy  wrote:

> Ahoy Kaylyn,
>
> we are solving this problem with two different areas. One is “working”
> where silent area is required (it means also that people should not have
> phone calls in) and second one is “chill” one, where we have music. Still
> sometimes people shout it down but we are anyway putting it on all the time
> because it really gives space more relaxed and comfortable touch.
>
> In the case you have just one space I would suggest that you to have
> silence and maybe turn on music just at the mornings and evening. You know,
> people who would like to listen music they can always put headphones on …
> but people who would like to have silence they can not make it with
> headphones. So with having silence you are more on the safe side;)
>
> Tjaša
>
>
>
> On 21 Oct 2015, at 18:30, Kaylyn Gelata  wrote:
>
> Hi all !
>
> I am getting mixed member opinions about music in the coworking space.
> Some members LOVE it, and some find it "unprofessional" to have music on in
> the background and use headphone to block it out.
> Personally, I find it way too quiet without some music on in the
> background, making it feel like a library... which we are not.
>
> Do you have music in your coworking space?
>
> Has anyone else had this difference in opinions? If so, what did you do to
> try to resolve it?
>
> I know you can't please everyone.. I want to do what's best for the
> majority! Thoughts?
>
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Re: [Coworking] Membership Board

[Jacob Sayles]

We have a mix of both.  We have a physical wall where we print everyone's
photo out and post it.  At some point we started allowing people to attach
their business card to their photo as well.  We upload all the photos in to
Nadine, our member management system, where people can browse through other
members.  Most people seem to use Cobot or Nexudus but essentially they all
do the same things.

Keep in mind the real trick is to instill a culture where people talk to
one another.  The member board and the online systems only do a small
fraction of the job and a common mistake I've seen is relying on them to do
everything.  If you have no systems but you mingle you will have more
impact then if you have the most amazing systems but don't mingle.  Turns
out this is a people problem not a technology problem.

Jacob

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Elisa Iannilli  wrote:

> Hello all!  I'm a general manager of a co-working space and I was just
> wondering how I can highlight/promote members and their business that use
> the space.  Do other co-working places have physical membership boards or
> do they have an on-line platform?  I want to encourage collaboration
> between people by providing a way for them to find out about other
> members.  Any thoughts or suggestions?
>
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Re: [Coworking] Slack for Coworking

[Jacob Sayles]

I have a question about how this gets implemented.  Are people using the
free version and adding everyone manually, or using a paid version and
integrating the API with some automation tools?

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Alex Hillman 
wrote:

> I'd stay away from trying to use Slack as an announcement tool. It's more
> ephemeral and messages fly by and get buried pretty quickly.
>
> Email is still the best place for official announcements, we often mention
> a slack channel related to the announcement in the email for people who
> want to talk about it (#general by default, otherwise one of the
> specialized channels).
>
> I'd also recommend a casual channel or two, based around some known shared
> interests of your members. Once people see those kinds of channels they
> start to come up with more ideas of their own. Some great starter channels
> that lots of people can get involved in are #music (our channel ends up
> being a lot of YouTube music videos and soundcloud tracks), #podcasts
> (again, episode recommendations and episode discussions), #bookworms...and
> that's just a couple of them. Don't over plan it, the whole idea is to
> create places where people can talk about their non-work interests,
> and find out who shares them because that's where TRUST is built among
> community members. And if you over plan it, people don't get a chance to
> feel a sense of ownership over creating and moderating the rooms, which
> leads to the rooms dying quickly.
>
> Just a couple of casual seeds though and things can really start to take
> off!
>
> Oh, and don't forget to update the slack settings for "default rooms when
> new members join" to include a couple of these special interest rooms.
> People can leave them if they end up not being interested but think of it a
> bit like a tour through a virtual space. Show them it's there, and then let
> them decide if they want to stay!
>
> Good luck,
>
> -Alex
>
>
> On Friday, September 18, 2015, Elizabeth Trice  wrote:
>
>> We're just about to set up slack. I'd like to know how many channels/
>> what types people have found optimal.
>> Our current plan is:
>> 1. General conversation
>> 2. Official announcements
>> 3. A private group for ambassadors (front desk volunteers) and managers
>> with a  central email that members can send issues to that would show up on
>> the managers group.
>>
>> We're also wondering if this will replace our private facebook group,
>> which has fairly good usage (often 25 views/post)
>>
>> We have 80 members, but only about half of those ate actively engaged.
>>
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>
>
> --
>
> --
> *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
> Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
> Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast
>
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Re: [Coworking] Collaboration between coworking spaces

[Jacob Sayles]

This is very exciting and we are super happy to be working with Ashley.
Are there other examples of spaces coming together like this?  Please
share.

Jacob

On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Ashley Proctor ash...@foundery.is wrote:


 For those of you I have yet to meet, hello!

 I’m Ashley http://canada.gcuc.co/attendees/speaker-name/ and I run Creative
 Blueprint http://creativeblueprint.ca and Foundery http://foundery.is in
 Toronto, Canada.
 We’ve been building collaborative communities for more than 10 years now
 in Toronto.

 I’ve been really lucky to get to travel the world, visiting hundreds of
 coworking spaces and meeting thousands of coworking enthusiasts at
 international conferences. In all of my travels, there are a few coworking
 communities that really stand out.

 One of those spaces happens to be Office Nomads http://officenomads.com in
 Seattle, Washington.
 The thriving community and sense of camaraderie amongst their members is
 unparalleled, and after almost 8 years of quietly shaping the coworking
 movement I feel they are truly an example for us all. (Full disclosure -
 I’m also lucky to call the co-founders Jacob and Susan friends)

 In Toronto, Creative Blueprint and Foundery are partnered within the same
 15,000 sq ft location (The Foundery Buildings) and we are attempting to
 recreate the success of that model out in Seattle. *Creative Blueprint is
 launching a new US location on the West Coast
 https://www.facebook.com/CreativeBlueprintSeattle, IN THE SAME 15,000 sq
 ft BUILDING AS OFFICE NOMADS.*

 Office Nomads are founding members of the Seattle Collaborative Space
 Alliance http://collaborativespaces.org and we are founding members of
 the Coworking Toronto Collective http://coworkingtoronto.ca, so we are
 not strangers to the concept of collaborating with other spaces - we like
 to work together! *What I am currently searching for are examples of
 other independent coworking communities that have partnered in the same
 building, or in the same city to bring additional facilities and/or
 resources to their members and their neighbourhood.*

 Please point me in the right direction - I have so many questions :)

 P.S.
 *You can check out the video about our Seattle expansion here:*
 *https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/creative-blueprint-seattle-expansion#/story
 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/creative-blueprint-seattle-expansion#/story*

 We’ve been raising funds via Indiegogo, and surprisingly many people have
 also approached us directly with financial contributions and materials.
 *Feel free to share the campaign - there is only one week to go, and we
 need all the help we can get :)*
 *Every share and every dollar counts.*

 Thanks in advance!

 Ashley



 Ashley Proctor

 Creative Blueprint
 www.creativeblueprint.ca

 Foundery
 www.foundery.is

 GCUC Canada
 canada.gcuc.co



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Re: [Coworking] Invoicing and online payments

[Jacob Sayles]

We recently switched to using Xero for accounting although we don't use it
for invoicing.  We don't actually invoice.  We bill using recurring billing
on our payment gateway (usaepay) and they can get a recipe for their
charges through Nadine, a custom app we've been writing over the years.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Heather Haindel heather...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hey! I'm curious what folks are using for invoicing their members
 nowadays? How do you accept payments? What do you like/not like about the
 software/services you're using? If you were starting from scratch right
 now, what would you use?

 Is anyone using waveapps.com?

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Re: [Coworking] Unifi Basic/Pro and Meraki

[Jacob Sayles]

Pro for sure and stay away from the AC units for now.  They are new and
working through some bugs.  Also make sure you account for a controller for
the system.  We just us a simple linux box running their software.  Easy as
pie.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Jeran Fraser surfra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thank you all, especially Alex for all the helpful info on just about
 every aspect of putting a cowork space together.

 I have read several threads about Unifi and also some that chose Meraki.
 It sounds like the overwhelming majority agree that Unifi is the best
 solution from a cost perspective. I would love to hear what some people
 think about Meraki, as GCUC had several people raving about the product,
 but licensing fees seem to price out a majority of spaces.

 Also, with Unifi what is the primary difference between the basic Unifi
 and the Unifi Pro system. The basic is around $80/unit with Pro closer to
 $200. Thanks again to all of you for your help. This board has been
 extremely educational for me over the last 12 months and although I rarely
 communicate, I definitely appreciate all the helpful information!

 Jeran

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Re: [Coworking] How to save a once-successful coworking space if it loses the community that helped make it successful?

[Jacob Sayles]

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

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Re: [Coworking] Purchasing real estate for coworking space

[Jacob Sayles]

Sounds like a great idea!  I don't have a lot to add as I've never
purchased a commercial building.  We lease the building that Office Nomads
is in although we would love to buy it.

Jacob

On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Stephanie Miles stephanietmi...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hello all. I'm new to the group, at the very beginning stages of opening a
 coworking space in Redding, CA. (pop. 90,000)

 I'm considering buying a commercial space for my coworking business,
 rather than leasing. Obviously it's a big financial investment up front,
 however based on looking at the market here, it seems like the monthly
 payments on a commercial real estate loan would be less than the cost of a
 lease on a similarly sized space. (I'm looking at pretty run down
 industrial spaces, with the plan to renovate.)

 Wondering if anyone else has done that and what unexpected issues,
 challenges, or even benefits you faced by doing so?

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Re: [Coworking] Locking doors system

[Jacob Sayles]

I haven't found a system that does not rely on third-party servers.  You
can't really be a consumer level device and have all the remote programming
capabilities without having a server somewhere so I understand why this
is.  They also usually have some form of monetization strategy that
benefits from being tied to the company.

All that said, I'm looking to find or develop a solution that gets around
this.  The system I built for the hotel in SF is a first step, but there is
still a lot of work to be done before it's the solution I'm looking for.
For Ashley's art studios here in Seattle, I'm opting for inexpensive,
off-the-shelf hardware and I'll see if I can work some magic behind the
curtain.  Here is to hoping the Lockstate Remote Locks do the trick!

If anyone wants to help with all this hacking, I'd love to work together.
Also, if anyone has some hardware they want to donate to the cause I'm
happy to tinker with it to see if we can come up with a solution that works
for all of us.

Jacob

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 8:17 AM, Jonathan Markwell 
jonathan.markw...@gmail.com wrote:

 Clay doesn't use our Internet connection/WiFi. It comes with a unit that
 communicates via the cell/mobile phone network. I'd be happiest if it used
 both, so we had some redundancy. We have had problems when the cell network
 goes down and/or is busy. Master Key users (limited to 20 people but soon
 increasing to 40) can still get in if it's offline for any reason.

 Like Jacob, I wish we could gain complete control over the locks by
 bypassing their servers. Clay have used heavy encryption at multiple levels
 making that near impossible to do.

 On 29 April 2015 at 15:27, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.com wrote:

 Will, it's my concern as well and I'll need to play with one before I
 know for sure. I also want to bypass their servers so the doors don't rely
 on a third party. I'll report back as soon as Ive got my hands on some
 hardware.


 On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace 
 wmben...@locusworkspace.com wrote:

 Hi Folks, Jon, Craig,

 For both the Clay device and the Remote Lock: they look great, but...

 Am I misunderstanding something or does this mean that if the wifi link
 between door and internet goes down for some reason, members can't get into
 the space? We've had so much trouble just keeping our printers on the
 (functioning wifi), I'd hate for access to the building to depend on that
 connection always working. Or is my concern unjustified for some reason?

 Will

 On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 11:30:43 PM UTC+2, Craig Baute - Creative
 Density Coworking wrote:

 You got it Jacob and thanks for adding the link. It looks like a good
 system.

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 --
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 Lessons learned building better workplaces: http://jonathanmarkwell.com

 Work better in Brighton: http://theskiff.org
 Coworking community with workspace in North Laine.

 Find your coworking community: http://worksnug.com
 Worldwide workspace directory that puts communities first.

 Ship your digital product: http://coderfounders.com
 Coaching for businesses that want to make money while they sleep.

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Locking doors system

[Jacob Sayles]

Yeah most of these systems are far less expensive and are residential not
commercial level hardware.  For commercial doors you need an electric
strike in the door frame and it should be installed by a professional
locksmith.  We have a commercial system at Office Nomads using ISONAS
readers but it was $5K and many people find that too expensive.  The system
I built at The Red Victorian Hotel also uses an electric strike and I'm
hopeful it could be a suitable replacement, but I need more time/money to
develop it in to something solid.

What other commercial systems are in use here?  Anything I should have my
eye on?  Anything that is less then $1K/door?

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Bryan Boyer bryanbo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Does anyone have experience with a lock system for storefront style doors?
 Most of these wifi-locks seem to only work on a basic wooden door.

 -bryan


 On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 at 9:36:58 AM UTC-4, Ahoy! Berlin wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 we are Ahoy, coworking space from Berlin - Charlottenburg.
 We are planning to open a new coworking space and at the moment we are
 trying to find the best solution/system for locking doors of the offices
 and main entrance. We want to provide 24/7 entrance. Currently we are using
 keys, but this is a big mess:)

 We are thinking about magnet cards for locking doors (the same most of
 hotels have) and also that would be possible to purchase with them at our
 bar.
 Do anyone have any experiences what is the best system and maybe which
 company can provide us this kind of products, solutions?

 Thank you
 Cheers!

 *Tjaša Jarc*

 Ahoy! Berlin
 Windscheidstr. 18
 10627 Berlin
 *T**: **+49 173 7079148 %2B49%20173%207079148*

  [image: http://www.ahoyberlin.com/] http://www.ahoyberlin.com/
 https://www.facebook.com/ahoyberlin






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Re: [Coworking] Re: Locking doors system

[Jacob Sayles]

There are a few solutions like that including Lockitron, August, and Goji.
This works fine if you know everyone is going to have a smartphone, but
many situations can't make that assumption.  That said, these look like
cool projects and I'd love to hear your experience with SESAME when you get
one.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 7:54 PM, Lucas Judice lucasjud...@gmail.com wrote:

 I just bought SESAME (
 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1425492550/sesame-your-key-reinvented)
 and still anxious to see how it'll work.
 Basically you just plug the product over the lock system and control
 open/close thru an app (iOS and Android). By using it, we know who, when,
 what time and for how long that person stayed in the coworking.

 No key or card needed.

 Is there any other solution like that? As I said, haven't tried it yet,
 still waiting to be shipped.

 Thanks,
 Lucas Judice

 -




 Em quarta-feira, 15 de abril de 2015 06:36:58 UTC-7, Ahoy! Berlin escreveu:

 Hi everyone,

 we are Ahoy, coworking space from Berlin - Charlottenburg.
 We are planning to open a new coworking space and at the moment we are
 trying to find the best solution/system for locking doors of the offices
 and main entrance. We want to provide 24/7 entrance. Currently we are using
 keys, but this is a big mess:)

 We are thinking about magnet cards for locking doors (the same most of
 hotels have) and also that would be possible to purchase with them at our
 bar.
 Do anyone have any experiences what is the best system and maybe which
 company can provide us this kind of products, solutions?

 Thank you
 Cheers!

 *Tjaša Jarc*

 Ahoy! Berlin
 Windscheidstr. 18
 10627 Berlin
 *T**: **+49 173 7079148 %2B49%20173%207079148*

  [image: http://www.ahoyberlin.com/] http://www.ahoyberlin.com/
 https://www.facebook.com/ahoyberlin






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Re: [Coworking] Re: Locking doors system

[Jacob Sayles]

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Remote Lock line they have.

https://remotelock.com/products/smartlocks/

They sell them at Home Depot.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/LockState-RemoteLock-WiFi-Satin-Nickel-Electronic-Lever-Door-Lock-L500i-SN/204502395

I'm looking at using these for the new Creative Blueprint Seattle
location.  At Office Nomads we use an ISONAS system but due to cost and the
complication of integrating our systems I'm looking at using one of these
to replace the door knob.  This way we can have two separate systems that
don't interfere with each other.  We need to use the remote service so
Ashley can manage her space even when she's back in Toronto.

Jacob

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:52 PM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Can you link to this, Craig? The DB500 I'm finding doesn't have an online
 control panel of any kind.

 -Alex


 --
 *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
 Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
 Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

 On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking
 baut...@gmail.com wrote:

 After researching Lockstate's new line of deadbolts I think I like the
 $250 DB500. It has plenty of online control with temporary codes (times of
 day to number of days), up to 250, and permanent codes and has a recurring
 fee of $0.99 per month. It's affordable and has a well-known company behind
 it. It doesn't try to get too fancy which has plagued some of the startups
 that have gone after this market.

 They are a Denver based company so I just shot them an email to visit
 their store and have a sit down. If things go well I might be grabbing a up
 to three.

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Re: [Coworking] Unifi users - how often do you find yourself needing to restart APs?

[Jacob Sayles]

I'm seeing something similar, although I don't have enough data to really
offer much to the conversation.  I know one of our APs keeps dropping down
to 100Mbps so I think it has a bad cable.  I also see a fair amount of
channel switching going on.  I've left things on auto hoping it will figure
out the best settings, but I might need to pin them down.

Jacob

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hey gang!

 I'm especially curious if other Unifi users find themselves needing to
 reboot access points from time to time. It seems like a few of ours tend to
 get used more, and over time...they seem to slow down.

