What is the #1 Question People Have About Coworking?

The #1 question is still, “What is coworking?” if my day to day conversation about our book is any indication.  Most people on the street have never heard of coworking, so that question isn’t a surprise.

I’m interested in what people who have heard of coworking want to know about, so I asked (via Twitter, of course—my ad hoc polling tool of choice).  The answers surprised me.  I had expected questions about the mechanics of setting up a coworking space, mixed with questions about where to find more information.

Instead, easily well over half of the questions had to do with social issues—how to handle noise, what about distraction, can I really get my work done in a coworking space?

In retrospect, this is no surprise.  Coworking is about work.  Coworking’s invention and rapid growth is fueled by the very pragmatic need for a place to work.

Ensuring this is the case should weigh heavily in any coworking plan’s feature list.

- Todd

Thanks to everyone who responded!

Today’s Coworking Chatter on Twitter

I don’t know who many of these people are.  For a while I tried to follow everyone/anyone who mentioned “coworking” in a tweet.  I’ve long since given up.

Todd Sundsted

Ding

House 2.0 is on the fourth floor of a five-story apartment building in midtown Manhattan.

Despite its small size, the building has an elevator. A tiny, slow elevator that breaks down often (most notably, on the weekend I moved in).

On rare occasions, I find myself sharing the elevator with the resident of another floor. Today, while running late to work and leaving around 9am, I ran into a new resident in the elevator, whom I had never met before.

Here’s how our conversation went:

Me: Hey.

Him: Hi.

Me: Late for work?

Him: Oh, no… I work from home.

Me: Really? What do you do?

Him: I’m a photographer.

Me: Oh, cool… I used to work from home too, but it started to drive me crazy.

Him: Tell me about it.

Me: Yeah, so I started a coworking space. Are you familiar with coworking?

Him: Yeah, it’s when a bunch of people get together and share a space, right?

Ding.

We arrived at the ground floor and the door opened, but the dinging sound didn’t come from the elevator.

The ding was in my head. It was the sound of coworking making it.

In the tiny elevator of this tiny building, I met a stranger, and he was not only familiar with coworking, he described it to me in one sentence.

Ding ding ding ding.

Positioning Coworking

I came across the following entries in the FAQ for The Hive in Denver:

What Amenities Do You Offer?

We provide secure access via cardkey, a cafe lounge, a fridge, a dishwasher, a coffee machine, a microwave, nightly maid service, a conference room, cool and functional semi-private desk pods, 802.11N WiFi, a chill-out room with desks and bean bags.

What Amenities Don’t You Offer?

A secretary, a copier (Kinkos does a better job and is just down the street), a phone system with cheesy hold music, mahogany paneling, a legal library, 80’s faux wood desks, boredom.

How Do I Make Phone Calls?

How do you make calls now? We assume most freelancers/entrepreneurs/road warriors use cell phones and VOIP solutions 90% of the time. We didn’t see much sense in charging everyone for a phone system they don’t really need…

To me, these entries brilliantly sum up the positioning of coworking with respect to other, similar flexible space arrangements.  Coworking, in my opinion, is a great example of a blue ocean strategy–one that emphasizes the product/service elements that customers value, and de-emphasizes or removes the product/service elements that customers don’t value.  People get what they want and little more.

Todd Sundsted