By DAN FOST
New York Times
Published: February 20, 2008

CONTEMPLATING his career path a couple of years ago, a young computer programmer named Brad Neuberg faced a modern predicament. “It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community,” he said, “or I could be freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn’t I have both?”

As someone used to hacking out solutions, Mr. Neuberg took action. He created a word — coworking, eliminating the hyphen — and rented space in a building, starting a movement.

While coworking has evolved since Mr. Neuberg’s epiphany in 2005, dozens of places around the country and increasingly around the world now offer such arrangements, where someone sets up an office and rents out desks, creating a community of people who have different jobs but who want to share ideas.

“It’s nourishing on a fundamental level,” said John Vlahides, the executive editor of 71miles.com, a travel site covering Northern California, who rents a desk for $175 a month at one of Mr. Neuberg’s original sites, the Hat Factory. “And if you’re not nourished, how can you be creative?”
Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

Ilana DeBareSan
Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Working at home was too lonely for Summer Powell, a 35-year-old freelance graphic designer who had recently moved to San Francisco. She tried working in cafes but found it too distracting. So Powell called a friend and together they joined a communal drop-in office space called Sandbox Suites - an example of a new and growing work arrangement called co-working.

“This seems more like in between home and office,” Powell said, sitting with her laptop in a carrel last week in the airy main room of Sandbox Suites, while several other freelancers typed quietly nearby and two Web entrepreneurs conferred over lunches and laptops at a big table on a second-floor landing. “It gives me a scrappy startup feeling in a good way.”

Laptop nomads - that growing tribe of folks who can be found typing away at any cafe with wireless Internet access - are starting to put down roots. And some, like Powell, are doing it through co-working, a 21st century twist on the old idea of the shared artists’ studio.

In co-working, a group of freelancers or other solo entrepreneurs share one big office space with perks that they might not get at home, such as conference rooms, espresso machines and opportunities for socializing.

Co-working sites usually give members the option of renting a desk that becomes their own reserved space. But most also provide a drop-in option, where people can stop by and work in an unreserved common area for a lower fee - or sometimes even for free.

Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…