 A quick restart from the Unifi console gets them back to their snappy
 usual selves, but I'm wondering if we can address the problem somewhere
 else in the admin console? I've been experimenting with load balancing
 within wlan groups
 http://dangerouslyawesome.com/snaps/indyhalljukebox.at.indyhall.org_-_UniFi_2015-04-23_14-54-45.jpg
  but
 I can't tell if it's helping or not :)

 Configuration tips welcome!

 -Alex

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Re: [Coworking] Extending wifi range

[Jacob Sayles]

This is a great list Thilo!  Some of it doesn't work with coworking spaces
as you can't disable Dropbox for example, but it's still a great place to
start.  I'm still fine tuning our setup and it's a constantly moving
target.  That is frustrating enough but I've seen sites with no technical
expertise on the ground really struggle.

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 6:35 AM, Thilo Utke th...@upstre.am wrote:

 Hi,

 I like to share my learnings about setting up WiFi for conferences. Most
 of this also applies to coworking spaces:

 http://thilo.me/post/62067077735/the-conference-wifi-checklist

 Cheers
 Thilo

 --
 more time for you coworkers: http://cobot.me



 On Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 6:53:24 AM UTC+2, Jacques Paquin wrote:

 We're opening a cowork space that's about 14,000 sq.ft. A little large
 but that's the way it worked out in the building we have. We're using a
 combination of UniFi Ap and AC access points and in testing I like them.
 We'll see what happens when we go live after our grand opening. So far the
 coworkers in there haven't had any issues. You can run the UniFi access
 points without a computer controlling them, but to do some things like the
 captive portal you need Unifi controller software running. Since it was the
 only thing I needed a pc for I purchased $189 Zotac Pico pc and the
 controller software runs there.


 On Friday, April 10, 2015 at 10:52:30 AM UTC-4, Shannon Hicks wrote:

 I misspoke... The base model is 2.4Ghz only... which for internet access
 is plenty.

 There's no cloud app to manage it. However, typically those
 cloud-managed solutions (Like Cisco's Meraki products) you not only have to
 buy the hardware, but you have to pay yearly fees for the software too.
 This is buy  you're done.

 In theory, you could set up a tiny cloud VPC to run the software... but
 it would need full-time VPN access into your network (and be publicly
 secure) for optimal results.

 If this info is useful to you guys, here's my Amazon affiliate link to
 the product :)

 Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AP Enterprise WiFi System UAP-3 (Pack of 3)
 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EORRBW/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8camp=1789creative=390957creativeASIN=B005EORRBWlinkCode=as2tag=thefunmouse-20linkId=7BFJN7FNW4K7Z54B

 Shan

 On Friday, April 10, 2015 at 9:30:33 AM UTC-5, Jerome wrote:

 Does UniFi have a cloud app to manage these AP's or just computer-based
 app?

 Jerome

 On Apr 10, 2015, at 7:23 AM, Shannon Hicks sh...@iotashan.com wrote:

 What you need are some UniFi access points. They are commercial-grade
 access points, similar to what a college campus, hospital, or any other
 facility where they need a single wifi network, but multiple access points
 to provide blanket coverage.

 The base model, the UniFi AP, goes for like $200 for a three-pack. They
 are standard 2.4/5ghz Wireless N access points. They come with everything
 you need except the ethernet cable... It comes with the mounting base
 plate, brackets for drop ceilings, and the PoE injector. There are faster
 (WirelessAC), and outdoor-ready models too, that of course cost more. You
 configure the network (including advanced features like guest networks) via
 software that runs on a computer.

 Keep in mind that these are ONLY access points. You still need a router.

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Re: [Coworking] Bandwidth questions for new coworking venture

[Jacob Sayles]

Also on the DHCP front we switched to using a netmask of 23 instead of 24
to get twice the number of addresses.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 11:04 AM, Stuart Lambert stu...@cohub.co.uk wrote:

 Yeah, dropped it down to a day from 7 and our helped.

 (Secretly looking for an excuse to buy better kit anyway! )
 On 2 Apr 2015 18:29, Glen Ferguson g...@coworkfrederick.com wrote:

 If you shorten the DHCP lease time to 2, 4, or even 8 hours, that should
 address the problem of running  out of leases.

*Glen Ferguson*
  Phone: 301-732-5165
 Email: g...@coworkfrederick.com http://mailtog...@coworkfrederick.com
 Website: http://coworkfrederick.com
 Address: 122 E Patrick St, Frederick, MD 21701

 On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Alex Hillman 
 dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote:

 Oh yeah my experience matches Stuart's, the dual band is *much* better.

 I thought we could get away with the single band $99-per-unit versions
 when we expanded our initial cover and...yeah, they're just not as good.

 Definitely spring for the Pro units - this 3 pack:
 http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-PRO-3/dp/B00DJERLFG


 Or this single unit:
 http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Enterprise-System-AP-Pro-UAP-PRO/dp/B00HXT8T5O/ref=pd_sim_pc_6?ie=UTF8refRID=1SYSFCBY9V4T4H5TW0P1

 -Alex


 --
 *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
 Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
 Listen to the podcast: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/podcast

 On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Stuart Lambert stu...@cohub.co.uk
 wrote:

 +1 to the Unifi recommendation.

 We found that the dual band versions work far better. It seems a lot of
 users in the building our space shares are using 2.4Ghz only routers so we
 have the 5Ghz band to ourself...

 Something we've bumped into very recently is exhausting the DHCP pool
 on our router (a Draytek) which only supports 254 DHCP total address, no
 matter what size subnet you configure. The symptoms are people being unable
 to connect to the network because there is no spare DHCP address for them.
 We have one of these on order which will fix this issue, and provide us
 with better throughput from our network to the internet -
 http://linitx.com/product/linitx-apu-1d-3nicusbrtc-pfsense-embed-firewall-kit-red/14094


 On Thursday, 2 April 2015 14:02:24 UTC+1, Alex Hillman wrote:

 I've never seen a resource that organizes bandwidth usage that way -
 even within our individual respective spaces I think that would be tricky
 data to acquire!

 But two things that aren't obvious about Internet usage (and how
 bandwidth is just a tiny part of the equation) until you've had
 hundreds of people piping through a shared connection every day:

 1) bandwidth is important, but latency is more important. Without
 getting super duper technical, latency is the speed that the network
 responds, which is different from how fast files download.

 MOST people spend a lot of their day clicking around the Internet, or
 using internet connected apps. With some rare exceptions like game
 developers and video editors, the files we move around in our daily work
 are relatively small.

 But when the latency is bad - everyone feels it because clicking to
 load a page, or refresh email, or live typing on Google docs etc feels 
 like
 it has a lag. Our network (internal wireless + gigabit) plus our 50mb
 down/10mb up almost always has more than enough bandwidth for 120+ people
 working hard every day. And that includes streaming videos, music, etc.

 Where things go haywire is when latency ratchets up. This can happen
 in our network because wifi coverage is interrupted, or because our
 internet provider is having issues, or most often because someone on the
 network is uploading a huge file (offsite backup like a Dropbox sync or
 uploading a video to YouTube) and our ISP starts to throttle latency
 because it thinks something is wrong. This tool is FOREVER to figure out!

 Our normal network latency is 20-30ms response time from a popular
 site like google.com when it goes above 100ms, you start to notice
 things slowing down. 200ms and the network feels like it's crawling.
 Interestingly, though, you can still download big files quickly they just
 take a few extra moments before they start.

 It's a rough experience to explain to people, and they don't care if
 it's latency or speed they just want to work. So understanding that more
 speed without an improvement in latency is important.

 2) the network itself is just as important as the Internet connection.
 There's been a bunch of great discussions on this list about network 
 design
 and what hardware to get before, but Jon Markwell's post sums up the
 majority of the best of it: http://jonathanmarkwell.
 com/2014/11/22/best-coworking-wifi/

 We upgraded to the Unifi system that he mentions in this post and it's
 been a MASSIVE improvement over everything else we tried. I
 heartily endorse this recommendation now from first 

Re: [Coworking] Let's stay together for GCUC !

[Jacob Sayles]

This is the coliving hotel my fiancé Katie and I worked on last summer!  We
lived there for the first two months working on all the renovations needed
to get the place open.  What a fun way for my coliving and coworking worlds
to combine.

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 7:57 AM, eric van den broek eric.vndn...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Guys, we've got some exciting news :)

 We'll be going to GCUC this year and we decided to rent out a gorgeous
 house right in the center of SF to stay together during the GCUC and a
 little more. We actually did that spontaneously during the Coworking Europe
 in Lisbon and it was just an incredible experience. You can watch the video
 here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSaxEhzmX_E
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSaxEhzmX_E

 We'll be able to accommodate only 30 people there. Activities will be
 organized (two welcome dinners prior to the conference), food will be
 included, and we might have a great surprise for transportation to the
 conference :) . Here is the link to the registration page with more details
 about the camp: http://camps.copass.org/sanfrancisco2015/#map

 We'll only be able to give away 10 early birds tickets at 459$ for 6 days
 which is a pretty awesome price for SF !

 Register to the waiting list quickly to be sure to benefit from it.

 NB: we've got a little problem on mobile for registration so just contact
 us if you're on a mobile and would like to make sure to be part of it :)

 Hope to see you guys soon there and let's rock SF

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Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings

[Jacob Sayles]

It's all about balance... and that's our role.  The easy part is to make
sure the toilets are clean and the credit cards are run.  Keeping things in
balance is the tricky (and fun) part.

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 8:18 AM, Jerome Chang jer...@blankspaces.com
wrote:

 I think the below typically applies to smaller coworking spaces.
 Well, let me rephrase:
 the below is required for smaller spaces
 larger spaces does not need to follow the below rule; BUT, should they,
 yes, I agree that the below would be ideal.

 That said, from my experience of being in the trenches for now, 7 years, I
 can comfortably say that recruiting full-timers is MUCH easier than
 part-timers.
 Part-timers have to me, seem only part-ly motivated to join, whether due to
 (1) they don’t want to spend $;
 (2) they’re so attached with their status quo of their home office;
 (3) their interest is so 50/50 fickle, any little thing can wane their
 interest.
 Also, if you were to spend, say, 1 hour per new part-timer member, between
 the tour, follow-up(s), onboarding…to yield $100, and your goal is 10
 members, then you’ll spend 10 hours for those “sales”.
 If you were to spend, say, the same 1 hour per new full-timer to yield
 $300, then you’d only need to spend a little over 3 hours for those “sales”.
 The spread worsens if you seek $10k, or $20k. The very same many
 DIY/automated billing and other admin procedures you’ve focused to
 minimize, is being offset by exponentially more labor time to sell, or
 “cost of sales”.

 Is that the reason why exec suites probably only ‘rent’ full-time office
 spaces? Yes. Same efforts that yield way more $ revenue.
 Is there a better mix between the below strategy and exec suites? Yes. And
 that will depend upon how you operate, your demographics, your size space,
 etc.


 *JEROME CHANG*

 *WEST: Santa Monica*
 1450 2nd Street (@Broadway) | Santa Monica CA 90401
 ph: (310) 526-2255

 *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire*
 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036
 ph: (323) 330-9505

 *EAST: Downtown*
 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013
 ph: (213) 550-2235


 http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles
 https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339
 http://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_home
 http://vimeo.com/blankspaces
  http://vimeo.com/blankspaces
 On Jan 30, 2015, at 6:11 AM, rachel young rac...@camaraderie.ca wrote:

 I'll add another item to Jonathan\s list:

 4 - Less diversity. 100 members with a flex or part time membership is 3x
 as many different occupations, passions, life experiences, and hobbies than
 35 members with a full time membership, so the mix of people that members
 interact with will be much less with full time people packed in, but you
 can cap the number of full time members and ensure there are more part time
 or flex to make that diversity even more apparent and effective.

 We have three membership levels: lite, part time, and full time. I always
 aim for a mix of approximately 30%, 50%, 20%, respectively, with no cap on
 daypass users or non-space usage memberships (virtual/non-space usage
 network membership only).
 r.




 *rachel young*rac...@camaraderie.ca

 *We're located at 2241 Dundas St W, 3rd floor*
 *(between Bloor and Roncesvalles)*

 *Chat with me *via 10KCoffees
 http://t.signaledue.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XZs1qwymMW5wLM1s8rBvDjF51mVDt7mBxf5z9bGz03?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tenthousandcoffees.com%2Fprofile%2Frachel-youngsi=5437397447737344pi=86732968-f3b7-4c9d-93d9-049ee0b7d3d5

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Re: [Coworking] Re: How I'm using workflows and automation to improve our member onboarding

[Jacob Sayles]

This is what we use Nadine for.  OK so it's another silly name but we now
have a cute logo and website http://nadineproject.org!  Since I'm focused
on running Office Nomads and not writing the best marketing speak I've
struggled with how to describe Nadine.  The user profiles are what people
usually simplify it down too but for our team it's the onboarding and
workflow that are the real killer app.  A new member comes in and we all
get an email sparking a discussion about what their story is.  They come
back and we haven't taken their photo yet or they need a new member
orientation and another alert goes out until we've completed all the
tasks.  Someone hasn't been in for over 3 months and we get notified so we
can reach out and make sure everything is OK.  It also handles a few easily
automatable tasks like at 5:55PM on your first day it sends out an email
asking how everything went and sending a new member survey after two
months, and an exit survey a week after memberships end.

On a side note we even went so far as to sync up our surveys with the other
member spaces of the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance
http://collaborativespaces.org so we have some interesting data across
town.  Many different pieces coming together,

I know Cobot does a lot of this too and I'm sure better then Nadine does.
It's been a long time since I've synced up with them about all of this.
What about Desk Time, Nexidus, Dove Tale, etc?  I assume they all do it
more cleanly and smart since they are actual software companies focusing on
coworking software.

Jacob

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 7:44 AM, dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote:

 Great ideas - thanks Glen!


 --
 *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
  Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
 Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com


 On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Glen Ferguson g...@coworkfrederick.com
 wrote:

 Hey Alex,

 I've been using Zapier enough to finally move into a paid account. It's
 hooking together a lot of differnet services. I have it:

- tying together website room reservation forms with Freshbooks for
invoicing non-members plus Google calendars to make an event entry/send 
 the
invitation email.
- onboarding our new members: Freshbooks for the recurring
invoicing/payments, addition to a Mailchimp list, addition to our member's
Google group. (side note: I'm now using MailChimp automation to drip send
info/tips to new members over their first 2 weeks so they're not 
 overloaded
with info the first day. It seems to help remind folks that they're 
 members
now, so they should come in and work. Changing old habits, you know)
- do the calendar addition when someone signs up for a tour and
through Twilio I get an SMS alert so I can check on the tour email to see
if there are any questions I can answer ahead of time.


 I just started exploring using Zapier to send reservation reminders,
 generally to outsiders that are renting our conference room.


 ---
 Glen Ferguson
 Cowork Frederick
 122 E Patrick St
 Frederick, MD 21701-5630
 +1 (301) 732-5165
 www.coworkfrederick.com
 @CoworkFrederick http://twitter.com/CoworkFrederick

 On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 8:42 AM, dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote:

 Very welcome :)

 Trello's blog is worth scoping out too, they show it being used in all
 kinds of ways I had never imagined...definitely part of what inspired this
 stuff. http://blog.trello.com


 --
 *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
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 Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com


  On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 8:39 AM, Anne Kirby 
 creativehouseoflancas...@gmail.com wrote:

 Great post, thanks! I use Trello all the time for my marketing business
 but haven't really used it in this way for our coworking space. I'll have
 to try it :)

 On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 12:33:58 AM UTC-5, Alex Hillman wrote:

  We’ve been working on a lot of workflows and streamlining at Indy
 Hall recently…and today had a bit of a breakthrough that I wanted to share
 because I’m already stoked about what it’s going to let us do and hope 
 that
 more people use these tools.

 Anybody here use Trello?
 How about Zapier?

 Sidetone: aren’t those ridiculously silly names for anything, let
 alone *business* products?

 Trello is…a project management too? A task management tool? A workflow
 management tool? Honestly it could be any of those things…it’s super
 flexible and adaptable.

 Zapier sort of turns the world of your favorite internet tools into
 legos that you can snap together and combine in fun and useful ways. It’s 
 a
 way for you to have actions in one piece of software trigger a result in
 another piece of software.

 I use both Trello and Zapier quite a bit but not as much for Indy Hall
 until recently. Today I started using BOTH of them, together, to create
 some 

Re: [Coworking] backup internet?

[Jacob Sayles]

Our main connection is a 100mbps rooftop wifi link and we back it up with a
20mbps cable service (that also hosts our phones).  I'm not sure the layout
of where you are but rooftop service providers are popping up all over the
country as they are pretty easy to implement.  Heck you could do it
yourself if you get up there and see a building of someone you know that
has better connectivity.

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Heh, another thing I’ve learned in 8 years of coworking is that most
 people don’t read signs, even when they’re right in front of them ;)

 -Alex

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 On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 11:39 AM, Elliott Williams ellio...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Ahhh, thanks for this. Sounds like maybe what I could do in that
 direction is have some sort of internet connected sign that shows the
 internet status. At least then no one would think it's just them.

 On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 11:35 AM, Alex Hillman 
 dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote:

 Internet downtime sucks and we’re in a similar situation, having only
 one ISP option.

 We tried an LTE backup and it was actually *worse* than not having
 internet when it goes down. At least when it’s down you know it’s down vs.
 when the LTE backup kicks in and it’s frustratingly slow but people try to
 use it anyway.

