Hey Everyone -

It’s been an exciting journey starting a co-working space.  Made a heckuva lot of new friends along the way — though I’d have to admit, it was much more challenging to gather a community around the idea of co-working than I had anticipated.  In hindsight, it’s consistent with many of the things I’ve seen develop in Wausau, slow adoption rate for new ideas around here.

Had I had more time to do it all over again, I would have first focussed on building up the local Web Community, like the idea of organizing the Jellys & a Web715 network (which should still move forward under someone else’s stewardship).  Getting a group of like-minded people together takes time - especially in a smaller market like Wausau.  My good friend Alex says all the time - community, community, community!  I suspect that’ll be the way I do it next time.

Which brings me to this - As of last Saturday, there will no longer be “physical” space called CitizenDesk.  We’ve shut down the office space.  For the time being, my wife and I are pursuing several new directions professionally, of which I’m not at liberty to post anything just yet.  But, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, then you’re bound to figure it out eventually.

So, with that in mind - this Evening, Emily & I will be gathering at Red Eye Brewing Company for casual

drinks and camaraderie.  You are also invited, so feel free to drop in and share some time together.  Brews begin pouring around 7pm.  Hope to see you there tonight - otherwise, maybe a more formal “going away party” may be in order some time soon.  We shall see.

Take care & we wish you well!

]]> http://citizendesk.com/2008/05/saying-goodbye/feed/ http://citizendesk.com/2008/05/jelly-becomes-web715/ http://citizendesk.com/2008/05/jelly-becomes-web715/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 17:24:20 +0000 marcus http://citizendesk.com/?p=42 Hi guys –  Sorry for the late announcement, but I said we’d have these meetings every week — So tonight, from 5PM-10PM, for those wishing to meet-up with other web/Internet/computer folks - We’ll be hosting another evening of camaraderie and community building.

Last time we talked about changing the name to something other than Jelly.  The designer from Web414 has offered to whip up a logo for us using the same template he designed for Web414 & Web608 in Madison.  If you’re interested in being a part of that decision, come by tonight!

Please ping me back if you’re coming - and if you are, bring some snacks or drinks to share!!!

Just posted our next Jelly Meet-Up information on the Jelly Wiki.  I’m looking at Thursday, April 17th as our time to meet.  As you can see from the schedule, we changed it up a bit - the co-working is during the day, and then a “Happy Hour” is from 6PM-10PM.  This is how other Jelly’s are being run, so we’ll give it a whirl.

Make sure to invite other web-related workers & designers - looking forward to another great meet-up!!!

marcus

For those of you who could not attend, here are some links that we all talked about - if I forgot any, please send them to me and I’ll add ‘em right away:

http://web414.com/
http://indyhall.com/
http://tv.winelibrary.com/
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/
http://twitter.com/
http://microformats.org/
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/
http://www.horsepigcow.com/
http://www.sxsw.com/
http://tastyblogsnack.com/
http://brian.shaler.name/

Also - we’ve all added Twitter to our list of tools to keep in touch.  If you haven’t already signed up for Twitter, please go sign up and then “friend” us up at CitizenDesk.

Looking at Thursday, April 17th as the next event - Does that work for everyone?

Let’s start out this entry with a confession.

I am a hypocrite.

In the spirit of wishing to unify the local Web community, I got sidetracked. With opportunities, work, etc. - I make no excuses - Should have stayed the course and built the community. In that respect, I’ve done little to perpetuate it’s momentum. So admitting that, it’s time to change and get back on track.

Earlier this month, I was hugely re-inspired by my good friends in Philidelphia & Milwaukee — Wouldn’t it be cool to see Central Wisconsin Web people getting together and making Sh_t happen like that? It’s exciting to see what people are doing around here - and I’m sure you agree — But in many ways, we’re not doing enough in supporting each other’s efforts.

