According to this story in Business Week:
“Over the past few years, co-working facilities—both grassroots,
co-op-like versions and for-profit models—have started popping up
across the country and the world, from Seattle to Copenhagen. A co-working wiki
hosts pages for dozens of other cities with co-working initiatives in
progress. And while the concept of shared office space is nothing new
to entrepreneurs, an increasing number of them are signing on and
finding that the community-building and networking benefits outweigh
even the virtues of a shared fax machine.“
Be sure to check out the slide show. For a long time, I have said that we need new kinds of “third places” geared to the realities of flexible virtual work. Part coffee shop, part hotel lobby? The right space is hard to describe. Love to hear what you think.
February 28th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Seems a lot like the Starbucks as conference room and Kinko’s as back office in Daniel Pink’s Free Agent Nation. Funny how all of these ideas seem to converge.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Michael – I agree: General idea is similar. But the space needs to be more appealing, more stimulating. Coffee house – Starbucks – has some elements. But it’s hard to work there – really work. A good hotel lobby is closer, but not quite right. An international airline lounge – sort of getting there. We can do a whole lot better. The creative age demands it.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:33 am
For your readers’ background info, that Coworking group was started by busy community beaver Chris Messina and others behind the global BarCamp community, the mother of all open tech communities.
Chris and equally talented partner Tara Hunt work out of Citizen Agency, http://citizenagency.com/ in SanFran. Many interesting social, community and technology innovations coming out of this crew and good people to talk to sometime.
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:06 am
Coworking space in Birmingham
Being someone who likes to move around between places while Im working, and who does sometimes miss sitting in an office with a group of other like-minded people, I was really interested by an post on Co-working spaces I read on the Creativity E…
June 12th, 2008 at 11:43 am
there is a renewed interest in a coworking space for toronto, and we’re taking cues from some of the best coworking facilities already in existence plus adding some of our own elements. we’re hoping to get something up and running within a few months.
the creative age does demand it, and what a third space it can be!
r.
May 19th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Renee, community manager intern at Citizen Space here. Another good use of coworking spaces like ours is for flexible telecommuting. Companies who want to let their employees “work from home” but want to provide a focused workplace can look into options like Citizen Space.
For example, one of our members is a 30-person tech company based in Silicon Valley (1 hr outside SF). Many of its employees live in SF, so the company has a membership, and employees can work closer to home a few times per week to cut their commutes. It’s a flexible alternative to traditional telecommuting.
August 2nd, 2011 at 1:16 pm
I am the owner of Creative Density in Denver and have fallen in love with the coworking concept. By being among other professionals I am able to learn more and be more productive because I can simply ask a question to an expert besides me versus spending 2 hours searching Google.
I would also like you, RIchard Florida, to know that the name of Creative Density was inspire by your book ‘Who’s Your City.’ Your concept of clusters and the spreading of knowledge through close proximity resonated with me and I think the coworking concept does that on a micro level. Thank you for the inspiration.