Founded in November 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo (co-author of “I’m Outta Here: How Coworking Is Making The Office Obsolete”) and Sanford Dickert, NWC has two central objectives: 1. To provide community workspace for location-independent workers, and 2. To facilitate entrepreneurial activity in NYC.

To further objective number 2, they launched The Runway Project, a project to help people turn this crisis into an opportunity to become entrepreneurs. They also recently helped to form the Coalition of Office Space Providers, which joins together available work spaces in NYC. The Coalition will be working with the NYC Economic Development Corp. to provide discounted workspace for first-time entrepreneurs, as well as events and other benefits.

These guys are clearly coworking heroes to be admired and emulated.

At the NWC center, members share their expertise through workshops and use the space for anything tech-related, from presentations to labs to social get-togethers.

If you’re in the Manhattan area, don’t wait to check them out. If you’re not, head over to their site and steal some ideas for making coworking a reality in your area!

(And for those of you in Paris, France, be sure to stop by La Cantine, the exceptional coworking center I wrote about last year. La Cantine, a nonprofit organization run by Silicon Sentier, is a hopping hub that offers all manner of tech-related activities and is a great place to pop in and work, for free. Thanks to Nathanaël of La Cantine for the tip on NWC)

Please leave a comment to tell us and your fellow readers about coworking initiatives in your area.

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I was coming to Paris and knew it was going to be one of those out and about all day and half the night and with a side trip to another country kind of vacations. And it was January, which meant heavy luggage. What was I going to do, lug my laptop around with me? Leave it in a safe? Certainly not in the room!

And when, realistically, was I going to use it? Those café tables are hardly big enough for two beers. I knew from experience there was a computer in the lobby of my hotel where I could check my e-mail for X Euros per X number of minutes. So the laptop stayed home. It was not easy.

Now the days of deprivation of this magnitude are over, luckily for you! Prepare yourself for the Parisian dream geek vacation.

Mama Shelter, a luxurious hotel in the 20th arrondissement of Paris wants you. But why would you want to stay out on the eastern edge of Paris instead of in the heart of the Latin Quarter with the other 80 million tourists? Well, it is only a couple of blocks from the eerily beautiful Père Lachaise cemetery (one of my favorite places in Paris and where many of my favorite heroes, eccentrics and geniuses are buried: Oscar Wilde, Molière, Gertrude Stein, Colette, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison…).

But mostly because at Mama Shelter, they’ve done away with the TV entirely and put at least one 24-inch iMac in every room. Of course, the wi-fi is free. And every room has an office. The incredibly cool bar has live music and iMacs too.

Geek bonus: Wookie mask bedside lamp, the pièce de résistance.

Even though I’m more Star Trek than Star Wars, I adore this place already, and am planning a surprise getaway there with my husband. (At least it was a surprise till I posted this.)

Mama Shelter is the brainchild of the Trigano family (co-founders of Club Med) and French philosopher Cyril Aouizerate (only in France, right?). Its edgy interior was done by renowned designer Philippe Starck. Words cannot do this place justice. You have to check out the site. And then the hotel! Rates right now, since it’s off season, are from 79 € – 139 €. Totally affordable!

If any of you are going to be here for Le Web ’08 Paris in December, you might want to see if they have any room!

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You can kiss your home office good-bye (hopefully temporarily). So now what?

There may be co-working spaces near you, but they’re not quite as ubiquitous as Starbucks yet… You can dig (and dig and dig) through craigslist and hope it’s your lucky day and that your dream workspace will appear in the first 10 listings (because looking at any more than that is mind numbing and hazardous to your health) and that the people with the perfect space for rent that miraculously appears in listing number seven actually respond to you when you do contact them. (I have a very low tolerance for classifieds sites, can you tell?)

You can go to Regus, the slick, corporate rent-a-workspace/meeting room/virtual office people, and deal with “a representative” who will probably try to sell you a plan or a package or something. (That’s just the impression I get from looking at their site and knowing how American businesses operate… I could be wrong.)

Or… You can check out ShareYourOffice.com, a new project with a whole lot of potential. It’s a free service for people who need office space, or those who have extra space they’d like to fill with a warm, rent-paying body.

Wait! Before you say, “Not interested” and stop reading, think of this: it’s a French startup. Parisian. Which means most of the office spaces (at the moment) are in Paris. Ever dreamed of living and working in France?