 People are upset either way, but we learned that they’re actually less
 upset when they know it’s down and they can just find other work to do vs.
 wondering “maybe the internet is just slow right now” and getting
 frustrated with that.

 -Alex



 --
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 Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com



 On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 11:27 AM, Elliott Williams ellio...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  We've had 5-20 minute outages several times on our area over the last
 few months (pittsburgh). I'm pretty sure it's not our internal network as I
 live 5 blocks away and my home internet has been spotty as well.

 I'm wondering what people do for backup internet. We only have one
 ISP piped into our building, so I was thinking of a LTE router. Anyone have
 experience with this?

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Re: [Coworking] Member board/photos

[Jacob Sayles]

We used to use an old classroom sized chalkboard but then we outgrew it and
now have a large chalkboard painted on the wall.  We also used to go to
Wallgreens on the corner and have them printed for about $.08/print but at
some point along the way switched to a Canon Selphy printer to the tune of
about $.28/print but we don't have to order them and walk up to the
store.  I wouldn't recommend this printer as it is kind of a pain but I'm
not sure what else is out there.  We have 180 members and we also put dog
photos up there so it's a lot of photos.

The other thing to think about is how you make sure the right photos are up
there, and that exiting members come down.  We use Nadine to alert us to
take new member photos and when they leave it reminds us to take them
down.  Otherwise it's easy to end up with old members that are on there
forever.

Oh and we started a New Member board where we keep photos for one month.
That has been well received.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 7:53 AM, Gretchen Bilbro gretchen.bil...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hi all,
  What have you used to create your member boards? I have a giant old metal
 sign that I want to use for the board itself and place photos with brief
 write ups on with magnets for our member board. For those that have done
 something similar did you print photos on your printer or buy an instant
 camera for this purpose? I seem to recall hearing at GCUC last year that
 the instant camera idea was not the best option but can't remember why or
 who said that. Any suggestions?
 Thanks!
 Gretchen

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Re: [Coworking] Wired vs Wireless?? Does anyone use wired anymore?

[Jacob Sayles]

You will also get a lot more milage from your wifi setup with a number of
users plugged in.  It's nice to always have the option.  Every desk has the
option for a hard wire or wireless.  We just have one wire going to a
number of pods and a switch under the tables.  So you don't have to go
super crazy with the wiring.

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Aaron Cruikshank aa...@cruikshank.me
wrote:

 Wired is still important. I always use the hardline if it's available
 because the speeds are better. Wifi is always slow in comparison.

 Aaron Cruikshank
 Principal, CRUIKSHANK
 phone: 778.908.4560
 e-mail: aa...@cruikshank.me
 web: cruikshank.me http://www.cruikshank.me
 twitter: @cruikshank https://twitter.com/cruikshank
 book a meeting: doodle.com/cruikshank http://www.doodle.com/cruikshank
 linkedin: in/cruikshank http://www.linkedin.com/in/cruikshank




 On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:13 PM, CoWork Factory - New Braunfels, TX 
 coworkfactor...@gmail.com wrote:

 Does anyone use wired anymore?  I'm opening a new space and installing
 the IT infrastructure now, but am thinking I may be overdoing the CAT5e
 ports. Planning on about 30-35 ports for a 3,200 sq ft building.  I'll have
 a couple of business class APs and am thinking I should have wired ports as
 an option for IP phones and other heavy users of data.

 Thoughts?

 Thanks!

 Bob
 www.coworkfactorynb.com


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Re: [Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?

[Jacob Sayles]

I've been looking at Copass more lately and I like what I've been seeing.
I can see them having a very positive impact on coworking (and coliving)
communities.  I have a few conflated big ideas on where this intersects
with payments, and a co focused, stripe-like service... but I'm just
waking up so I'll try to avoid getting lost in the details before my first
cup of coffee.

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 5:50 AM, Thilo Utke th...@upstre.am wrote:

 Hi Jacob.

 yes. we use stripe with cobot, ist just so much easier with them to get
 paid and resolve issues like refunds and chargebacks that the extra share
 they take pays of by the time we save so far.

 For co.up we also use adyen because they do direct debit for europe.

 We don't integrate with copass yet, why do you ask?

 Cheers
 Thilo

 On Wednesday, December 31, 2014 12:49:25 AM UTC+1, Jacob Sayles wrote:

 Thilo, Barbara, you two run cards using your service, correct?  Do you
 integrate with Copass?

 On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Barbara Sprenger 
 bspr...@thesatelliteinc.com wrote:

 Hi Jensen,
 We had this same issue at first. (But 10%!!!???) And it also turned out
 that our bank owned our data! Took over a year to get out from under
 them. We are now paying about 1.9% TOTAL for bankcard processing, and we're
 happy to recommend our service to anyone. Take all your costs of credit
 card processing (discount fee, interchange fee, bankcard fees, etc.) --
 don't worry about breaking them apart. Look at the total gross that you
 processed through the credit card company, the total net into your pocket.
 Take the difference and divide by the gross. That's the true cost of credit
 card processing for you and the only important number.

 There are a number of entities involved in this. Don't get suckered into
 believing that a company that does all of this for you is going to save you
 money. They all cost more. The entities in a credit card transaction are:
 1) The online gateway. This will typically be Authorize.net or an
 expensive all-in-one like Stripe. (Authorize charges $10/mo. for this.)
 2) Your credit card processor. This is the entity you may have the most
 contact with and the one that probably sold you the service. Or the one
 that gives you no service but charges you a lot anyway. They take a small,
 but significant, nick off every transaction. This is typically where the
 variability in your costs comes from.
 3) The processor's bank. Yep, they're there, too. (But their fees may be
 hidden from you and show up in #2.)
 4) The credit card vault. This holds securely all of your member credit
 cards. You may use Authorize, which charges another $10/mo. for this. With
 our management software (DeskWorks), we use Spreedly because they make it
 easy to draw on the card to go into different accounts, and we don't charge
 for the vault service (we pay for it).
 5) Don't forget the credit card companies. If someone has a card with
 points or miles or other benefits, you're paying for it in a higher
 percentage.
 6) Your bank. They may not take a visible percentage, but they're
 probably taking the float. Meaning they hold your money for an extra day.

 When you add all of this up, you should be able to be under 2.5% total
 cost, dropping as you get bigger and have more track record with your
 processor. And you should have a processor that is always instantly
 available to you and helpful. Holler if you want the recommendation to the
 one we're using.

 Barbara



 On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 3:18:54 PM UTC, Jensen Yancey wrote:

 I don't know about everyone else, but since I've opened a coworking
 office, one of the most mysterious and difficult-to-wrap-my-head-around
 concepts has been why the hell am I getting charged so much for accepting
 credit cards and where is it all going.  In our scramble to get open in
 time, we signed on with First Data, Wells Fargo recommended them so what
 could go wrong?  This month, we billed $1435 through first data, from that,
 we were charged a $48.55 bankcard discount fee, a $23.87 Bankcard
 interchange fee, and a 53.89 Bankcard Fee.  First data is incredibly
 unhelpful, but I've managed to figure out that the discount fee is just
 what they charge us, the interchange fee is what the credit card charges
 us, but what the hell is the Bankcard fee?  Also, most beguilingly of all,
 It's been slowly going down while our other two fees have been going up.

 I knew it would be a little pricy, but it seems absolutely insane that
 we're paying nearly 10% of our revenue out to these companies.  It's going
 to cost us $500 to break the contract and I'm totally on board with doing
 it, but is there a much better solution?

  --
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 For more options

Re: [Coworking] Re: Can we talk about bank fees?

[Jacob Sayles]

Thilo, Barbara, you two run cards using your service, correct?  Do you
integrate with Copass?

On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Barbara Sprenger 
bspren...@thesatelliteinc.com wrote:

 Hi Jensen,
 We had this same issue at first. (But 10%!!!???) And it also turned out
 that our bank owned our data! Took over a year to get out from under
 them. We are now paying about 1.9% TOTAL for bankcard processing, and we're
 happy to recommend our service to anyone. Take all your costs of credit
 card processing (discount fee, interchange fee, bankcard fees, etc.) --
 don't worry about breaking them apart. Look at the total gross that you
 processed through the credit card company, the total net into your pocket.
 Take the difference and divide by the gross. That's the true cost of credit
 card processing for you and the only important number.

 There are a number of entities involved in this. Don't get suckered into
 believing that a company that does all of this for you is going to save you
 money. They all cost more. The entities in a credit card transaction are:
 1) The online gateway. This will typically be Authorize.net or an
 expensive all-in-one like Stripe. (Authorize charges $10/mo. for this.)
 2) Your credit card processor. This is the entity you may have the most
 contact with and the one that probably sold you the service. Or the one
 that gives you no service but charges you a lot anyway. They take a small,
 but significant, nick off every transaction. This is typically where the
 variability in your costs comes from.
 3) The processor's bank. Yep, they're there, too. (But their fees may be
 hidden from you and show up in #2.)
 4) The credit card vault. This holds securely all of your member credit
 cards. You may use Authorize, which charges another $10/mo. for this. With
 our management software (DeskWorks), we use Spreedly because they make it
 easy to draw on the card to go into different accounts, and we don't charge
 for the vault service (we pay for it).
 5) Don't forget the credit card companies. If someone has a card with
 points or miles or other benefits, you're paying for it in a higher
 percentage.
 6) Your bank. They may not take a visible percentage, but they're probably
 taking the float. Meaning they hold your money for an extra day.

 When you add all of this up, you should be able to be under 2.5% total
 cost, dropping as you get bigger and have more track record with your
 processor. And you should have a processor that is always instantly
 available to you and helpful. Holler if you want the recommendation to the
 one we're using.

 Barbara



 On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 3:18:54 PM UTC, Jensen Yancey wrote:

 I don't know about everyone else, but since I've opened a coworking
 office, one of the most mysterious and difficult-to-wrap-my-head-around
 concepts has been why the hell am I getting charged so much for accepting
 credit cards and where is it all going.  In our scramble to get open in
 time, we signed on with First Data, Wells Fargo recommended them so what
 could go wrong?  This month, we billed $1435 through first data, from that,
 we were charged a $48.55 bankcard discount fee, a $23.87 Bankcard
 interchange fee, and a 53.89 Bankcard Fee.  First data is incredibly
 unhelpful, but I've managed to figure out that the discount fee is just
 what they charge us, the interchange fee is what the credit card charges
 us, but what the hell is the Bankcard fee?  Also, most beguilingly of all,
 It's been slowly going down while our other two fees have been going up.

 I knew it would be a little pricy, but it seems absolutely insane that
 we're paying nearly 10% of our revenue out to these companies.  It's going
 to cost us $500 to break the contract and I'm totally on board with doing
 it, but is there a much better solution?

  --
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Re: [Coworking] Starting a new coworking space while employed fulltime

[Jacob Sayles]

It's tricky.  I did it, but I had a partner.  Without Susan, it would have
played out very differently.  There are just so many layers that need your
attention that presence is required, not just physically, but mentally.

The first few years (or more) are figuring out your processes.  Even if you
adopt those of others, you still need to wrap your mind around them.  That
means every little thing, like buying paper towels for example, is also a
dozen other things like deciding where you buy your supplies?  Do you pick
them up or have them delivered?  Where do you store them?  How much do you
buy?  Do you want paper towels or cloth towels?  And there are a million
little things so that adds up fast.

And operations things like that are an order of magnitude easier then the
REAL work of running a coworking space: being present for your members.
Sure when everything is running smoothly people get along and everyone
pitches in... but things don't always run smoothly.  And when they don't,
it's your problem right then, right now, and odds are you are busy doing
something else for your full-time job.  If someone wants you to hold their
hand setting up the printer, it doesn't really matter that you have a
deadline.  If someone is having a rough day and needs someone to talk to,
you want to be there for them.  It's important.  If one member decides the
radio should be at a higher volume and another decides it needs to be at a
lower volume, it's in your best interest to negotiate that quickly and
quietly before it blows up in to something big.  You might miss the signs
until it's too late if you have your head in your other job.

And all that is just keeping the lights on and people happy.  You still
need to reach out to the larger community and bring people in.  Lots to
think about.  I'm most protective over the softer things as it's easy to
overlook and just hope for the best.

Jacob

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Jason Phelps jpphe...@gmail.com wrote:

 I currently work for a company remotely and spend my days at a coworking
 space.  I am looking at the option of starting my own coworking space to
 meet a need in a particular location in town.  I've read some stories of
 others starting their own space while working fulltime, but those posts
 were from 3+ years ago.  Not to negate the value of experiences that are
 old, I wanted to see if there's anyone that has done that recently and how
 it impacted your ability to start your space.

 The other aspect of this that is probably more difficult to predict or
 control is profitability and the ability to actually do this full time.  A
 comment I found on this forum said regarding the time to make the jump to
 doing coworking fulltime was it's a singular moment where you just know.
  I wanted to hear from other owners here if it is possible to actually do
 coworking fulltime, or if I should not even be thinking along those lines
 and just focus on solving a need here in town and let it grow as it does.
 I'm curious what others have seen in their experience.

 I'll be doing some digging here and possibly even have some questions
 around recommendations for management software, door locks, etc.   But for
 now, I'm honestly just open to hearing advice from those that have gone
 down this road and learned lessons that I'd prefer not to learn the hard
 way :-)  Whether that's business partners, leasing vs. owning, etc., I'm
 open to advise and wisdom from all the experts here.

 I'm so glad I found this group - looking forward to reading and learning!

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Re: [Coworking] Can we talk about bank fees?

[Jacob Sayles]

Yeah that seems high.  On $1500 I'd expect $50-75 in fees.  We currently
use USAePay+ACCPC+CheckGateway and it's about 2.1%.  When you process more
and you've been around longer, the rates go down.  Your services probably
give you more then you are asking for... some funky feature they think
warrants the added fees.  They should at least throw in a Christmas turkey.


But yes, it's all kinda crazy.  The reason for it is that there are a lot
of middle-men taking a cut along the way.  I could dig in to the details
but it would make your head spin even more.  I'm currently exploring the
idea of starting our own payment gateway where all the proceeds go towards
coliving and coworking movements.  If we can add a layer where our members
are voting with their payments then we have a revenue stream, a
communication channel, and direction. Combine this with something like
Copass and things get really interesting really fast.

If anyone is interested in exploring this with me, please let me know.  But
sorry Jensen none of this would be ready in time for your needs.  Switch to
stripe and move on.  You'll recoup the $500 soon enough.

Jacob

On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
wrote:

  Oh wow, your fees are way too high. Kill that contract!

 Standard fees are closer to 2.9% + 25-30 cents per transaction. Even
 when you factor in all of the tools to work with a decent processor like
 Stripe or Braintree, the max you're gonna pay is 5%ish. Even PayPal (which
 sucks for lots of other reasons and I would not recommend using) is 2.9%.

 The biggest additional benefit to using Stripe is that your account is
 portable. It also manages recurring subscriptions and, when you get a bit
 bigger, plug into awesome business analytics tools like Baremetrics.io and
 FirstOfficer.io that are built JUST for stripe.

 For actually managing memberships and subscriptions, do some googling
 around for stripe membership subscriptions and see which option fits your
 needs. You can get things that are out of the box like Memberful, or
 things that are super duper customizable like GravityForms for Wordpress +
 the 3rd party Gravity Forms stripe plugin (that's what we do. It's not
 perfect but it gives us the control we wanted).

 Do some homework before choosing again, but you're DEFINITELY overpaying
 now!

 -Alex



 --
 *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.*
  Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
 Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com

 On Tuesday, Dec 23, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Jensen Yancey 
 jensen.yan...@gmail.com, wrote:

 I don't know about everyone else, but since I've opened a coworking
 office, one of the most mysterious and difficult-to-wrap-my-head-around
 concepts has been why the hell am I getting charged so much for accepting
 credit cards and where is it all going.  In our scramble to get open in
 time, we signed on with First Data, Wells Fargo recommended them so what
 could go wrong?  This month, we billed $1435 through first data, from that,
 we were charged a $48.55 bankcard discount fee, a $23.87 Bankcard
 interchange fee, and a 53.89 Bankcard Fee.  First data is incredibly
 unhelpful, but I've managed to figure out that the discount fee is just
 what they charge us, the interchange fee is what the credit card charges
 us, but what the hell is the Bankcard fee?  Also, most beguilingly of all,
 It's been slowly going down while our other two fees have been going up.

 I knew it would be a little pricy, but it seems absolutely insane that
 we're paying nearly 10% of our revenue out to these companies.  It's going
 to cost us $500 to break the contract and I'm totally on board with doing
 it, but is there a much better solution?

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Re: [Coworking] The best wireless routers for a 3500 sq. ft. space

[Jacob Sayles]

We have been slowly switching to UniFi hardware and it has been stable and
I'm happy with he tech. I've been a fan of PFSense for a long time and have
helped a few spaces get set up with nice firewalls.  I buy refurbished
desktops on NewEgg for 1-200 and then grab a nice dual or quad Intel gbit
NIC for 2-300.

Jacob

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, Robert Petrusz rob...@bullcitycoworking.com
wrote:

 I am. :-)

 I am leaning towards PFSense + Ubiquiti now.

 Great thread!

 Robert

 On Monday, December 1, 2014 7:25:25 PM UTC-5, Craig Baute - Creative
 Density Coworking wrote:

 Are we all falling in love?