It’s time to get people meeting, talking, and dreaming out loud. I know most of you - but you may not know each other — yet! Off the top of my head, I can think of several people who should be in the same room together:

Aaron Saray - PHP RockStar
Grant Dobbe - Drupal Expert
Melissa Sullivan - Blogger - Central Wisconsin Mommy
Zina Harrington - Marketing & Design - Data Dog Marketing
Eric Sorensen - Designer & Entrepreneur - PushMedia.info
Adrian Balfe - PHP Ninja
Dino Corvino - Writer, Podcaster - Citizen Wausau
Dave McMahon - Thinker, Tinkerer - Eastbay
Jim Carlson - Search Engine Guru - Eastbay
Patrick Hills - Designer
Nick Sweeney - ColdFusion & Entrepreneur - Big Fat Designs
Dan Guite - Code Monkey - Fiserv
Rob Mentzer - Writer & Blogger - Daily Herald
Peter Philleo - ColdFusion & Entrepreneur - Digital Dialogue

And there are sooo many more — All of these people should be talking and creating together — which is why I’d like to introducing something - it’s called “Jelly” - which will be the first of many bi-weekly meet-ups at Citizen Desk. Put people in a place and see what happens!

What is Jelly?

Jelly is casual co-working / social interaction. We invite people to work from Citizen Desk for the evening (or all day if you wish). We provide chairs, desks and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.

You bring a laptop (or whatever you think you need to work), a six-pack of beverage or some sort of chips - and a friendly disposition. Just don’t come empty handed!

Who can come to Jelly?

Anyone! We want to see designers, developers, and internet types, but we’d also like musicians, cooks, sound designers, tea sommeliers, product designers, photographers, writers, and more. Feel free to invite others!!

Some of us are entrepreneurs or freelancers. Others work in an office most of the time, but we’re hoping that by working at a Jelly, you’ll gain fresh ideas and experience a change of pace. No matter what you do or what you create, you’re welcome to come to Jelly and share your talent and learn from others.

When Is It?

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 – 6PM-10PM
300 N. Third Street - Fourth Floor (penthouse)
Washington Square, Wausau
715-203-4125

By Chris Gaylord
The Christian Science Monitor
Published: March 3, 2008 edition

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - When Mike Jones signed on to be marketing director at an e-book publisher, one of the advertised perks was the chance to work at home full time. Two years later, he loves the job, but hated the location.

“I was totally cut off from the world,” Mr. Jones says. “I was only working four or five hours a day because I’d keep looking for things to do just so I could get out of the apartment.”

After months of searching for alternatives, Jones found Office Nomad, a shared workplace in Seattle that sells itself as “individuality without isolation.” The studio plugs into a new and flourishing philosophy called “coworking.”

The concept tries to combine the structure and socializing of a company office space with the flexibility of working from home. There are desks to rent, conference rooms to reserve, and still plenty of room to recline.

Coworking spots cater to the telecommuters, freelancers, and entrepreneurs of the e-mail era. These laptop bedouins represent a growing segment of the US workforce, and many coworkers say others are bound to find similar arrangements.

“I couldn’t figure out why I had to choose between freedom and community,” says Brad Neuberg, the computer programmer who coined the term coworking. “I wanted both. So I started imagining what that would look like.”

In 2005, Mr. Neuberg found a woman’s community hall in San Francisco that was empty during the day, and he struck a deal to use the space as the first coworking site. Every morning, Mr. Neuberg set up tables and waited for coworkers.

“For the first two months, no one showed up,” he says, laughing at his initial hubris. “But people started trickling in and the word spread.” Soon enough, he had started a movement.

There are now several dozen coworking spots across the country, and more popping up on other continents. Neuberg only had his hand in a few of them. Being an open-source developer, where software code is shared freely so it can be tweaked and improved by the community, he urged others to create their own coworking spots.

“I told people, ‘Steal this idea. Turn it into whatever you want it to be,’ ” he says.

Coworking locations now come in every flavor: loose groups of individual workers such as Office Nomad, flats that have been converted into makeshift workspaces, and well-structured offices that tout more amenities than some corporate headquarters.