Why not get outta Dodge for a month or three and rent a workspace in some gorgeous, 19th-century (or older) building with hardwood floors and crown molding on the high ceilings, curlycue iron balconies embracing every giant window… And they have fancy espresso machines in their offices here, and teensy weensy cups (like in those annoying George Clooney Nespresso commercials). No donuts on Fridays, though. No donuts period. (Small price to pay, if you ask me.)

You can search for a space using multiple criteria (number of desks, physical space, amenities, price range), and you can see your search results on a Google map. You can create an alert so you’ll receive an e-mail if something that fits your criteria comes up. Those with space to offer can provide many details, so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. (Here’s a demo.)

The site began as bureauxapartager.com (offices to share), a project of FaberNovel, a management consulting company with their fingers in many pies. The company recently translated the site into English and kindly bought a domain name we anglophones could remember how to spell. The project came into being because the company had some extra office space and, being groovy techie webbie types, they decided to offer their space to stray geeks in need.

The idea has since grown into something very cool. They want to accumulate office space and focus on startups in need of incubator space, and plan to offer them space at a below-market rate. All in the spirit of cooperation and community that pervades the (generally) youthful and idealistic tech crowd. (I so dig all that warm fuzziness.) And, as we speak, they’re submitting a proposal to the City of Paris, which currently has plans to build 50,000 m2 of space for incubators in the city. (How sweet is that, by the way?) The bureauxapartager proposal urges the city to consider using existing space instead, by encouraging businesses to use their platform to rent their spare space to co-workers and startups.

I really like the idea of this project. I think we don’t really know what the economic storm that’s brewing will bring, and this platform could not only be a great service for web workers in need of a change of scenery, but it could also potentially help businesses pay their rent if they fall on hard times.

Help spread the word (and the grooviness)!

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I didn’t find the millions of euros I was hoping for (I admit I didn’t try very hard). But I did find some real live French web workers/startup founders (including a delightful web-working couple with the delightfully French names of Sylvain and Jacinthe) and a startup with an app we web workers can use (more on that soon).

I also discovered La Cantine, which is where the event was held. It’s a great co-working space run by Silicon Sentier, a nonprofit networking organization for tech professionals.

La Cantine provides 14 individual workstations with an ADSL connection and another space where 12 people can meet, or where 30 people can view a presentation. The atmosphere is very Parisian, as you can see. There’s even a wet bar in one corner, so the space can easily be converted from work to après work. More of that magnificent French work/life balance.

Silicon Sentier offers regular events, presentations and topical public gatherings at La Cantine, several of which recently focused on women and tech. The La Cantine website will soon feature an international social network for web workers and co-workers (something I’ve been wishing for) called “Coworkers United.”

So if you’re passing through Paris, even though the whole city is (un)wired for wi-fi, you might want to consider popping into La Cantine for an authentic Parisian web-working experience!

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I’ll be wearing two hats there (hopefully neither of them a lampshade, but there will be an open bar, so we’ll see…). One is my entrepreneur hat; of course I’m hoping somebody who hasn’t lost all his or her wealth in the crash will dig my elevator pitch to the tune of several million Euros. But aren’t we all? I’m sure there will be lots of talk about the Wall Street fiasco and what it means for the tech industry and entrepreneurs looking for funding. Should be interesting.

The other hat is my web worker hat.

I’m very curious to talk to the other entrepreneurs who will be there. I have a hunch that a high proportion of startup founders are web workers. We live outside of the box. We march to the beat of our own drums. And similar metaphors. Right?

We tend to be early adopters and know more about new trends and technologies than the average Joe. Because of that, I imagine we get some really good ideas. Just about all the web workers I know put their energy and skills and creative minds into side projects, whether for fun or profit. Do you? I’ll be testing my hypothesis at the Meetup and hopefully meeting some local web workers.

The other thing I’m curious about is what Mike Gunderloy asked a couple of weeks ago in his post Where are the exciting startups? He said he hadn’t seen anything come out of recent startup conferences that struck him as particularly innovative or useful for web workers. I haven’t either. I’ll be looking to see if there are any at this soirée that might get Mike and the rest of us web workers excited. Rumor has it that innovation in the Old World is on the rise.

Lastly, if you are planning to be at the Paris Meetup, please let me know in the comments! And if you don’t make it to this one, maybe I’ll catch you next time!

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