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Re: [Coworking] The best wireless routers for a 3500 sq. ft. space

[Jacob Sayles]

We found a deal on a Unifi AP (2.4ghz only) and an AP Pro.  We put these on
our top floor and still have our Airport Extremes on the bottom floor.  One
of our members just sold us a UAP-AC but we haven't hooked it up yet.  We
figure we would put it in place of the 2.4ghz only AP.  Eventually we'll
replace the Airports with either the AP Pro or the AC depending on how that
guy works out for us.  I helped a space that had 2 AP Long Range access
points and I'd recommend against that.

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking 
baut...@gmail.com wrote:

 Which Unify access points are people using?

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Re: [Coworking] The best wireless routers for a 3500 sq. ft. space

[Jacob Sayles]

No.  In general it's not a good idea to extend wifi.  Just plug everything
in to a hard line and you should be good to go.

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking 
baut...@gmail.com wrote:

 Do the UAP extend the Airport Extreme signal?

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Optimal Desk Sizes / Dimensions

[Jacob Sayles]

We have the basic Vika Amon tables from Ikea arraigned in pods of 4-8
desks.  In larger areas we have the larger ones arranged like one big
table.  Key is flexibility and the pods are spread out so that you are
always around people, but you can change the noise/heat/activity level by
switching pods.

We've also made a few of these standing desks by extending the legs with
black PVC pipe design requires a wall though as they are not very
stable w/o it.

We have 10K sqft and  something like 125 desks.  I'm happy with them
although we had to create a piece in the center of the pod to keep them
relatively straight.  Keeping wires tidy is an ongoing battle.

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 3:03 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace 
wmben...@locusworkspace.com wrote:

 Very cool! Thanks for sharing that.


 On Wednesday, November 19, 2014 5:11:07 AM UTC+1, NODO Cowork wrote:

 Do you know about open furniture? https://www.opendesk.cc/

 El martes, 18 de noviembre de 2014 14:41:35 UTC-6, Farhan Abbasi escribió:

 Hi folks,

 I run a coworking space in Boston called Coalition and this community
 provided great info for me when launching. Thank you!

 I'm wondering if you folks have experience with an ideal desk dimension
 that optimizes seating (ie getting the most chairs out of the table setup)?
 I have a wide open floorplan (imagine 10,000+ SF) and able to connect many
 tables and chairs together, with people sitting on both sides of each
 table. Looking to get the most out of the space to meet my financial
 hurdles.

 I would love to hear:

 - The optimal desk size that allows for people to sit side by side and
 across from each other. (Multiple of these tables will be setup next to
 each other or across from each other).
 - Examples of actual desks that you think works? (I would purchase in
 bulk).

 Thanks for any of your valuable time!
 Farhan

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Inside The Phenomenal Rise Of WeWork

[Jacob Sayles]

WeWork moving to Seattle has been a good thing.  They spend more
money/energy throwing the word coworking around then we ever have and
provide services we don't care to offer.  They work better for bigger teams
(4+) or individuals requiring private offices.  Also, they fully
participate in the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance.  I think they are
good people.  If anything Regus should be worried, not us.

Thank you for the back story.  It's great to see how everyone gets started.

Jacob

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 5:23 AM, Tom Brandt twbra...@gmail.com wrote:

 There are two big-box hardware stores near me - Lowes and Home Depot - but
 I still go to the local hardware store because they frequently have, order,
 or can make, some obscure thing that the big boxes don't, and the people
 working there are very knowledgeable about all things hardware and
 home-maintenance related.

 I think that smaller, independent coworking communities can offer a more
 personalized experience than big coworking can. Independent communities are
 better able to adapt their communities to the character of the particular
 community than spaces that are part of a larger organization.

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 4:44 AM, Jeannine flexkantoorkame...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I think that once you put 6 zeros after anything, everybody goes crazy.

 I am glad for the attention, high tide raises all ships and, as Alex
 points out, Regus has been more co-opted than it has been dominant in
 relation to coworking.  Before you know it, WeWork will also be applying to
 get on the Wiki and so on, just like Regus. :-). Though not yet, they are
 still in the own sandbox model and who knows, they may stay there.

 A number of sectors are shifting in the face of the ideas around the
 sharing economy and office space is one of them.  And as with the others
 there are policy issues to be worked out and so on. The dark sides of the
 sharing economy include of course exploitation and the black market.  This
 is also not different with coworking.  As Big Coworking develops I expect
 to see these kinds of problems addressed faster than they would have
 without it, so that is helpful.

 One of the things I would like to see is a real cradle to grave approach
 for coworking; at this moment most people think of it as a nice place to
 start until you get to be a real business when you get your own space.  And
 I expect that Big Coworking will change that.



 On Monday, November 17, 2014 9:16:07 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:

 Fascinating - and eye popping - numbers on WeWork in the Forbes article
 Inside the Phenomenal Rise of WeWork
 http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/11/05/the-rise-of-wework/

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 member, Workantile http://workantile.com/
 @twbrandt

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Optimal Desk Sizes / Dimensions

[Jacob Sayles]

Not the small ones.  They are only big enough for one person.  We situate
them face to face in rows of 2-4 to make our pods of 4-8 desks.  We then
have 12 of these pods spread around the space.  I wonder how many
individual ikea legs we own... boggles the mind.

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Farhan Abbasi findfar...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Thanks Jacob!

 So would one Vika Amon desk fit 2 people across from each other, or
 possible 2 on each side?

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.com
 wrote:

 We have the basic Vika Amon tables from Ikea arraigned in pods of 4-8
 desks.  In larger areas we have the larger ones arranged like one big
 table.  Key is flexibility and the pods are spread out so that you are
 always around people, but you can change the noise/heat/activity level by
 switching pods.

 We've also made a few of these standing desks by extending the legs with
 black PVC pipe design requires a wall though as they are not very
 stable w/o it.

 We have 10K sqft and  something like 125 desks.  I'm happy with them
 although we had to create a piece in the center of the pod to keep them
 relatively straight.  Keeping wires tidy is an ongoing battle.

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 3:03 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace 
 wmben...@locusworkspace.com wrote:

 Very cool! Thanks for sharing that.


 On Wednesday, November 19, 2014 5:11:07 AM UTC+1, NODO Cowork wrote:

 Do you know about open furniture? https://www.opendesk.cc/

 El martes, 18 de noviembre de 2014 14:41:35 UTC-6, Farhan Abbasi
 escribió:

 Hi folks,

 I run a coworking space in Boston called Coalition and this community
 provided great info for me when launching. Thank you!

 I'm wondering if you folks have experience with an ideal desk
 dimension that optimizes seating (ie getting the most chairs out of the
 table setup)? I have a wide open floorplan (imagine 10,000+ SF) and able 
 to
 connect many tables and chairs together, with people sitting on both sides
 of each table. Looking to get the most out of the space to meet my
 financial hurdles.

 I would love to hear:

 - The optimal desk size that allows for people to sit side by side and
 across from each other. (Multiple of these tables will be setup next to
 each other or across from each other).
 - Examples of actual desks that you think works? (I would purchase in
 bulk).

 Thanks for any of your valuable time!
 Farhan

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Optimal Desk Sizes / Dimensions

[Jacob Sayles]

I think this is it:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00251135/#/00251338

I have to say though, Open Desk has a similarly sized table and their
organization is a heck of a lot more interesting then Ikea.  If I had to do
it again I'd probably standardize around these:

https://www.opendesk.cc/lean/olivia-desk

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 11:54 AM, Glen Ferguson g...@coworkfrederick.com
wrote:

 Jacob,

 Could you provide measurements for that desk? Searching the IKEA US site
 for Vika Amon doesn't return any matches. I've tried a few spelling
 variations too.

 Thanks,

 ---
 Glen Ferguson
 Cowork Frederick
 122 E Patrick St
 Frederick, MD 21701-5630
 +1 (301) 732-5165
 www.coworkfrederick.com
 @CoworkFrederick http://twitter.com/CoworkFrederick


 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.com
 wrote:

 Not the small ones.  They are only big enough for one person.  We situate
 them face to face in rows of 2-4 to make our pods of 4-8 desks.  We then
 have 12 of these pods spread around the space.  I wonder how many
 individual ikea legs we own... boggles the mind.

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 11:13 AM, Farhan Abbasi findfar...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Thanks Jacob!

 So would one Vika Amon desk fit 2 people across from each other, or
 possible 2 on each side?

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.com
 wrote:

 We have the basic Vika Amon tables from Ikea arraigned in pods of 4-8
 desks.  In larger areas we have the larger ones arranged like one big
 table.  Key is flexibility and the pods are spread out so that you are
 always around people, but you can change the noise/heat/activity level by
 switching pods.

 We've also made a few of these standing desks by extending the legs
 with black PVC pipe design requires a wall though as they are not very
 stable w/o it.

 We have 10K sqft and  something like 125 desks.  I'm happy with them
 although we had to create a piece in the center of the pod to keep them
 relatively straight.  Keeping wires tidy is an ongoing battle.

 On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 3:03 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace 
 wmben...@locusworkspace.com wrote:

 Very cool! Thanks for sharing that.


 On Wednesday, November 19, 2014 5:11:07 AM UTC+1, NODO Cowork wrote:

 Do you know about open furniture? https://www.opendesk.cc/

 El martes, 18 de noviembre de 2014 14:41:35 UTC-6, Farhan Abbasi
 escribió:

 Hi folks,

 I run a coworking space in Boston called Coalition and this
 community provided great info for me when launching. Thank you!

 I'm wondering if you folks have experience with an ideal desk
 dimension that optimizes seating (ie getting the most chairs out of the
 table setup)? I have a wide open floorplan (imagine 10,000+ SF) and 
 able to
 connect many tables and chairs together, with people sitting on both 
 sides
 of each table. Looking to get the most out of the space to meet my
 financial hurdles.

 I would love to hear:

 - The optimal desk size that allows for people to sit side by side
 and across from each other. (Multiple of these tables will be setup 
 next to
 each other or across from each other).
 - Examples of actual desks that you think works? (I would purchase
 in bulk).

 Thanks for any of your valuable time!
 Farhan

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Who's shopping for electronic door locks?

[Jacob Sayles]

Wow that sounds like a pretty great feature set Barbara.  I'll have to dig
in to their hardware. I hadn't heard of them before.  Thank you for the
tip!  I'd love to integrate something in to Nadine, our software, as well.
Let me know how that goes for DeskWorks.

Jacob

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 10:32 AM, Barbara Sprenger 
bspren...@thesatelliteinc.com wrote:

 Hi Jacob,
 We have standardized on Paxton, and we're very happy with them. We're
 using a battery powered and wifi enabled lock on every office and
 conference room door. Easy to install without wiring to each door (except
 outside doors, which are wired). These units have the scanner built into
 the door handle, so when we leave a place, we can just put the old handles
 back on and take the Paxton scanner/locks with us. We've brought our costs
 down on these systems to about ⅓ of our original costs. We'll shortly be
 tying them into our software, DeskWorks, for automatic posting of charges.
 Our Center Coordinators now start the day (takes about 5 minutes) to post
 any charges from the day before for anyone who has a less than full-time
 plan. Really expands the available market!

 Barbara Sprenger


 On Thursday, October 21, 2010 2:09:34 PM UTC-7, Jacob Sayles wrote:

 Hello,

 The topic of electronic (RFID) door locks has come up a few times and I
 wanted to revisit it.  Who out there now is looking for a solution?  Who is
 keeping an eye out for something cool to come along and interested if one
 does?

 Jacob

 ---
 Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
 http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

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Re: [Coworking] AltamontCowork Closing

[Jacob Sayles]

Thank you for everything Mike!  You have been a great addition to the
conversation here and I hope we cross paths again soon.

On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Mike Pihlman altamontcow...@gmail.com
wrote:

 I wrote this on my Facebook page.  But, before I paste it here I would
 like to thank ALL of those among you who helped me TREMENDOUSLY over the
 years (you know who you are from private conversations).  You are my
 inspirations, and, please keep up the fight for collaborative, open, work!
 I became too old (at 63) to continue the fight from this direction, but, I
 will continue from another (you will have to read my pasted posting to the
 end!).

 To all the new people here (by new those who came after May 2009)...good
 luck and do not ever give up, or change the values that you believe in

 COWORKING (without a hyphen) ROCKS!!!

 
 AFTER 67 months of trying (65 of those at a loss), we will closing
 AltamontCowork on Dec 31, 2014.

 COWORKING in Tracy, CA WILL happen sometime in the future; when the
 CULTURE changes sufficiently to understand the beauty of, and embrace: Open,
 Collaborative, Work.

 When will that happen I suspect 5 to 20 years.

 Why that long???

 Here is the clue: Those accepting, and fully embracing, this kind of work
 environment are just NOW 25 years old or YOUNGER. It will take 5 to 20
 years for the oldest of them to grow sufficiently (and for us old farts
 to die off so they have the road ahead free of us) to have a major impact
 in the world.

 THEN the world of collaborative work will change, but, only then. The
 circle of life. The youngsters of today will embrace collaborative work in
 the futurehail to them!

 Tracy, CA Residents: When you see that next COWORKING location open up
 hereall I ask is that you have a fleeting memory of
 AltamontCoworkas we will ALWAYS be the first!

 We have met many wonderful people and made some wonderful, lifelong,
 friends. There have been fun times and hard times. But, I appreciate each
 and every one who supported AltamontCowork (or Tracy Virtual Office...who
 remembers?) over the years.

 The very very special people among you know who you are. (Yes, Tom Gardner
 knew)

 BUTLike in Harry Potter: The Phoenix rises.

 On Jan 1, 2015, YeOldeTechy (does anyone remember?) will rise again as:
 TechyMike

 http://TechyMike.com/
 http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2FTechyMike.com%2Fh=AAQGcO282s=1


 Cue the music from Jaws.haha


 --

 --
 Buy From *Amazon* and help ForCarol.com. Click on this link:
 http://smile.amazon.com/ch/45-1499304
 --
 Mike Pihlman
 AltamontCowork / ForCarol.com (501c3)
 95 W. 11th Street, Suite 205
 Tracy, CA 95376
 Phone: 209-608-4340
 Web: http://AltamontCowork.com http://altamontcowork.com/

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Re: [Coworking] Crowdfunding Insights

[Jacob Sayles]

Some landlords don't get it.  The first place we looked at took 3 months of
negotiation and the guy was throwing all sorts of weird stuff at us like
being worried people would sleep on the couches.  He wanted us to make sure
the place was empty by 8 every night.  We walked away and it was the right
move.  You might have grounds to push back, but you might not want to.

It really sucks that it's going down like this, but a crisis can really
rally and forge a community. Now that you have been open for a few months,
have some good stories, and an identity, it will be easier to find the next
space and they will understand what you are doing so you can avoid this
sort of thing.

It might not seem like it right now, but you are in a really good position.


Jacob

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Harman Grewal har...@lab-b.ca wrote:

 Hello Everyone,

 I haven't posted in the Coworking group for quite a while but I have
 frequented the topics as often as possible and whatever I've read has
 ALWAYS been helpful. My friend and I have recently started a coworking
 space in Brampton in August of this year. Being the first coworking space
 in Brampton, our expectations were exceeded with the amount of traction we
 were gaining in our local community. Events were happening, people were
 slowly signing up...things were good. However, down the line our landlord
 became very unsettled with coworking and what it entailed. We hoped that
 after seeing the publicity we were getting his building and after talking
 to community stakeholders he might understand what coworking is and its
 benefits but that wasn't the case. We received a formal cease and desist
 about a month ago and still don't know what we did wrong. The lease stated
 general coworking , rent was always paid and none of the terms of the
 agreement were broken. Fast forward, our community is left waiting for us
 to move into our new space. We're back to the coffee shops lol.

 To help with paying for the transition and to ensure that this doesn't
 happen again we're going to be crowdfunding. We're going to be using
 Indiegogo as well. What I wanted to find out was if anyone here has been
 involved with crowdfunding or has done crowdfunding themselves? What
 tips/advice/guidance could you provide to ensuring a successful campaign?
 What types of perks should we offer? and Where should we be focusing our
 efforts?

 Any info would be greatly appreciated :)

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Coworking EU ticket available

[Jacob Sayles]

You'll just need to come to Seattle!  :)


Jacob

---
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On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Thilo Utke th...@upstre.am wrote:

 no!!!, I hoped we could finally meet in person.

 Cheers
 Thilo


 On Monday, October 20, 2014 3:27:21 PM UTC+2, Susan Evans wrote:

 Hi all,

 I have one early-bird priced ticket to Coworking EU that unfortunately I
 cannot use. If you're planning to go but haven't gotten your ticket yet, it
 is available to you for the early-bird price (€195).

 Please contact me directly if you're interested!

 Thanks,
 Susan
 __
 Office Nomads
 officenomads.com
 206-323-6500(o)
 206-484-5859(m)

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Re: [Coworking] Who's shopping for electronic door locks?

[Jacob Sayles]

Yeah they are working through a lot of manufacturing issues but they are
being nice and transparent about it.

On this topic we are talking here at Office Nomads about if we want to
continue to develop the lock I built for The Red Victorian this summer.
I'd love to see a solid open source solution with a modular hardware
design.  If anyone is interested in working on this with me let me know.

Jacob

---
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On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 7:05 AM, Jamie Russo ja...@enerspacecoworking.com
wrote:

 Jane, did you get any idea of shipping time from Lockitron? Their site
 hasn't been updated since April and I read that they haven't yet shipped
 all Lockitrons to their backers...but some folks on this list seem to have
 them. Thanks!