Sandbox Suites in San Francisco sports fingerprint-scan locks, ergonomic ball chairs, and macchiato coffees to order. Local artwork provides some eye candy, while the kitchen space offers the real deal, including Snickers and Crunch bars.

“I prefer it to working from home. I’m much more productive,” says Heather Findlay, a local publisher. She can quantify her increased productivity: She’s a month ahead of schedule from last year’s publishing cycle.

Because of the shared costs, coworking spots are often a great deal less expensive than leasing a private office. Sandbox Suites costs $395 a month for five days a week. An extra $100 will get you a private desk. Office Nomad charges $25 a day for drop-ins or $475 a month for a dedicated desk that’s available 24/7. Factor in the price of drinks at a neighborhood cafe, and the monthly fees aren’t much greater.

AN EVOLUTIONARY STEP FOR START-UPS

Among Sandbox’s 20 regular denizens are the workforces of several start-up companies.

“I think there’s a natural evolution of Internet companies nowadays,” says James Nicholson, CEO of YourStreet Inc., a hyperlocal news website. “You start in your house, and then you move to a coffee shop, and then you move to a coworking space, then finally you get permanent office space.”

One of the Sandbox start-ups is “graduating” to its own office in the weeks ahead. DanceJam, a video website focusing on dance, moved into Sandbox Suites a few months ago with three to four regular workers.

Now that venture funding has swelled its ranks to nine, plus a couple of interns, the workers have begun to outgrow the shared office and feel self-conscious about being the nosiest tenant in the space.

Noisy neighbors is part of the charm of Beta House, a coworking location in Cambridge, Mass. Taking up the top two stories of a multifamily house, the shared space feels like a techie fraternity. Electronic music is pumping. Someone had set up drum pads from the Rock Band video game. About half of the dozen coworkers tapped on keyboards, while the rest chatted in the open kitchen area.

“This place is a good mixture of all the things a young company needs,” says AnYuan Guo, CEO of the video-based job counselor MyCareerTube.com. “There’s networking, a place to get things done, collaboration.”

Although most of the Beta House members work on their own projects, many stress how helpful it is to have other programmers around. They can pitch ideas, share hacks, and work through stubborn code. And because everyone is working toward different goals, there’s no sense of office politics and little fear of ideas being stolen, says Jeff Dlouhy, a sophomore at Northeastern University who uses Beta House to get away from his dorm room and program new features for the open-source Web browser Camino.

“There’s not that much competition,” he says. “But sometimes there is a little geek envy.”

COWORKERS CONNECT VIA THE WEB

Since the movement sprang from the open-source community, coworking uses many of the same self-organizing tools to spread the word. There’s a coworking wiki site, several blogs, and countless Web pages devoted to promoting the idea and matching up workers with offices.

The main coworking location in Dublin, Ireland, grew out of a single website. “What we did was set up coworking.ie,” just to see if there was any interest, says Jason Roe, an Irish freelance Web designer. He launched the site last March. By May, he had unveiled the first office. Another, larger space should be opening this month, he says.

The growth in coworking is no surprise to Rose Stanley, a work-life practice leader for the human resource association WorldatWork in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In 2006, the number of Americans who said they never telecommute dropped 24 percent, according to a study by WorldatWork. The fastest-growing segment was those who worked remotely every day, rising 20 percent to 14.7 million Americans. WorldatWork has yet to release the 2007 numbers, but Ms. Stanley expects the trends to continue.

In fact, with WorldatWork growing as a company, it’s considering a situation very similar to coworking.

“Recently, we’ve been talking about opening a remote office,” Stanley says. “But it doesn’t have to be just for us. We’ve talked about sharing the space with other companies.”

• Staff writer Ben Arnoldy contributed to this story from San Francisco.[reprinted]

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?”

