Coworking: A More Rewarding Collaboration and Community Opportunity or Not?
I just shared with you my criteria and assessments of the local cafe scene as a collaborative space. Indeed, cafe spaces have great potential for both the solo, work-at-home consultant and those pulling together meeting space for the team.
Ironically however, right after finishing the post, some coworking literature found its way to my mailbox. It seems here’s something else vying for my attentions and consideration. But I’m wondering–does it add value or complication to my life, make me more of something I want, like becoming more productive and connected, and how much smarter is it joining one of them versus my now old standby, making the rounds with the cafes?
First of all, for those of you who don’t know the idea, coworking is a cafe-like community/collaboration space for designers, makers, prototypers, DIY’ers, writers, and independents. And boy, is the concept growing, as identified by Todd Sundsted. And check out the number of places cropping up across the U.S. already!
The concept is this: People want to self-organize and receive the benefits of affiliation but they also want to make individually-determined time commitments, feel out some alternatives, and choose a context that, unlike the last job they came from, is now enabling the good fit. This may come down to essentially renting a desk for the day, week, month. And what a desk it is!
By opting in, you also typically gain access to all the standards of an office: meeting rooms, whiteboards, mailing, faxing, message center services, etc. In addition, some of the spaces have some very interesting extras, like cafes that are within their own walls, and scheduled evening presentations where people explore complementary collaboration tools and professional information. No need to submerge into that echo chamber of isolation that seems to come part and parcel with working at home.
It might even be said that coworking is a next level commitment toward one’s own advancement. You rent a space for a time you can commit to (with some coworking entities–there are even limited time frame arrangements to check out for free). At which point you can begin to gauge if the commute, the new people, and the added stimulation make sense to you. Many people attest that the more you affiliate, the less you have to wonder where your next interesting exchange is going to come from. Remember, that unlike the old corporate, take-it-as-it-comes job, people are very often creative and coming from disciplines you may not ordinarily have connection time with. Again, joining a coworking space can be a way to get in touch with what helps your own productivity the most.
But then, we come back to the question about whether coworking is somehow a truer, more rewarding form of collaboration and community, versus the cafe where you may already be pulling together folks for community table congregating or securing a savory seat by the window just for you. What do you think? What have you found out about the way you work? How well do you work in these various venues and what raises your productivity to the max?