 On Sunday, September 7, 2014 10:31:36 AM UTC-7, Jane Behr wrote:

 Chui https://preorder.getchui.com/the-world-s-most-intelligent-doorbell
 is WAY TOO COOL for my small town and my modest coworking space, but I
 ordered one anyway, along with the Lockitron https://lockitron.com/.  
 THEORETICALLY,
 the Chui addresses the major potential weakness of the Lockitron as a
 stand-alone - what to do if one of your members doesn't have a phone, or
 the phone isn't charged - and also acts as a wireless intercom. (Honestly,
 I think EVERYONE has a phone, and I don't see it as much of a weakness -
 but it's good to have back-up/redundant systems.)

 When our Lockitron/Chui system is set up I will report back to the group
 with pros and cons.

 I am new to the group - thanks much to everyone for taking the time to
 share experiences and expertise.

 Joy! from Jane

 On Tuesday, July 15, 2014 7:18:03 PM UTC-7, Toby in Boulder wrote:

 My recommendation: Chui
 https://preorder.getchui.com/the-world-s-most-intelligent-doorbell

 Facial recognition door access, for $199. Works with Lockitron.

 -Toby

 Full disclosure: investor
 (+ co-working space owner)


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Re: [Coworking] Re: Getting rid of the co-working hyphen

[Jacob Sayles]

I'll reach out to him and see if he is close enough to stop in for coffee.

Also, if it would help the cause, Open Coworking can buy a subscription.
But a subscription without the leg work isn't worth much.  Lauren and Oren,
you two seem to have a good momentum on this.  Go team!


Jacob

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On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 5:19 PM, oren.salo...@gmail.com 
oren.salo...@gmail.com wrote:

 I was doing some digging and found it not so easy to contact the editors
 of the AP Style Guide directly without a content subscription, but I did
 find this: https://twitter.com/apstylebook

 Does anyone want to join on a tweet campaign to get their attention
 #NoHyphenInCoworking anyone?

 Also, found this: https://twitter.com/dhminthorn

 Jacob, he seems to be a Washington state native, maybe you can reach out
 and invite him to Office Nomads to check out coworking?



 On Tuesday, September 23, 2014 1:15:25 PM UTC-5, Alex Hillman wrote:

  Lots of great analogies in there, Oren. http://ihighfive.com/


 -Alex

 On Tuesday, Sep 23, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Will BennisLocus Workspace 
 wmbe...@locusworkspace.com, wrote:

 Hi Oren,

 I really appreciate your thoughtful reply about this. And it's
 definitely pushed me in the direction of greater support for the cause.
 Two particular points that I can agree with: (1) the name is being spelled
 in two different ways for no very good reason. We might be able to solve
 that, and get it spelled in the way most people using the word want it to
 be spelled, so why not do it? (2) The way it's spelled matters to a lot of
 people in ways that are not specifically about language clarity and are
 more about identity and community support. And for those people, the
 preferred spelling tends to be coworking, so why not respect that?

 I'm in. I can respect that.

 Best,
 Will

 On Saturday, September 20, 2014 9:41:49 PM UTC+2, oren.s...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hi Will,

 I know what your name is, I was just trying to make a point. :)

 I respect and value your points about no horse in the race and that the
 indifference of the co-working fans would never lead them to debate this
 to such an extent and that clearly this is something the coworking fans
 are pushing here. I also see your point about the flexibility of language
 and I agree no entity can stop language from changing and adapting and
 being interpreted differently in different contexts.

 All that being said, I find co-working to be disrespectful. There is a
 distinct difference between your example of personal computing and
 computing and co-working and coworking. One refers to a rapidly adapting
 industry where the nature of what was being described changed over time.
 While coworking is rapidly expanding and comes across new variants all the
 time, I don't think anyone is claiming a full transformation is happening
 like in your computing example.

 Nobody in journalism misspells kibbutz in writing and nobody just
 started calling them collective agricultural communities either. Kibbutz
 means something because it staked out the term and owned it. I see the
 exact same thing happening with coworking except that spelling it
 co-working means a distinct unfamiliarity with the subject matter.

 Maybe I'm making some assumptions here, but this was one of the first
 things I learned about coworking. I don't know a single major organization,
 association, product, content hub, group or otherwise large group of
 coworking people identifying under the co-working banner. We're all
 squarely organized under the coworking banner. So what if some space
 operators choose to spell it co-working? Obviously that's their choice as
 an operator and they're welcome to do so, but to me it's always been a red
 flag that they're disconnected from the global community. Maybe I'm wrong
 in assuming so, but in my experience it's been validated pretty
 consistently.

 Even if there is little ambiguity in co-working vs. coworking (because
 there's nothing currently called co-working), it's still very undignified
 not be regarded as important enough to have a consistent spelling. That's
 the core issue at hand from my perspective and maybe you disagree, but
 that's why I think we're talking about entering the dictionary and the
 style guides. It's for the same reason that a apple is in appropriate but
 an apple is ok. If I said I'm going to eat a apple, you'd understand me but
 look at me funny. We're just trying to get the journalists to realize that
 from our perspective, co-working = a apple.


 On Friday, September 19, 2014 5:19:38 AM UTC-5, Will Bennis, Locus
 Workspace wrote:

 Hi Oren,

 I appreciate your reply about this!

 Actually, my name is Will, not William, damnit!!! :

 But I don't think this is really the same.

 First, coworking isn't a company name or a given name / proper noun.
 It's not your name or my name. It's not even the movement's name. If
 

Re: [Coworking] Re: Getting rid of the co-working hyphen

[Jacob Sayles]

I haven't heard any movement on it but I'd love to see us take another stab
at it.  Lauren, our newest employee, had some great ideas on what we could
do to grease the skids for the AP but she's only worked here one week so
she may need some time to settle in.  :)

Sometimes you just have to let it go.  For the NYTimes article on the
Coworking Visa recently I went to bat just like you did and got a similar
response.  Funny though they did not hyphenate Coworking Visa as that is
a name of a program but they did hyphenate the word everywhere else in the
article.

Jacob

---
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http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 10:09 PM, oren.salo...@gmail.com 
oren.salo...@gmail.com wrote:

 There hasn't been any movement on this in 3 years. Anyone have an update?
 Liz? Alex? Tony? Jacob? Anybody?

 I had no idea how bad this issue was.

 I encountered this today with some press being written on Fort Work in the
 Dallas media today.

 When I saw the article posted, I saw a few misquotes about coworking
 statistics as well as the misspelling of coworking  (hyphen included, not
 the cowering autocorrect).

 When I requested that both be corrected, the writer told me she could
 change (or omit) the quotes, but that AP style guides forbid her from
 changing the spelling of coworking.

 Here's her actual response (C+P'ed below):

 Hi Oren,

 I’ll take a look at the microsite — thank you! I’ll also rework your
 quote, or take it out entirely to make to correct the statement.

 On the word co-working, this is an AP style that’s out of our control.
 Again, I’ll take a look at the details first thing in the morning and will
 make the changes immediately.

 Thank for the email. I really appreciate it.

 Take care,



 On Thursday, September 1, 2011 4:29:20 AM UTC-5, sop...@deskwanted.com
 wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 For a while now we've been annoyed about the resurgence in the use of
 the hyphenated version of the word coworking. As you all know, most
 major media outlets these days write it as co-working.
 Deskmag recently published an article explaining why this is
 happening: it's because the AP Stylebook has decided that co-working
 is the correct form.
 However, we'd like to ask for your assistance in helping AP change
 their minds! We've put out a call for people to bombard AP with the
 following tweet:

 @APStylebook #Coworking is not Co-working. It’s an independent
 movement that doesn’t want to be separated by a hyphen!

 For a backgrounder on why we think the word should be without a
 hyphen, have a read of the article: http://www.deskmag.com/en/
 coworking-or-co-working-with-hyphen-252

 What do you all think? I know this is an old issue, but it's important
 to get the name right, right?

 Sophie
 Deskmag/Deskwanted

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Re: [Coworking] Basic elements for a definition of coworking

[Jacob Sayles]

Tricky business for sure.  One factor I've been looking more and more at is
the motivations and intentions of the champions behind each community, or
said another way, why the space was started in the first place.  There are
many conversations that come up again and again that, with hindsight, I can
see are just a miss-match of intentions.  For example the Open one space
or many spaces conversation.  It's a perfectly reasonable motivation to
want to open multiple spaces and have a wide reach and impact.  I
personally started Office Nomads because I want a home and a community I
want to be a member of.  Understanding this helps me see why it doesn't
make sense for us to make a chain of Office Nomads, and also why it's a
waste of everyone's time to argue about this.  If we can find neutral
language to highlight distinctions like this it would go a long way to that
goal of finding like-minded spaces and filling our communities with happy
members.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
wrote:

 I’m pretty sure that Emergent Research has a rubric they use for when they
 do their research for their annual report, but I can’t remember exactly
 what is on it. Having some consistency with that would probably be helpful!

 I think it had some of the items you described, but it was a lot more
 specific with many of the attributes. Hopefully Steve can chime in!

 I used to be more opinionated about self-describing as “coworking” and the
 regular mis-use of the term, but I’ve become more and more comfortable with
 the idea that the word coworking is as specific as the word “restaurant”,
 which doesn’t really describe much on its own. I’d love to see more maps
 (including the one you’re putting together) display with more detail what
 people can expect. It’s more important that people find a place that makes
 them happy and productive than anything else…and reducing that to
 “coworking” is like reducing fine dining french restaurants and mcdonalds
 to “restaurant”. *Technically* accurate, but not really helpful.

 Related, this recent post caught my eye (I think Liz posted it from the
 GCUC account):
 http://www.cloudvirtualoffice.com/blog/a-coworking-safari/

 I’m especially interested in the things vary widely, really impact the
 experience, but are hardest to really quantify: things like “ambiance” and
 noise level are such relative descriptions, so the source matters a lot,
 too! Who’s doing the describing: the owner? The members? Visitors? In a lot
 of cases, their descriptions vary quite a bit.

 To that point, even “non-hostile  friendly” is relative. It’s become a
 common theme that I hear from coworkers who visit startup-centric coworking
 spaces that the only time people talk to each other is when they’re
 pitching their startup. For some people, that’s non-hostile and friends but
 for others, it’s their worst nightmare.

 -Alex



 On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Ramon Suarez ra...@betacowork.com
 wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 I'm working on a definition of Coworking to make it easier to choose who
 to include in the map of coworking spaces in Belgium
 http://coworkingbelgium.be/belgium-coworking-spaces-map. I know it can
 be a controversial subject and I don't want to start a flamewar, but I
 would like to have your feedback on the basic elements to build this
 definition. I think it could also be helpful to make it easier to explain
 to our potential customers and journalists.

 In my definition a Coworking space :

- Calls itself a coworking space.
- Has a fully dedicated espace for cowoking (not just a few hours or
a cafeteria shared with patrons).
- Treats coworkers as 1st class clients, not as a lesser kind to fill
unused space.
- Has  somebody dedicated to connect the members (a facilitator, not
an administrative asistant.)
- Provides a non hostile and friendly environment that encourages
collaboration and interaction.

 What do you think?


 Ramon Suarez
 Serendipity Accelerator, Betacowork
 Author: http://coworkinghandbook.com
 email  hangouts: ra...@betacowork.com
  Phone: +3227376769
 GSM: +32497556284
 Twitter:http://twitter.com/ramonsuarez
 Skype: ramonsuarez
 Try coworking: http://betacowork.com

 http://betacowork.com/free-coworking-tryout/?utm_source=emailutm_medium=468x60_bannerutm_content=girl-homeutm_campaign=ramon-signature

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Re: [Coworking] Basic elements for a definition of coworking

[Jacob Sayles]

Ah let me clarify.  By neutral I didn't mean less specific I meant
less hostile or actually more open to the difference.  Using terms like
Korean BBQ is a good example of this as it's not derogatory.  Likening
another space to a fast food joint is a little less neutral.

Jacob

---
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http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 If we can find neutral language to highlight distinctions like this it
 would go a long way to that goal of finding like-minded spaces and filling
 our communities with happy members.”

 I don’t think that more *neutral* language is what we need. In fact, I
 think we need the opposite.

 The restaurant industry has fine dining and fast food, regional cuisines,
 varying price points, etc. But people need to have terms like “fast food”
 and “korean BBQ” to narrow down what they’re looking for.

 I know that this sounds like fragmentation, which freaks a lot of people
 out. I think this is HEALTHY fragmentation, though, like this:
 http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2014/07/theres-never-only-one-community/

 It doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends, or even help each other, but I’m
 firmly convinced that having some more narrow specific terminology to add
 to add to the more neutral term ‘coworking’ is going to help the industry,
 not hurt it.

 -Alex


 On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.com
 wrote:

 Tricky business for sure.  One factor I've been looking more and more at
 is the motivations and intentions of the champions behind each community,
 or said another way, why the space was started in the first place.  There
 are many conversations that come up again and again that, with hindsight, I
 can see are just a miss-match of intentions.  For example the Open one
 space or many spaces conversation.  It's a perfectly reasonable motivation
 to want to open multiple spaces and have a wide reach and impact.  I
 personally started Office Nomads because I want a home and a community I
 want to be a member of.  Understanding this helps me see why it doesn't
 make sense for us to make a chain of Office Nomads, and also why it's a
 waste of everyone's time to argue about this.  If we can find neutral
 language to highlight distinctions like this it would go a long way to that
 goal of finding like-minded spaces and filling our communities with happy
 members.

 Jacob

 ---
 Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
 http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500

 On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Alex Hillman 
 dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote:

 I’m pretty sure that Emergent Research has a rubric they use for when
 they do their research for their annual report, but I can’t remember
 exactly what is on it. Having some consistency with that would probably be
 helpful!

 I think it had some of the items you described, but it was a lot more
 specific with many of the attributes. Hopefully Steve can chime in!

 I used to be more opinionated about self-describing as “coworking” and
 the regular mis-use of the term, but I’ve become more and more comfortable
 with the idea that the word coworking is as specific as the word
 “restaurant”, which doesn’t really describe much on its own. I’d love to
 see more maps (including the one you’re putting together) display with more
 detail what people can expect. It’s more important that people find a place
 that makes them happy and productive than anything else…and reducing that
 to “coworking” is like reducing fine dining french restaurants and
 mcdonalds to “restaurant”. *Technically* accurate, but not really
 helpful.

 Related, this recent post caught my eye (I think Liz posted it from the
 GCUC account):
 http://www.cloudvirtualoffice.com/blog/a-coworking-safari/

 I’m especially interested in the things vary widely, really impact the
 experience, but are hardest to really quantify: things like “ambiance” and
 noise level are such relative descriptions, so the source matters a lot,
 too! Who’s doing the describing: the owner? The members? Visitors? In a lot
 of cases, their descriptions vary quite a bit.

 To that point, even “non-hostile  friendly” is relative. It’s become a
 common theme that I hear from coworkers who visit startup-centric coworking
 spaces that the only time people talk to each other is when they’re
 pitching their startup. For some people, that’s non-hostile and friends but
 for others, it’s their worst nightmare.

 -Alex



 On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Ramon Suarez ra...@betacowork.com
 wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 I'm working on a definition of Coworking to make it easier to choose
 who to include in the map of coworking spaces in Belgium
 http://coworkingbelgium.be/belgium-coworking-spaces-map. I know it
 can be a controversial subject and I don't want to start a flamewar, but I
 would like to have your feedback on the basic elements to build this
 definition. I

Re: [Coworking] Onboarding task tracking and internal directory - best tools?

[Jacob Sayles]

We use Nadine for this and loosely call it member management. We have a
list of onboarding and exit tasks that get triggered when a member signs up
or leaves. It also emails the team when someone signs in for the day and
there are tasks to be done. I call that the AutoNag. :)

On Sunday, August 31, 2014, Adrian Palacios adr...@nexudus.com wrote:

 TFTM Jerome!

 Lisa, I don't like to do a lot marketing here but Nexudus seems to be a
 very good fit for what you are describing. So, apologies...

 The tasks system allows to create groups and a sequence of tasks to be
 performed for a member. You can create as many of these workflows as you
 want and trigger them automatically when a member signs up or cancels a
 membership. You can also start one ore more sequences of tasks based on the
 specific memberships people sign up to. For example, if you had a 24/7
 access membership you can tell Nexudus to add the Set up Access Card task
 for any member registering in those; but skip that step for memberships who
 don't need it.

 More details here http://help.spaces.nexudus.com/en/managers/tasks.html.

 The members directory is also at the core of Nexudus. Members can manage
 their full profile online (as well as any other contact and billing
 details), link it to different social networks and upload some basic media,
 such as images and videos about their work. There is a tag system which you
 can use to browse the directory and the search uses some semantics to try
 to get the best match based on the words you type and the content published
 by each member.

 More details here
 http://help.spaces.nexudus.com/en/managers/website-members-directory.html
 .

 You also talked about communication and interaction between members. The
 community board, which is also linked to the directory, allows members to
 start conversation threads (similar to Google groups) and post replies to
 different topics. There is a like, follow, mute and mention system, which
 makes sure people are no bombarded by content which is not relevant to
 them. You can also create moderated groups and a members can start private
 conversation rooms which are ideal for internal discussions or for members
 to direct message other members, without actually having to share their
 emails to start with.

 More details here
 http://help.spaces.nexudus.com/en/managers/community-board.html.

