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Will good economic tidings kill coworking?

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:00:33 +0000

According to sources including the Telework Research Network and FlexJobs.com, remote work has boomed during the recession as job seekers look beyond traditional office-based gigs and companies embrace any opportunity to cut costs. That boom in nontraditional work, along with high levels of interest in entrepreneurship, has fed enthusiasm for coworking spaces. But will this enthusiasm outlast the tough economic times?

This question was recently posed in Fortune by Elaine Pofeldt, who offered some skepticism that coworking would continue to flourish if better economic times returned:

Of course, no one knows how long the party will continue for coworking spaces. The trend has been fueled, in part, by an economy where corporate jobs for the young are scarce. A survey of coworking spaces by Emergent Research in 2010 found that their desks and sofas are mostly filled by well-educated male techies who are under 40, with 55% working for small companies and 44% of them freelancers or sole proprietors.

She also quotes fellow skeptic Paul V. Carter, a senior vice president at flexible office space provider OfficeLinks, who said: “Do members of Generation Y and Millennials really want to be independent contractors when Google offers them a permanent position? How much do they like this lifestyle? I suspect it’s not as much as people think.”

But owners and managers of coworking spaces we spoke to think there are several good reasons a better business environment won’t put a damper on their movement. Noelle Stary, co-founder of Launchpad Creatives in New Jersey, for one, feels that the damage has been done and workers will no longer want to rely on big companies like they once did, even if the economy comes back.

“People are learning to brand themselves,” she says. “People seem to know that one big business is not going to keep them employed long term. So if people are looking to stay fresh and want to explore their entrepreneurial side these coworking spaces also offer late hours and weekends for the person trying to get another business off the ground while being employed full time.”

And Sam Rosen of The COOP in Chicago is also feeling confident that, while some very large spaces may face difficulties in boom times, his space can withstand an uptick in the economy. For one, it’s busier than it has every been, with interest also at an all time high. Plus, this interest doesn’t seem to be coming from economic desperation (or, at least at Rosen’s space, mainly from the Millennials Carter mentions in Fortune). The workers flooding the COOP aren’t driven their by financial necessity, Rosen reports, but by their desire for a better way to work.

“I get the feeling that coworking has become a lifestyle for people and a way of getting work done. I think that movement is growing and will continue to grow as the economy grows,” he says. “People are tired of working in cubicles and workspaces that don’t inspire them, so until that problem is fixed in big corporations, I think there will continue to be an exodus to more equipped, modular spaces.”

Craig Baute, owner of Creative Density Coworking in Denver, agrees that coworking is a genuine lifestyle choice rather than an option of last resort and feels that that technology and demographics are driving interest in this lifestyle. These strong fundamentals should support the growth of movement even after the economy improves, he believes. “Coworking is a movement driven mostly by technology, not the recession. If costs were the main factor than people would be working at home and possibly the coffee shop as cheaper alternatives.”

“According to the Global Coworking Survey 75 percent of coworkers have a college degree. The unemployment rate for college graduates is below 5 percent, far from the national average. Coworkers are also younger, under 40, and very comfortable with technology,” Baute points out, proving that coworking’s core demographic isn’t the one most affected by recession.

What do you think the fate of coworking spaces will be when the economy finally heats up again?

Image courtesy of Flickr user jonny goldstein.

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Coworking spaces get creative to raise awareness

Jessica Stillman — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:00:08 +0000

Here at WebWorkerDaily coworking is a well established trend we’ve covered in many different ways. And certainly, if you travel to Berlin, San Francisco or any other buzzing city with plenty of young, entrepreneurial residents, you’ll find no shortage of supporters of the concept. But has the idea really taken root as firmly as certain coast-dwellers believe?

As I’ve interviewed owners of newly established co-working spaces recently, the answer appears to be: not really. Craig Baute, who opened Creative Density in Denver just a few months ago, for example, told us that for his fledgling space, “awareness is the biggest problem.”

Several coworking spaces already exist in Denver and while some of them might be skeptical of the new competition, Baute insisted that it’s ignorance — not each other — that they should be worried about. “Coworking spaces in cities can work together because they’re not in competition with each other. The biggest competition is concept awareness,” he said.

And if you think Baute has it bad when it comes to getting the word out in Denver, spare a thought for Noelle Stary, co-founder of Launchpad Creatives in suburban New Jersey. She recently visited an event put on by her local Small Business Administration and spoke to the group’s president after the event. Here’s what happened:

I’m talking to him about, hey, we’re big believers in what entrepreneurs are doing, and we start talking about coworking spaces, and the president of the Small Business Administration is like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never even heard of the word.

“Clearly coworking is very big in London. It’s really big in New York,” says Stary, but you mention “co-working spaces in New Jersey and people in suburbia are like, what is this? I don’t get it.”

All for one and one for all

So what are these newly founded spaces doing to raise their profile. Both Baute and Stary are banding together with other local spaces to pool their powers and attract attention. Before moving to Denver, Baute was involved in the coworking movement in Toronto where, as he says:

We were planning a coworking week where all of our members could move between the spaces — we thought that might get some media attention — then also banding together to create a Toronto coworking pass where you can just buy a ten-day punch card and go to all the other spaces.

Now he hopes to bring something similar to Colorado. And Stary has similar plans in the works for New Jersey’s coworking spaces, including a regional coworking alliance to raise awareness. “We’re actually going to try and set up a coworking visa that you could purchase from the coworking alliance,” she explained. With the visa, members could use their choice of spaces within a 40-mile radius.

Matchmaking for entrepreneurs

Stary and her business partner Eric Duchin have also come up with another creative way to raise the profile of the movement — they’re offering to match entrepreneurs who use their space with a local college student willing to serve as an eager intern. It’s a win for everyone involved, explained Stary, as harried entrepreneurs get some extra help (and a place to work with the intern that isn’t their living room), young people get a hands-on learning opportunity and coworking gets some new converts. “We’ve gotten a huge response,” Stary told us.

They’re even thinking of scaling up the service by offering to pair entrepreneurs and interns at other coworking spaces through the wonders of technology. Stary explains: “It basically would be almost like a Match.com. Here are the interns. Here are the entrepreneurs. You pick who you want and you can set that up through the different types of coworking spaces.”

Coworking is one form of the changing concept of the “office” from an 8-to-5 day at corporate HQ to a more fluid and dynamic workspace. We’ll discuss this in-depth at our upcoming event Net:Work on December 8.

Image courtesy of Flickr user {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}, CC 2.0.

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