Coworking sites are up and running from Argentina to Australia and many places in between, although a wiki site on coworking shows that most are in the United States. While some have grown-up-sounding names, most seem connected somewhere between the communalism of the 1960s and the whimsy of the dot-com days of the ’90s, like the Hive Cooperative in Denver, Office Nomads in Seattle, Nutopia Workspace in Lower Manhattan and Independents Hall in Philadelphia.

The coworkers, armed with Wi-Fi laptops and cellphones, are in some ways offering a techie twist on the age-old practice of artists or writers teaming up to rent studio space.

Most coworkers say they were drawn to the spaces for the same reasons that inspired Mr. Neuberg: they like working independently, but they are less effective when sitting home alone.“Even people who are antisocial feel a need to be around other people for at least part of the day while they’re working,” said Laura Forlano, a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School who has studied people working in communal offices and cafes.

Coworking comes in many flavors. The Hat Factory in San Francisco is a live-work loft that’s home to three technology workers who open up during the day to other people. Some companies, like Citizen Agency, a San Francisco Internet consulting firm that has done the most to evangelize coworking, have an open-door policy, in which people rent desks but others are free to drop in and use the Wi-Fi or the conference room.

Some companies rent out desks to the nomadic workers, hoping some of their Internet mojo will rub off. Yet others have started coworking spaces as businesses unto themselves, like a community version of the corporate business centers operated by the Regus Group.

Tara Hunt, a co-owner of Citizen Agency, which calls its office Citizen Space, has listed (in a blog, of course) some principles of coworking. They include collaboration, openness, community, sustainability and accessibility.

Many of the ideas come from the open-source software movement, in which people share their work freely with little regard for financial gain. Taking a nod from that movement, the people involved in coworking share their experiences and ideas on a Web site, coworking.pbwiki.com.

Despite such ideals, the arrangement does not always work perfectly. Thor Muller, the chief executive of Get Satisfaction, a San Francisco start-up, said he had opened his offices to friends to come in and work. One day, a friend started aggressively recruiting Satisfaction’s employees for his own start-up, and he was banned from the office.

“There should be honor among start-ups,” Mr. Muller said, still rankled.

Ms. Hunt and Chris Messina, her partner in Citizen Agency, said they have had to make sure that people respect their space and leave it clean.

“Someone wanted to bring her dog in, and we had to say, ‘That actually doesn’t work for us,’ ” Ms. Hunt said. And Mr. Vlahides at the Hat Factory griped about “some humorless European guys” who sat at the common table and talked loudly on their cellphones instead of going outside.

Citizen Space lets people drop in without paying, but if someone uses the space regularly, the group asks the person to pay for a key. For $350 a month, a worker can rent a desk and get a key to Citizen Space for 24-hour access. For $250 a month, you get only a key. The space has seven desks, a large table for drop-ins, a private conference room, whiteboards and other office amenities — some less typical, like beer and wine.

Ms. Hunt and Mr. Messina say they don’t make a profit on the space. “We could get our own office with 800 square feet and spend the same money,” Mr. Messina said, “or we can be here, and have a space where people can come and work and have meet-ups that serve the community, and it gives us the opportunity to meet some fascinating people.

”Mr. Messina and Ms. Hunt are so passionate about coworking that they even sell their technology customers on it. While consulting with a San Francisco bag maker, Timbuk2, they persuaded the company to create some coworking desks in its offices, attracting technology folks to help stimulate ideas.

Other coworking spaces are set up as businesses. Roman Gelfer, a former equities trader, and Sasha Vasilyuk, a writer, started Sandbox Suites in San Francisco last October, renting out 4,300 square feet on three floors. Their rates start at $135 for a once-a-week drop-in slot and go up to $495 a month for a private desk.

“If you build a space from the ground up for coworking and networking as well, you could do a better job, and I definitely believe it’s a great business,” Mr. Gelfer said.

Still, he allows free events in the space, like hackathons — weekends in which programmers get together and build, say, Facebook applications.