 Hope that helps :)

 On Sunday, August 31, 2014 4:08:22 AM UTC+1, Jerome wrote:

 Try any of these for managing billing, memberships, etc:
 DeskTime
 Happy Desk
 Nexudus
 LiquidSpace
 Front Desk
 Cobot
 I believe DeskTime and Happy Desk have the most obvious member directory
 feature with profiles, for interaction.
 LiquidSpace has profiles, but the interaction is limited to providing
 comments/reviews on a space, vs. interacting w/ fellow LiquidSpace-rs.

 If you use HighriseHQ as your CRM for both prospects, and current/former
 members, you can use WeLoveHighrise to run templates of
 onboarding/offboarding tasks.


 *JEROME CHANG*

 *WEST: Santa Monica*
 1450 2nd Street (@Broadway) | Santa Monica CA 90405
 ph: (310) 526-2255

 *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire*
 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036
 ph: (323) 330-9505

 *EAST: Downtown*
 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013
 ph: (213) 550-2235


 http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles
 https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339
 http://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_home
 http://vimeo.com/blankspaces
  http://vimeo.com/blankspaces
 On Aug 30, 2014, at 6:44 PM, Lisa Anne Logan l...@hattery.com wrote:

 Such a fun project for a Saturday night, right?!

 Trying to solve 2 problems for my coworking space.


 *Problem #1:*
 I need some sort of member management tool to track the ~50 tasks I do
 for each new resident's onboarding and later offboarding. The spreadsheet
 I've kept to date for this is now just too unwieldy.

 *Problem #2:*
 I'd love some sort of internal directory, where people could create
 profiles (which company they're with, role, personal interests, photos,
 etc.). Just something light to facilitate more interaction between people
 sharing a space but not actual work projects.

 *Solutions:*
 I've heard of Simper (just requested an invite) and Parklet (appears to
 be good). Is there anything else I should consider to tackle one or both of
 these problems? What about any more robust membership management tools
 (integrating billing, etc.)?

 Thanks all,
 LA

 Lisa Anne Logan
 Director of Marketing and Operations
 Hattery

 l...@hattery.com
 415.205.5325




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Re: [Coworking] Joining a reciprical coworking partnership with coworking spaces worldwide?

[Jacob Sayles]

Hello there!  I can't figure out from any of the links you provided who is
behind Co-WAG.  Can you clue us in a little bit more on the story here?

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 10:58 PM, Village Mayor 
village.northsyd...@gmail.com wrote:

 *Would your coworking spaces be interested in joining an Alliance of
 coworking spaces globally?*

 *Co-WAG.com http://co-wag.com/ is now up and running. *


 Co-WAG is adding independent coworking spaces in cities worldwide, that
 want to offer reciprocal coworking facilities.

  Co-WAG Members are professionally savvy coworking spaces with a desire
 to have a global presence for their members.

  We are now uploading coworking spaces that meet our criteria (see here)
 so you can offer the value added service to your members. We hope this will
 be a defining and differentiating feature for your coworking space over
 other coworking spaces in your city.


 See the website at http://co-wag.com/ and the following links:

 ·   Membership Agreement http://co-wag.com/members-agreement/

 ·   Benefits http://co-wag.com/benefits-co-wag/ to belonging to
 Co-WAG

 ·   Join us on Facebook
 https://www.facebook.com/coworkingallianceglobal?ref=bookmarks



 *Is your coworking space ready to be the Co-WAG http://co-wag.com/ space
 in your city?*

 p.s. this is for independent coworking spaces that are not already part of
 an international arrangement.

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Coffee brokers/wholesale recommendation

[Jacob Sayles]

Where can they sell/ship to?

Jacob

---
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http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:47 AM, Jeannine flexkantoorkame...@gmail.com
wrote:

 How marvellous of you to bring this up.

 I was recently approached by a business involved in my Amsterdam space,
 Moyee Coffee http://www.moyeecoffee.com/.  They have a Fair Chain thing
 going on.  We have been talking about how they can get involved with Open
 Coworking; we are in preliminary talks and so nothing has been given any
 kind of shape at all.  They are nevertheless intrigued by the possibilities
 and that is as far as we have gotten.

 Until now the discussion has centered around exactly what Alex says, they
 don't really want a we talk you up and get a discount  kind of
 relationship but are interested in the long term.  And I am not at all
 interested in sending a pitch to the community, I don't think that is what
 I am for.  And the logistics of course are both daunting and interesting.

 The coffee, I have to tell you, is FAB.

 So I am just throwing that out there as food for thought.  Maybe I should
 set up a list for folks interested in taking this particular notion
 further?  Or should we just get a show of hands?  :-)

 Cheers,

 Jeannine



 On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 3:48:20 PM UTC+2, George Aye wrote:

 Dear coworkjng gurus,

 Our space in Chicago has been on a weekly subscription to Metropolis
 coffee since we started 1.5 yrs ago. We've been ramping up our consumption
 as we add more people and we're now level at 4 lbs/week for $60. We're at a
 total headcount of 27 individuals.

 Anyone have any recommendations on a coffee broker or a wholesaler that
 can get offer better pricing? Or simply suggestions on managing cost?

 Many thanks in advance!

 George

 Ps. Chicago has a strong coffee culture with metropolis and
 intelligentsia being the two big roasters in town. Both are fantastic but
 expensive. Switching to dunkin donuts for their beans is not a viable
 option and I personally can't stand to drink it.

 George Aye
 773-263-2603

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Re: [Coworking] How to add my space to the wiki.coworking.org Directory

[Jacob Sayles]

Juliana,

Jeannine from Kamer 52 is taking over the wiki although she is currently on
vacation.  I'm sure she would love your help and will respond to you when
she is back to a computer next week.  Thanks for the offer!

Jacob

---
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http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 8:49 AM, jguimar...@4legal.com.br wrote:

 Jacob,

 Just as Lisa, I would like to add my space (4Legal Coworking) to
 Brasília/Brasil directory listing.
 I've just asked for access to the wiki. Please let me know if I can help
 you in anything.

 tks
 Juliana Guimarães


 Em quinta-feira, 24 de julho de 2014 13h34min42s UTC-3, Jacob Sayles
 escreveu:

 Lisa,

 I am very sorry for the delay approving your access to the wiki.  Out
 team in in a constant state of flux and lately we have been dropping the
 ball.  Truth is, the wiki needs some new champions.  A few years ago I
 started Open Coworking, a non-profit with the mission to keep the core
 values in the conversation and keep basic infrastructure, like the wiki, up
 and running.  I haven't been able to solidify the organization and I'm
 rather busy with other projects at the moment as well.  I'm actually in SF
 too this sumer working on a Coliving Hotel.  Perhaps we could get coffee
 and I could talk you in to taking over the wiki team!  If anyone is
 interested in the job, please let me know and I'll be happy to show you the
 ropes.

 Jacob

 ---
 Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
 http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


 On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Lisa Anne Logan l...@hattery.com
 wrote:

 Hi there,

 I've requested access through the join this workspace link a few times
 in recent months and never received a response. Is anyone else having this
 issue? Is there an active admin/moderator for this workspace currently?

 in particular, I'd like to add my space to the San Francisco directory
 listing, and it seems I need access to do so. http://wiki.coworking.org/
 w/page/16583935/SanFranciscoCoworking

 Thanks for any help,
 LA

  Lisa Anne Logan
 Director of Marketing and Operations
 Hattery

 l...@hattery.com
 415.205.5325




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Re: [Coworking] How to add my space to the wiki.coworking.org Directory

[Jacob Sayles]

Lisa,

I am very sorry for the delay approving your access to the wiki.  Out team
in in a constant state of flux and lately we have been dropping the ball.
 Truth is, the wiki needs some new champions.  A few years ago I started
Open Coworking, a non-profit with the mission to keep the core values in
the conversation and keep basic infrastructure, like the wiki, up and
running.  I haven't been able to solidify the organization and I'm rather
busy with other projects at the moment as well.  I'm actually in SF too
this sumer working on a Coliving Hotel.  Perhaps we could get coffee and I
could talk you in to taking over the wiki team!  If anyone is interested in
the job, please let me know and I'll be happy to show you the ropes.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Lisa Anne Logan l...@hattery.com wrote:

 Hi there,

 I've requested access through the join this workspace link a few times
 in recent months and never received a response. Is anyone else having this
 issue? Is there an active admin/moderator for this workspace currently?

 in particular, I'd like to add my space to the San Francisco directory
 listing, and it seems I need access to do so.
 http://wiki.coworking.org/w/page/16583935/SanFranciscoCoworking

 Thanks for any help,
 LA

 Lisa Anne Logan
 Director of Marketing and Operations
 Hattery

 l...@hattery.com
 415.205.5325




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Re: [Coworking] Who's shopping for electronic door locks?

[Jacob Sayles]

I'm down here in San Francisco now, knee deep in renovations for The Red
Victorian http://www.redvic.com and working on their door lock solution.
 We don't want to use any smart phone systems (Kevo, Lockitron, August,
etc) because we can't know for sure what kind of phone our guests will
have, if they will even have phones, or if they are charged when they
arrive.  We want to go with a personalized key code that can be generated
and emailed to them using the reservation system we built.  For that we are
hooking up the existing electric strike on the front gate to a raspberry pi
and a wiegand keypad.  The next bit of magic will be to hook up each room
with a Kwikset SmartCode lock and push the generated code to the given
room, and turn off the previous occupants code.

The advantages of going with the Kwikset are that it can use the existing
lock tumblers so we can keep the large amount of room keys we already have.
 Also at around $120-$150 the price is right for outfitting 20+ doors.
 People have been getting really excited about the idea of outfitting each
door with a raspberry pi but by the time we get power, servos, and a
durable enclosure hooked up it's going to be a lot more expensive.  One pi
at the front door calling all the shots is all we need.  Of course I have
to figure out how to send the key codes to each door so there is more RD
needed.  I'm also working to figure out the Wiegand protocol to hook up the
keypad.  If anyone has played with this, please reach out.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 6:34 AM, rachel cline rclineconsult...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Good info, I saw the fobs cost about $25, I didn't notice you had to pay
 for each virtual key also.

 Rachel Cline
 702-577-8627
 Sent from my iPhone

 On Jul 14, 2014, at 6:30 AM, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote:

 The one thing I would recommend, if you’re looking at Kevo, is to make
 sure you understand how their “ekey” pricing model works. Unless I’m
 grossly misunderstanding, it looks like the way it works is that you have
 to pay for packs of virtual “keys” to give to people before they can unlock
 it with their phone. It seems a bit ridiculous to me that you have to pay
 for the hardware and *then* pay again for each user you want to be able
 to unlock the hardware. If you have a lot of members, the cost for the Kevo
 system could end up being quite a bit higher than expected if you were only
 looking at the cost of the hardware.


 On Jul 12, 2014, at 11:43 PM, Rachel Cline rclineconsult...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Kevo looks great!  thanks for sharing.  Have you found any additional
 information or reviews?

 On Friday, June 6, 2014 2:49:10 PM UTC-7, Andy Soell wrote:

 Love all these reviews, thanks for all the guidance everyone! Does anyone
 have any experience with a newer Bluetooth-enabled locked called Kevo?
 Works with iOS devices, and also supports key fobs for users with other
 mobile phone platforms.

 http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/

 Looks promising, but I'm always a little wary of newer, untested
 products.


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Re: [Coworking] Who's shopping for electronic door locks?

[Jacob Sayles]

For something like that Andy you probably want to focus on if the door jam
can hold and electric strike.  They are easier to deal with actually but
residential products focus on the deadbolt because that is a standard
residential doors.  We have a lot more to work with in commercial spaces.

As for codes vs RFID vs physical keys vs phones: It's important to
understand the advantages and disadvantages each brings to the situation.
 The RedVic need codes we can email people like I described, but I'm
generally against codes as they are too easy to copy, pass on, overhear,
etc.  Keys are too hard to revoke and change so at Office Nomads we go with
RFID.  Phone solutions I'm sure work great here in tech savvy San Francisco
so I'm not surprised at all they work great for you Toby.  I wonder how
that would work even in Seattle and it makes me wonder what I would come up
with if I looked at the phones of every member that had a key.  We already
have an RFID solution so that would mostly be academic.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote:

 As long as we're back on electronic locks, we're looking for a good
 solution for our new location. The existing door is glass with a narrow
 stile
 http://www.customstorefronts.com/products/doors/aluminum/aluminum.htm
 frame that won't accommodate a standard deadbolt sized solution. If you
 search for door-code style locks for door like this on Amazon, you get a
 lot of results but none of them with enough purchases to figure out if
 they're good or not. Angel mentioned one earlier in this thread that would
 work, but it wasn't very favorably reviewed by her. Does anyone have any
 tips on a door code lock like this that they would recommend? I definitely
 want something with easily programmable codes we can give our members and
 not fobs or smartphone integration.

 andy


 On Monday, July 14, 2014 1:17:49 PM UTC-4, Jacob Sayles wrote:

 I'm down here in San Francisco now, knee deep in renovations for The Red
 Victorian http://www.redvic.com and working on their door lock
 solution.  We don't want to use any smart phone systems (Kevo, Lockitron,
 August, etc) because we can't know for sure what kind of phone our guests
 will have, if they will even have phones, or if they are charged when they
 arrive.  We want to go with a personalized key code that can be generated
 and emailed to them using the reservation system we built.  For that we are
 hooking up the existing electric strike on the front gate to a raspberry pi
 and a wiegand keypad.  The next bit of magic will be to hook up each room
 with a Kwikset SmartCode lock and push the generated code to the given
 room, and turn off the previous occupants code.

 The advantages of going with the Kwikset are that it can use the existing
 lock tumblers so we can keep the large amount of room keys we already have.
  Also at around $120-$150 the price is right for outfitting 20+ doors.
  People have been getting really excited about the idea of outfitting each
 door with a raspberry pi but by the time we get power, servos, and a
 durable enclosure hooked up it's going to be a lot more expensive.  One pi
 at the front door calling all the shots is all we need.  Of course I have
 to figure out how to send the key codes to each door so there is more RD
 needed.  I'm also working to figure out the Wiegand protocol to hook up the
 keypad.  If anyone has played with this, please reach out.

 Jacob

 ---
 Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
 http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


 On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 6:34 AM, rachel cline rclineco...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Good info, I saw the fobs cost about $25, I didn't notice you had to pay
 for each virtual key also.

 Rachel Cline
 702-577-8627
 Sent from my iPhone

 On Jul 14, 2014, at 6:30 AM, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote:

 The one thing I would recommend, if you’re looking at Kevo, is to make
 sure you understand how their “ekey” pricing model works. Unless I’m
 grossly misunderstanding, it looks like the way it works is that you have
 to pay for packs of virtual “keys” to give to people before they can unlock
 it with their phone. It seems a bit ridiculous to me that you have to pay
 for the hardware and *then* pay again for each user you want to be able
 to unlock the hardware. If you have a lot of members, the cost for the Kevo
 system could end up being quite a bit higher than expected if you were only
 looking at the cost of the hardware.


 On Jul 12, 2014, at 11:43 PM, Rachel Cline rclineco...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Kevo looks great!  thanks for sharing.  Have you found any additional
 information or reviews?

 On Friday, June 6, 2014 2:49:10 PM UTC-7, Andy Soell wrote:

 Love all these reviews, thanks for all the guidance everyone! Does
 anyone have any experience with a newer Bluetooth-enabled locked called
 Kevo? Works

Re: [Coworking] Re: Exchange program

[Jacob Sayles]

This is amazing.  I love the idea and Office Nomads would love to
participate.  This takes the beautiful cross-pollination that fuels the
Coworking Visa and kicks it up a notch or two.  When I get back from
spending the summer in San Francisco, I plan to keep a guest room in my
house in Seattle for visitors like this.

I won't be available for the conference call later this month but I'll keep
an eye on the project and reach out later in the year.  Nice work!

Jacob

On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Kristin Romaine kris...@cohoots.com
wrote:

 We have actually established a nonprofit arm at CO+HOOTS in Phoenix and
 are looking to get donations of airfare and lodging to support coworking
 both nationally and internationally.  I am going to be starting a community
 of advisors from cities around the country interested in being part of our
 pilot program.  In order to receive the exchange trip, we are going to ask
 the coworkers who participate to also do a small pro bono project in their
 field for an organization of need in the local community where they visit.
  :D

 The local coworking spaces who participate would need to provide a desk
 for the visiting coworkers, safe lodging (via a local hotel) with access to
 public transportation and a host of people who are willing to show the
 person around the area on their visit.  There are still a lot of details to
 figure out, but we are going to be hosting a Google Hangout at the end of
 this month and I will post it here if any of you want to attend.

 We have established the nonprofit with the intent of it being a national
 program that ALL coworking spaces can benefit from for the coworking
 exchange program-- NOT just PHX and CO+HOOTS.

 If any of you are interested in being in the community of advisors, please
 let me know.

 GIVE 2 HOOTS WITH CO+HOOTS!


 *Kristin Romaine*
 CO+HOOTS Foundation :: co-founder/executive director
 O:: 602.688.2825 C::* 602. http://602.738.8001/309-1247*
  je...@eekostudio.comcohoots.com http://www.eekostudio.com/ ::
 kris...@cohoots.com kris...@cohoots.com

 *Find us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/cohoots + twitter
 https://twitter.com/cohootsphx + blog http://cohoots.com/blog/! 1027 E.
 Washington St. Suite 107, PHX*

 On Thursday, May 29, 2014 8:16:17 AM UTC-7, Carlos López wrote:

 Hi all,

 I'm starting an exchange program between coworkers and I would like to
 know your insights, ideas or suggestions.

 It's a network for coworkers who want to exchange their homes + coworking
 memberships, usually for short periods of time. So in other words a
 coworker would be living in another city and working in a different
 coworking space but without paying anything extra (no rent and no coworking
 fee since they're already paying at home).

 I think it would be enriching for both the person who travels to another
 city/country and your coworking community. I was wondering if you as
 coworking managers would aprove this kind of arrangement (someone else
 using a coworking membership).

 Thanks a lot for your feedback!

 Carlos

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Exchange program

[Jacob Sayles]

I love this!  Susan and I have talked about something very similar where we
invite people to come to Seattle to join the Office Nomads team for a week,
or a month to get hands on experience in an established community.  We've
been talking about it for a long time but haven't pinned down any details
as of yet.  What do people think about that idea?  I also love to travel so
give me an excuse and I'm there!

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Angel Kwiatkowski fccowork...@gmail.com
wrote:

 It would be fun to take this a step further and just think about members
 or owner opening their homes to visiting coworkers whether the home owner
 is there or not. Commute to cowork together, live together :) We're
 piloting this between coworking space owners this fall. More details soon!

 Angel


 On Thursday, May 29, 2014 9:16:17 AM UTC-6, Carlos López wrote:

 Hi all,

 I'm starting an exchange program between coworkers and I would like to
 know your insights, ideas or suggestions.

 It's a network for coworkers who want to exchange their homes + coworking
 memberships, usually for short periods of time. So in other words a
 coworker would be living in another city and working in a different
 coworking space but without paying anything extra (no rent and no coworking
 fee since they're already paying at home).

 I think it would be enriching for both the person who travels to another
 city/country and your coworking community. I was wondering if you as
 coworking managers would aprove this kind of arrangement (someone else
 using a coworking membership).

 Thanks a lot for your feedback!

 Carlos

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[Coworking] Door Lock Systems?

[Jacob Sayles]

This topic has come up a number of times over the years and I was wondering
if there are any new thoughts/products in this area.  I'm looking to help
set up a 25 room hotel and the ISONAS system we use at Office Nomads would
be prohibitively expensive and complex at about $1000/door + wiring costs.
 I know a lot of people are happy with the home systems, but they are
usually key-code based and I'm not sure that works great in a hotel
setting.  Has anyone worked with a system they think could work well for
this?

Jacob

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Re: [Coworking] Fostering community across multiple locations

[Jacob Sayles]

Susan and I went down this road and pulled back.  We tried to open another
location under the assumption that we could give both spaces the care we
give our first location.  After about a year we got our first negative yelp
review and it stung because it was true. Our assumption was seriously
challenged and we decided to regroup at our current location.  I'm not
saying you can't open two locations, but this was our experience.  The
really tricky part was finding people to talk to about it and get advice.
 Traditional logic is that bigger is better and growing is good.  But if
you are trying to build a home, multiple houses doesn't necessarily get you
there.

Jacob

---
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On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 8:41 AM, Jerome Chang jer...@blankspaces.comwrote:

 I would have the new one focus on something different, like more event
 space(s), meeting rooms, cafe seating or whatever. Have a reason for people
 to want to visit both.

 *JEROME CHANG*

 *Mid-Wilshire*

 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036

 ph: (323) 330-9505

 *Downtown*
 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013
 ph: (213) 550-2235



 On Tuesday, May 13, 2014, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote:

 So, an amazing opportunity has fallen into our laps that would allow us
 to open a second coworking location a couple miles away from our existing
 location. We make a pretty heavy emphasis on community here, so I've never
 been super keen on the idea of multiple locations (versus expanding to
 larger spaces as needed) but for a variety of reasons this new space makes
 a lot of sense. We're contemplating it, but I wanted to check with any
 other space operators to find out any advice / tips / pitfalls related to
 multiple spaces, specifically as it relates to making sure the community
 doesn't become fragmented.

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 --

 *Downtown*
 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013
 ph: (213) 550-2235

 *Mid-Wilshire*
 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036
 ph: (323) 330-9505

 http://www.blankspaces.com/http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-downtown-la-los-angeles-2https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACEShttps://www.facebook.com/blankspacesdtlahttp://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_homehttp://vimeo.com/blankspaces

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Re: [Coworking] 5th Anniversary for The Creative Space

[Jacob Sayles]

Nice work!


Jacob

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On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Chad Ballantyne
c...@thecreativespace.cawrote:

 We turn 5 tomorrow!
 3 moves, 2 different buildings, now in 6200sf, 40 members so far, covering
 rent!

 Chad Ballantyne
 705.812.0689
 c...@thecreativespace.ca





 Barrie's Coworking Community
 Perfect for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.
 12 Dunlop St E, Barrie Ontario, L4M 1A3
 Memberships start at $25/mth
 www.thecreativespace.ca
 705-812-0689

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Re: [Coworking] Erasmus Plus Partner Search

[Jacob Sayles]

We are not specifically European, with our team spread around the world,
but your goals are perfectly aligned with our mission at Open Coworking.
We're working to keep the core values (community, collaboration, openness,
accessibility, and sustainability) in the conversation by facilitating
projects like the Coworking Wiki that embody these values.  Is that the
kind of partnership you are looking for?

Jacob

On Thursday, April 17, 2014, Francesca Martinuzzi fmartinu...@gmail.com
wrote:

 The University of Urbino is working on a project to be submitted in the
 Erasmus Plus call KA” Stratgic Partnership (deadline 30th April 2013).

 Our project aims to enhance the coworking culture strengthening the
 cooperation between coworking spaces and academic institution at a European
 level and supporting the spreading of a collaborative and creative approach
 to entrepreneurship familiarizing emerging entrepreneurs with new working
 culture, skills and competences.

 The other partners already involved in the consortium are coworkings from
 Italy and Germany. We need at least one more  partner from a 3rd European
 Country.

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Re: [Coworking] Who's tracking their membership churn?

[Jacob Sayles]

Fun stuff!  Yes, we track this stuff in Nadine and have some staff facing
stats pages that show us some basic data.  I'd love to dive deeper and I'm
always trying to recruit data nerds that want to help develop new views
into our historical data.  One page we have now lists how long everyone has
been a member and it's pretty fun to see how long some of our members have
been here.  I hesitate to expose this as a member facing tool as I don't
want it to be misunderstood as rank.  We don't even highlight what kind
of members people are as all members are equal in our eyes.  Also staff
pages can be ugly and clunky and still expose the data.  That said we are
looking into member facing data pages both based on their own usage and the
community as a whole.

Lifetime value... that's all sorts of complex to calculate much less
communicate...

Jacob

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On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Alex Hillman
dangerouslyawes...@gmail.comwrote:

 As the business aphorism goes, it's a lot easier to keep an existing
 customer than it is to get a new one.

 I know there are a variety of systems out there that people are using, I'm
 wondering if anyone is actively keeping track of things like churn and
 member lifetime value?

 I know that most people are more focused on attracting new members, but I
 wonder who is tracking member lifetime lengths, and how?

 -Alex








 --

 /ah
 indyhall.org
 coworking in philadelphia

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Re: [Coworking] Re: How do you effectively track hourly members

[Jacob Sayles]

Our system, Nadine, gathers network information as well but we don't use it
for billing.  We specifically use a manual sign-in at the front desk for
billing and we use the network info to send gentle reminders if someone has
forgotten to sign in.  We also don't do hourly as we are all about getting
people to be relaxed and present in the space, not rushing in and out.
 Since we only do the day, there is no need to sign out.  This is the best
way we've found to balance out a number of different factors and
situations.

Jacob

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On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 5:26 AM, t...@mail.hubud.org wrote:

 We have an in-house developed system that tracks whenever a member's
 device is in the space connected to the network. Super-easy for the members
 (we just register their devices once). Even if the member isn't using their
 computer online (rare in our hub), their other device (phone, etc) is
 usually on the network when in the space. As long as one of their devices
 is online, we're tracking their hours and they can seem their usage in real
 time. As with other available systems, it also kicks them off if they've
 expired (after multiple notices) or if they've gone significantly over
 hours (again, after notices).

 On Thursday, January 16, 2014 8:18:37 AM UTC+8, Chris Thompson wrote:

 How does your coworking space effectively track hourly members?  Are
 members responsible for clocking out?

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Re: [Coworking] Re: How did you find your coworking space?

[Jacob Sayles]

We found our building on Craigslist.  I know people who have used brokers
before and that can be a good way to go.  They usually get paid by the
landlord, not you.

Jacob

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On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Soleil Onoya outsidesph...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi Karina,

 Have you tried searching for co-working spaces at http://www.sharedesk.net?
 They have a solid number of listings there. When I started living in
 Vancouver and needed a place to work for a few weeks, I found Suite Genius (
 http://www.sharedesk.net/spaces/view/1644/suite-genius/) through that
 site.

 Before heading in, I also made sure to read people's Google reviews of the
 space to make sure it's the right environment for me.

 Hope this helps!



 On Sunday, March 30, 2014 11:56:07 AM UTC-7, Karina Alvela wrote:

 Hi all - wondering how you all found the venue/space where you started
 your coworking venture?  I am having trouble finding something that could
 work in my area.

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Re: [Coworking] Security and Access

[Jacob Sayles]

Hello there Michaela!  Happy to help.  Office Nomads is staffed Monday
through Friday, 8:30AM to 6PM.  We offer a key card option to folks that
need access outside those hours.  There is a whole process of a trial
period, a special training, a deposit and some paperwork before we give
anyone a key card.  This sets expectations from the beginning and gives us
the opportunity to show everyone the ropes as we go through the process.
 We open up the space when staff is here and you can just walk right in.
 After 6 we close up and you need a key to get in.

We have a pretty simple key card system.  Ours is made by ISONAS but there
are many different kinds.  Electronic keys are important so you can turn
them on and off easily and don't need to rekey any doors.

As for staffing,  I don't believe you can run a coworking space without any
staff.  You can get people in the door with an access system, you can have
people sign up and change their memberships online, and you can hire
someone to keep the place clean but then you are just a place to sit and
get on the internet.  I don't believe people are lacking places to get on
the internet and the warm feel you get from being at a coworking space is a
lot more then the choice of paint colors and furniture. The intangible
human elements that make up a vibrant community are much trickier to
facilitate and take care, intention, and presence.  We have a staff of
three employees and five working members to cultivate our community of 175
members.  The process for each individual is different as they integrate
into the community and it's our job as Community Cultivators is to take
time with each and every person.  Now it's starting to make sense why it
takes a team of 8 and that's with a lot of help from others in the
community.  So looking at it all through this lens, it's not about keeping
the kitchen clean, it's about inviting people to take care of their
community by chipping in wherever they can.  That's what I mean by taking
the time and it really is different with each and every person.

I didn't address your questions directly but I hope you find this helpful.
 :)

Jacob

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On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Michaela Anchan michaela.anc...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hi all,

 I am in the throws of planning a womens coworking space in Singapore.

 I am struggling with how I will work out access and staffing and would
 love to know what solutions you use.

 Is your space always 'staffed' ?

 What hours is it staffed / managed?

 If it is totally unstaffed - do you assign certain coworkers
 responsibilities? ie who changes the water bottle in the cooler? Who makes
 sure the kitchen is clean?
 I guess Im wondering, if there is noone there to take care of it, how can
 I incentivize my coworkers to take care of these things?

 Also,

 When it is unstaffed how do you give access?

 When it is unstaffed how do you ensure the space is safe?

 Thanks for your input!

 Michaela

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Open Source Business Plan for Coworking Space

[Jacob Sayles]

Luca,

There hasn't been much movement on the open source coworking business plan
but it's an idea I'd love to see get some traction!   I'm happy to talk
with you more about it and what it is you are looking to build.

Jacob

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On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:23 AM, Luca Ruggeri luca.rugg...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi everyone,
 great initiative!
 I'm starting approaching to a coworking business planning activity, i
 would be glad to collaborate! And I'm also joining ouiShare community in
 Italy,

 have a nice day
 Luca

 Il giorno lunedì 25 novembre 2013 23:50:10 UTC+1, Kevin Ilardi ha scritto:

 Dear all,

 I am trying to understand and to study the Business Model of Coworking
 Space within a collaborative thesis. I am reading some books, but I'd like
 your opinion, because you are directly confronted to a Business Model. Do
 you use a proper Business Model? If you want to share it with me, I will
 put my thesis online soon and we can build together a base for a Coworking
 Space's BM.

 Best,
 Kevin Ilardi

 **about me: My name is Kevin Ilardi, international student actually at
 Saxion University, Enschede, The Netherlands. I am based in Grenoble for 4
 years ago now, and I am involved in the collaborative economy thanks to
 OuiShare community. I am writting my thesis about Business Model of
 Coworking Space (and FabLab) within a collaborative document because I am
 aware that I don't have all the knowledge, so share with you is more
 interesting.

 Thank you

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Strategies for showing which members are on-site on a given day?

[Jacob Sayles]

This is great information!  We are pushing our two Airport Extremes and are
starting to look for a more enterprise solution.  They have been great, but
these days we are averaging 120 devices a day and if I don't reboot them
once a week they stop accepting new connections about Wednesday or
Thursday.

I wonder if we could get away with only having two of these or if we should
get more.  Currently we have an Airport on each 5000sqft floor and have
plenty of coverage.

Jacob

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On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Jonathan Markwell 
jonathan.markw...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've not got hard data but since we got our UniFi AP Pros I've not had to
 think about WiFi. It's the only networking hardware I've ever had that gets
 close to an Apple-like Just Works experience.

 We regularly have 90+ devices without a problem but we've got 3 APs
 sharing the load - I've never stress tested one by itself. They're such
 good value and play so well with each other that I get the impression we'd
 be fine adding more APs if we needed to scale. I understand that among
 other things regulate their own signal strength so they don't interfere
 with each other. They even continued to work without complaint when the
 controller (an old Mac Mini) was accidentally turned off for a few days.

 Jon


 On 10 February 2014 17:32, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.comwrote:

 Thanks Kyle!

 Do you (or does anyone else on the list) know about a specific place
 where these APs are in production with 100+ devices connected? One of the
 things that we learned to account for is that 100 members usually equals
 200+ devices (count in mobile phones, tablets, etc.

 We did trials with a bunch of options - with an emphasis on the cloud
 controllers - and found that nobody performed as well as the Ruckus devices
 in spite of the promises on their websites and from their sales people. We
 have two Ruckus 7962's that outperform every other device we tried in
 production (including Meraki  Cisco hardware, at opposite ends of the
 price spectrum).

 Mind you, the cloud controllers are WAY better than what we have, and
 man, do I want some of those features. But they don't matter much when
 people can't consistently connect to the AP in the first place. ;) With all
 of that in mind, I'd replace our Ruckus hardware in a heartbeat if I knew
 for a fact that we'd get equal or better performance.

 So you'll have to forgive me for being suspicious of the theoretical
 performance capabilities, and why I'm hungry for more data.

 You mentioned reviews - could you point me towards them?

 -Alex









 --

 /ah
 indyhall.org
 coworking in philadelphia


 On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Kyle McLaren 
 kyle.mclar...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hey Alex,

 They are cheap, Ubiquity is famous for disruptive pricing. At maximum
 capacity we hope to have 100 members with 2 AP's running (may add a third).
 The AP's have some nice features like automatic load balancing of traffic
 and zero-handoff for seamless roaming between AP's.

 The nice thing about UniFi is they have a software controller (as
 opposed to hardware) that can even run on a cloud server, it's free as well
 whereas Cisco etc charge licensing fees for their software.

 Time will tell how they perform but reviews have been great. Many people
 reccomend them over Ruckus for instance and for a coworking facility, you
 probably don't need much more.

 (I have no affiliation with them :)

 Kyle McLaren
 Founder
 @EngineroomHQ http://www.twitter.com/EnginroomHQ

 On Monday, February 10, 2014, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Those UniFi AP's look pretty great, but are surprisingly cheap to me
 compared to the other enterprise options I've tested. It says up to 100
 concurrent connections in the traffic management part, but I've learned
 the hard way that those numbers are usually theoretical :) How many people
 do actually you have distributed across each one?

 -Alex


 --

 /ah
 indyhall.org
 coworking in philadelphia


 On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 5:49 AM, Kyle McLaren 
 kyle.mclar...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hi all,

 I'm in the process of implementing a technical solution to this for my
 new coworking space (Engineroom).

 We have a Ubiquity UniFi http://ubnt.com/unifi WLAN from which I'm
 able to get a list of users (through a 3rd party API) who are currently
 active on the network. This list is then published to a 
 Firebasehttp://www.firebase.comdatabase and users can then view (in 
 realtime) who is active on the network
 via a web app that pulls data from Firebase.

 Kyle McLaren
 Founder
 @EngineroomHQ http://www.twitter.com/EnginroomHQ


 On Friday, 31 January 2014 01:36:15 UTC+2, Eli Malinsky wrote:

 Hey all

 Wonder if anyone has novel ways of showing which members are in the
 space on a given day. Do you use table signs? flags? Pictures? Anything?
 I'd love to hear any creative ideas.

 We've 

Re: [Coworking] Consulting

[Jacob Sayles]

It's in our DNA?  Yeah... can't argue with you there.  Yes, I love helping
spaces get started and have done various levels of consulting.  But I'm not
really interested in a solo consulting career as it's also in my DNA to
prefer to work with other people.  To that end I'm joining forces with a
few people in the Coliving world who started the Open Door Development
Grouphttp://opendoor.io.
 I'm excited about where this could lead.