The Hat Factory has a more informal feel. One might call it messy. The lore is that the room, in an industrial loft, once belonged to a woman who made hats. It’s now occupied by a Web video producer, a guy who runs a Web video start-up called Viddyou and aYahoo employee. About seven others work in the space, which is open during daytime business hours.

The Hat Factory vibe is more like a dorm than an office, with Mr. Vlahides throwing candy across the floor to tease the resident cat, and bedsheets hanging from the ceiling.

A coworking site in Brighton and Hove, England, called the Werks, is an example of how the networked world can spread an idea across borders. James McCarthy, a founder, had left his job in information technology at American Express and with a partner rented a 6,000-square-foot building that once belonged to Barclays Bank.

They rent to artists, software developers and designers, among others, with hopes of someday being profitable but also allowing free drop-ins to spread the word.

Similarly, Fernando Maclen in Buenos Aires had read online accounts of Citizen Space and a coworking space in Vancouver, British Columbia, and for a college class wrote a paper about how he would create a coworking site.“In less than three months, I made my business plan (based on the experiences posted by the coworking group) and asked my parents for financial support,” he said in an e-mail message.

Mr. Maclen’s space in Buenos Aires is now half full with eight workers, but he said that his own small design studio had benefited “200 percent” from the arrangement.“We, as a design firm, have our own projects, but we outsource parts of them, very often to designers inside the coworking space,” he said. “They do the same with us. We complement each other. The speed is incredible. We don’t waste time with endless phone calls or IM chats, we simply walk to the office next door and there they are.”The coworking wiki page lists many countries where people would like to start sites, or work in one if someone else would get it going.

People who are coworking feel a bond to other coworkers.

One day last month, a technology worker from Montreal, Duncan Ward, set up his laptop at Citizen Space in San Francisco. “I just came to town for a week to do some networking for my start-up,” he said. He had heard of the site from a friend who was setting up a coworking site in Montreal.

As for Mr. Neuberg, who started the movement, he is no longer coworking, although he still promotes it. Like many other talented programmers, he took a job at Google.

[article source: New York Times - LINK

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.

“We went through a spurt of roaming around people’s apartments, but the ergonomics aren’t there so it starts to hurt after a while,” said Anthony Young, 31, one of the Web entrepreneurs working upstairs from Powell at Sandbox Suites. “Having a consistent, reliable place to go work is good for keeping your head straight.”

The spaces are as varied as their founders, ranging from funky industrial lofts to sleeker sites with a more corporate ambiance. But most of them are part of a grassroots international movement that is loosely connected through the Internet.

And the Bay Area - with about a half dozen co-working sites up and running - is one of the hotbeds of the movement.

“We definitely have a stronger presence,” said Steve King of Emergent Research in Lafayette, who studied co-working as part of a report on the future of small business. “We have a vibrant personal-business community in the Bay Area. And because it’s very tech- and media-focused, it fits in well with the concepts of co-working.”

If it’s possible to identify a founder of the movement, it might be Brad Neuberg, a 31-year-old San Francisco inventor and open-source software developer who coined the term “co-working.”

Neuberg had left a tech startup to work for himself but missed the camaraderie of an office.

“I started asking myself, ‘Why can’t I combine the structure and community of a job with the freedom and independence of working for myself?’ ” he said.

In 2005, Neuberg arranged to rent space two days a week from a Mission District event venue, setting up card tables each day to provide a work surface. Gradually other people started joining him - a computer science researcher, an entrepreneur, open source developers and a filmmaker.

“I remember some great conversations, brainstorming sessions, and lunches as we all got to know each other and zinged ideas off one another,” he said. “I even led some yoga classes in the space for awhile.”

Neuberg eventually disbanded his site, but some participants went on to start other co-working sites such as the Hat Factory near Potrero Hill and Citizen Space on Second Street.

Co-working is certainly not the only form of shared work space. Painters and other cash-strapped artists have shared studios for as long as anyone held a brush. Writers have clustered in shared offices such as San Francisco’s Grotto.