Em, why do you ask?

Jacob

---
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http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 7:26 AM, Chad Ballantyne c...@thecreativespace.cawrote:

 Most Space founders have an insatiable drive to help others do what makes
 them come alive in business, so It's in our DNA to help others whether they
 be small business in their space or new coworking space startups.

 Chad Ballantyne
 705.812.0689
 c...@thecreativespace.ca





 Barrie's Coworking Community
 Perfect for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.
 12 Dunlop St E, Barrie Ontario, L4M 1A3
 Memberships start at $25/mth
 www.thecreativespace.ca
 705-812-0689

 On Feb 7, 2014, at 5:02 AM, Em M emmanz...@gmail.com wrote:

 Any individuals out there who founded a space and now looking to help
 others through consulting?

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TheCreativeSpace-door-decal.png

Re: [Coworking] Strategies for showing which members are on-site on a given day?

[Jacob Sayles]

Elise,

We use Nadine to manage our space. It's an open source system we developed
here at Office Nomads.  The points that Alex and Alex made are really
important to keep in mind though when considering technical solutions
since they don't really work for the majority of cases they are relied on
for.  People come for the people first and foremost.  The main reason
Nadine works for us is that everyone gets a profile (entered by us) since
this is how we track membership.  The member facing sided of it is a perk
most people don't care about.

Jacob

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Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Elise Colcord ecolcor...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey All,

 I'm fairly new to the coworking world, been involved since Oct. 2013.
 Jacob, that sounds really interesting and an organic way for members to
 team-up for projects or answer questions. What kind of system were/are
 your using when you refer to tech ?

 Thanks,

 -Elise
 www.thincsavannah.com


 On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Jacob Sayles ja...@officenomads.comwrote:

 We have done this in a few different ways but both rely on tech (Nadine).
  We have an iPad at the front desk that shows who is Here Today and I
 setup a screen that shows the same information but bigger and continuously.
  But I mucked up the works that drove the screen so it's not up anymore.
  Nadine can also email alert when you and someone you want to meet are both
 in the space.  Fun stuff but both require the tech and going to a machine
 which less interesting since it's not at the table, with the people when
 they are working.  That would be more exciting and more in line with your
 question I believe.

 Jacob

 ---
 Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
 http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


 On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Eli Malinsky 
 e...@socialinnovation.orgwrote:

 Hey all

 Wonder if anyone has novel ways of showing which members are in the
 space on a given day. Do you use table signs? flags? Pictures? Anything?
 I'd love to hear any creative ideas.

 We've tried a few things in the past but nothing's really stuck. I'd
 love to hear your experiences, see pics, etc.

 thanks!

 Eli Malinsky
 Centre for Social Innovation
 New York // Toronto

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 LooseLeafDiarieshttp://elisecolcord.wordpress.com/category/a-day-in-the-life/
 RunningHealth http://twitter.com/#!/ecolcord
 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=69001866trk=tab_pro

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Re: [Coworking] Strategies for showing which members are on-site on a given day?

[Jacob Sayles]

We have done this in a few different ways but both rely on tech (Nadine).
 We have an iPad at the front desk that shows who is Here Today and I
setup a screen that shows the same information but bigger and continuously.
 But I mucked up the works that drove the screen so it's not up anymore.
 Nadine can also email alert when you and someone you want to meet are both
in the space.  Fun stuff but both require the tech and going to a machine
which less interesting since it's not at the table, with the people when
they are working.  That would be more exciting and more in line with your
question I believe.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Eli Malinsky e...@socialinnovation.orgwrote:

 Hey all

 Wonder if anyone has novel ways of showing which members are in the space
 on a given day. Do you use table signs? flags? Pictures? Anything? I'd love
 to hear any creative ideas.

 We've tried a few things in the past but nothing's really stuck. I'd love
 to hear your experiences, see pics, etc.

 thanks!

 Eli Malinsky
 Centre for Social Innovation
 New York // Toronto

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[Coworking] Introducing: Core Values Discussions

[Jacob Sayles]

Happy New Year!

A lot happened in Barcelona at the last Coworking Europe conference.  The
day after the conference we held an all day Open Coworking Focus Group
where we discussed what the group has achieved in the past two years, and
where we want to go in the future.  We talked a lot about all the
possibilities and opportunities, and rallied around the understanding that
the most important thing we can do is to keep the core values in the
ongoing conversation about Coworking.

The secret to Coworking's impact lies in its core values: Collaboration,
Openness, Community, Accessibility  Sustainability.

During 2014, Open Coworking will host a series of talks with coworking
managers and coworkers from around the world. *We will start with a session
about Collaboration*, with coworkers and managers from Coworking Ontario
and New Work City in New York.  This will be a live global online broadcast
on *Thursday, January 16 at 7:00pm EST*. We will discuss and debate what
collaboration means to us, and we will share our experiences of
collaboration between coworkers and coworking communities.

Find out more details about this series at http://coworking.org/talks/

This is the first of many and there are many ways to participate.  Host a
local discussion in your space either live, or later when we get the talks
posted.  Email Tony Bacigalupo (t...@nwc.co) if you have ideas or want to
participate in future broadcasts.  Also let him know if you are hosting
something locally, or blogging about this and we'll get it all up on the
website.

Thank you everyone!  2014 is already shaping up to be an amazing year.

Jacob

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Re: [Coworking] Global Coworking Map!

[Jacob Sayles]

Fernando,

This map looks like a great start!  We are working on a map project as well
over here at Open Coworking.  It's been a project that's been in the works
for some time and Oren Salomon is leading the charge.  Are you interested
in combining efforts?  Even if you would prefer to run with your project on
your own, I'd love to share notes.  :)

Jacob

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On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 11:47 PM, Fernando Aguirre 
ferna...@fernandoaguirre.com.br wrote:

 Hello guys, I created this small application to gather all coworking
 spaces on the planet. Please test if everything is working fine and register
 your space =)

 http://coworkingmap.org/

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Re: [Coworking] pleeease help me

[Jacob Sayles]

We are happy to help, but yes, we are going to need a little bit more to go
on.  I suspect that from the tone of the email you mostly need reassurance
that you are on the right track.  I can't say much to that but I can tell
you that it's a fun world to live in here in coworking land.  Welcome.  You
are not alone.

Jacob

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Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
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On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 1:56 PM, Joshua Marpet
jmar...@datadevastation.comwrote:

 Armen,

 What do you need?  Help with business plan?  Advice on how to build a
 group of people who want to do this with you?

 More details, please!  :)

 Thanks!!

 Joshua


 On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 2:01 AM, Armen Grigoryan 
 armengrigorya...@gmail.com wrote:

 hi there,
 I'm form Armenia, and I really want to open coworking center in Yerevan.
 Please help me with making of the business proposal for this

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Re: [Coworking] Re: Hi and smartphone operated lock system?

[Jacob Sayles]

I've done a lot of research on this topic as I've developed Nadine and have
come to the same basic conclusions as Adrian.  We use ISONAS card keys and
I looked into integrating it, but it's always been more complicated then
it's worth.  I even got ISONAS to release all their back-end technical
documents but didn't go very far down that road.  I've talked about this
quite a bit with Alex from Cobot and I know he was looking into it. I also
know that WUN is now doing ISONAS support so maybe it will become a better
product.  So far I'm not very impressed and at $1000/door it's not exactly
cheap.  That said, it's all installed and paid for here at Office Nomads so
I'm not about to make changes.

We also do some wifi accounting but don't do any billing off of it.  It's
too problematic to put any weight on.  If someone stops by for an event
their phone will jump on the wifi and show them as here when they are not
in fact working for the day.  I show up in the logs when I'm just walking
by the office.  So instead we rely on an iPad at the front desk to check
people in and our system is simplified to not require checking out.  Since
Nadine does know who is on the network it can highlight if someone is here
but hasn't signed in.  We can then talk with them to remind them and it
works out pretty well.

No matter how smart the technology, humans are always required at some
point of the process.  That's the beauty of running a coworking space
though.  We have lots of humans and that's the secret sauce that keeps our
members coming back for more.  People that run business centers must have
to work so hard.

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 5:15 AM, Adrian Palacios adr...@nexudus.com wrote:

 Hi Jay,

 It is a common need indeed, but a difficult one to crack, particularly if
 you want your access control infrastructure to communicate with the
 software helping run the space (Cobot, Nexudus Spaces or any other) so,
 when a member tries to access the space or a room, that software has a way
 of opening or not the lock, rather than always relaying on the access
 control software to make that call on its own.

 In most spaces we know, the software controlling the access control part
 runs independently from the software running price plans, bookings, etc…
 and you have to reconcile the access cards registration with what the space
 software tells you. The reason behind this, we think, is that the companies
 providing access control software are quite concerned about opening up
 their systems to third parties, as this may reveal problems or ways to
 hijack their systems. In short, integrating with access control providers
 hasn't been easy – so far.

 When talking about this with some spaces, we came to realize that, even if
 we managed to integrate with an access control manufacturer in a way that
 we (as the software helping you run the space) can control the locks, then
 there is an additional challenge, which is how to make sure that members
 are not bypassing that controlled door, say for example by two members
 going in using one card… it very quickly becomes an airport security model,
 which is not what most spaces want.

 So, after all this, these are the options we can offer.

 · RFID Reader. If you have, or planning to have, an access
 control system based on access cards, then you can register the member card
 number in your Spaces account, connect a USB RFID Reader and check members
 in and out of the space by touching the card on the reader, this will not
 only check if the member can access the space at that time but also give
 you real-time occupancy reports. In most cases, this will need a person on
 the front desk to make sure members check in and out. More info here:
 http://help.spaces.nexudus.com/en/managers/rfid-checkin-how-it-works.html*
 ***

 · The good old WiFi checking. This just controls access to your
 internet connection, but it uses that data to know who is in the space at
 all times and how long they have been there for. You can use this time
 towards time plan allowances. More info here:
 http://help.spaces.nexudus.com/en/managers/wifi-getting-started.html

 Every time we talk about this subject we always seek for help, comments
 and ideas from you guys running a space. We are always willing to offer our
 technical expertise and resources to try new ideas that will help everyone
 in this situation and also make Nexudus Spaces better and more useful to
 the community.

 …. and that all I have to say about that :)

 On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:05:44 PM UTC+1, Jay Chubb wrote:

 Hi all...

 Massive thankyou to everyone for all the posts, such a rich resource
 (I've been lurking for ages!).

 I'm opening Nest Coworking in Melbourne, Australia, in 3 weeks. I'll
 introduce myself and Nest more fully another time (like when I'm not
 half-insane 

Re: [Coworking] Coworking advantages mega list

[Jacob Sayles]

Lately I've been highlighting the deep and lasting connections that occur
organically at coworking spaces in contrast to forced/contrived connections
at networking events and the utter lack of connection at coffee shops.
 We've also been talking more about how these connections need time to form
and acceleration often mucks up the works.  There of course is an
acceleration that happens, but we make sure we don't use language that
implies we are the ones accelerating anything.

Not really sure how to put that into a bullet point.  :)

Jacob

---
Office Nomads - Individuality without Isolation
http://www.officenomads.com -  (206) 323-6500


On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Ramon Suarez ra...@betacowork.com wrote:

 We have drafted a mega list of coworking advantages for the coworking
 handbook: http://coworkinghandbook.com/advantages-benefits-coworking-list/

 What did we miss? :)

 Ramon

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Re: [Coworking] Pausing membership?

[Jacob Sayles]

I should really dig into all the data we have in Nadine and find answers to
your specific questions but I'm going to answer off the cuff for now.  Some
members switch a lot, some members don't switch much at all.  We do
everything month-to-month and we bill on the day you sign up and on that
date every month.  Our only rule is that you need to tell us of any changes
before your billing date.  If someone misses the date we don't issue
refunds but do offer a credit for that amount in the next few months if
they want to come back.  This simple system has worked out great for us.

Nadine is the system we use to manage all of this and I've shown many
people how it looks from the back end.  Often I get asked why we don't let
members change their membership from within Nadine and that's because we
want to have a conversation with folks when they are changing things up or
leaving.  We've already greatly simplified how everything works so it's not
much of an inconvenience to send us an email or come up to the front desk.

I can pull actual numbers sometime soon.  We have lots of data to play
with.  :)



Jacob

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On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Alex Linsker alexlins...@gmail.com wrote:

 Do you get requests from members to pause membership at your coworking
 place? Many of our members at Collective Agency travel a lot, some for
 several months or more at a time. What policies do you have with members
 quitting and rejoining, or pausing membership?

 Do any coworking places require a year lease, or is everywhere
 month-to-month, some with two months payment required up front?

 What do you do to increase the amount of time people stay members?
 Expressing appreciation to people for who/how they are, and having a vision
 for the place that's something big people can be part of and contribute to
 somehow, are two ways that work for us.

 I'm also interested in how much your members like variety in their life?
 Ours tend to like a lot.

 And how long your average member stays a member for less than 3 months? We
 get a percentage who are between jobs, or just moved to Portland and are
 looking for jobs.

 And for more than 2 years? We've had 16 people stay members for the past 2
 years, out of 50 members currently.

 What are the main reasons people stop being members? Ours is members
 travel to another city, and after that, the top reason is getting a job at
 another company.

 Thanks,

 Alex
 --
 Alex Linsker
 Collective Agency's Community Organizer / Proprietor
  (503) 517-6900 http://collectiveagency.co
 Tax and Conversation's Statewide Community Organizer
  (503) 369-9174 taxandconversation.com
 (503) 369-9174 mobile   (503) 517-6901 fax
 322 NW Sixth Ave, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon 97209

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Re: [Coworking] CoWorking Association?

[Jacob Sayles]

*

Ready to revisit the discussion about a coworking association? 

We’ve certainly spent a lot of time discussing the possibilities and the 
millions of ways this could work out.  Well, here is another one!  


A group of us, including Liz, Bill, Iris, Jerome, Benjamin, Jenny, Craig, 
Tony and I, have been digging into this a bit more and came up with what we 
call CoShare with the tagline Share space, Share Ideas.  Our goal is to 
support education, advocacy, and community by backing organizations like 
Open Coworking, infrastructure like the wiki, and the google group, and 
events like GCUC.  Of course, as we all know, what gets created depends on 
who shows up and the real work starts now.  Everyone is invited.

We’re launched the website this week and we are inviting everyone into the 
discussion.  We’ll be hosting a webinar on the 12th to give a broad 
overview of CoShare and to offer up a QA.  It’s still early days for all 
of this and we have a lot of work to do to build something long lasting. 
 Please come to the table with all your hopes, dreams, questions, ideas and 
concerns, and let’s build this together.

http://coshare.co*

Jacob

On Friday, February 25, 2011 11:19:05 PM UTC-8, mark gilbreath wrote:

 Mark
 I believe a number of us have had these discussions.  I spoke to our 
 representative from Trinet (a PEO).  He reiterated what others had shared 
 which is that in order to qualify for a shared insurance plan, the 
 individuals covered would need to all be employees of the same 
 organization.  This doesn't mean that there is no option... Just that some 
 creativity will be required

 Mark 

 Liquidspace

 Sent from my iPhone

 On Feb 25, 2011, at 1:25 PM, Mark in Iowa City 
 mno...@iowacityarea.comjavascript: 
 wrote:

  Was reading some threads on insurance, etc.  Has anyone actively
  pursued trying to start an association for coworkers such that we have
  a collective voice and could potentially ascertain if a group
  insurance pool could be made available to coworkers across the US?
  
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Re: [Coworking] Investors

[Jacob Sayles]

Craig,

This is a very interesting topic and I was thinking about introducing a
similar question to the group.  I was recently talking with someone
involved with coliving down in SF and  thoughts about real-estate came up
again.  I'd love to buy the building we are in but the hard assets Office
Nomads has is mostly a bunch of Ikea desks and that's not exactly good
collateral for a loan that size.  Navigating the relationship with
investors is tricky as you are highlighting.  I don't know how to make
someone millions, but I do know how to make a profitable business and a
strong community of loyal members.  Seems like a lot to work with if the
right investors came along.

Jacob

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On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 9:22 AM, Craig Baute - Creative Density Coworking 
baut...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hey team,

 I have been approached by three different investors in the last few weeks
 for new locations. Creative Density is looking at a second location and
 building up the new community for it in a simlar way to how we did it two
 years ago. It's very grass roots and will only happen if the community can
 be formed before the space opens. Once this process started to happen
 that's when investors started to show up.

 I know several others have had similar experience so I am hoping I can
 have guidance about important questions to ask and possible structures.

 What I'm thinking:

 Business structure:
 Creative Density's current location remains my own domain. They don't get
 a chunk of that but they are investing in future locations with the new
 location being a new business entity. We will share access to my
 intellectual property but in case of a split I will retain control in a
 reasonable time frame of transition.

 How much money:
 They are looking to purchase the building and renovating it. I'm working
 on how much money they need to put in beyound that and how to split revenue
 and profits.

 Do they have a good personality match and complimentary skill set?
 I'm laying out my principals of what I want coworking to be and that
 profit is not the sole driving force. Yes, we want to make money but we
 also want this a platform and community that supports freelancers and
 remote workers as well as small teams. Private offices sell fast but they
 can not dominate the space and must be around only a third of the space.
 They do have a good skill set that compliments my own as an experience
 coworking space owner.

 Any advice would helpful.

 Craig



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