On the corporate side, business centers such as the Regus Group or, in the Bay Area, Pacific Business Centers offer private offices and conference rooms that can be rented for short amounts of time. Such centers are popular among traveling salespeople and startup firms that are not quite ready to lease permanent space.

There are also business incubators - shared work spaces typically run by local government or nonprofit groups, dedicated to helping new ventures grow and become sources of local jobs.

Co-working differs from incubators in that it is aimed at solo freelancers, not just businesses with the potential for growth and job creation.

It differs from Regus-type business centers not only in cost - co-working is much less expensive - but also in its goal of creating a sense of community among users.

Many co-working pioneers came out of the open-source software movement, which believes in making source code freely available for use by anyone around the globe.

They approached co-working not just as a business model but as a mission - a way to extend open-source-style collaboration into other parts of life.

So co-working sites often host a variety of after-hours gatherings that range from movie nights to “hackathons” where scores of programmers converge to solve software problems.

“We’ve had some interesting open meetings,” said Tara Hunt, co-founder of Citizen Space. “One tenant wrote a plan on the whiteboard for something that included mock-ups. Some drop-ins came in and edited it like a wiki (a collaborative Web site), with a bunch of really cool suggestions. He said, ‘Omigod, I didn’t think of that.’ “

At Citizen Space last week, Hunt worked on decorating the room’s cinderblock walls while several members typed quietly at their keyboards. A whiteboard in the middle of the room was filled with notes from someone’s business meeting.

Across town at Sandbox Suites, owner Roman Gelfer brewed espressos while Powell hovered over her laptop. Young talked with his colleague Jesse Andrews about a dance-related Web site they were developing that was not yet public.

Both scenes illustrated one potential pitfall of co-working - lack of privacy. With strangers dropping in to work at adjacent desks, how can people ensure that their whiteboard notes or pre-launch conversations don’t fall into a competitor’s hands?

Co-working participants say privacy hasn’t turned out to be a problem.

“If it’s really sensitive, I can take my phone and go into a conference room,” said Greg Burton, 57, an online marketing consultant who works out of Sandbox Suites.

“The amount of productivity that would be lost in roaming from coffee shop to coffee shop is greater than any potential competitive losses here,” said Andrews, 29.

For now, the precise direction that co-working will take remains unclear.

One possible route is the creation of more grassroots, mission-driven sites like Citizen Space. Another possibility is the rise of co-working chains - cookie-cutter facilities like health clubs that are less of a movement and more of a corporate enterprise. In Santa Clara, a traditional business center, Bowers Office Center, started offering a co-working option several months ago.

“There could be a Starbucks-ification of co-working, or in fact, Starbucks could do it themselves,” said Chris Messina, who co-founded Citizen Space with Hunt.

Workplace expert King predicts that, regardless of its form, co-working is poised for a big takeoff.

That’s due to the growing number of one-person businesses, which rose from 16.5 million in 2000 to 20.4 million in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We’re seeing a clear trend to free agents and personal businesses, due to outsourcing, layoffs, and people looking for work-life balance or more work flexibility,” said King. “That’s going to result in more people working on their own either full or part time. Those folks need support. And what’s really cool about co-working is it solves that problem for a very modest amount of money.”

Online resources

For background information on co-working and a list of co-working spaces around the world, see coworking.pbwiki.com.

Some Bay Area co-working spaces include:

– Hat Factory (San Francisco): hatfactory.net

– Citizen Space (San Francisco): www .citizenspace.us

– Sandbox Suites (San Francisco): www .sandboxsuites.com

– 2431 Mission (San Francisco): links.sfgate.com/ZCMB

– Berkeley Coworking (Berkeley): www .berkeleycoworking.com

– Socialtext (Palo Alto): links.sfgate.com/ZCMJ

Source: Chronicle research

What does co-working cost?

Every co-working site has a different fee structure, but they typically cost less than renting a private office. Two examples:

Citizen Space charges $350 per month for a private desk, 24-hour access and unlimited use of the conference room. It charges $250 for 24-hour access but no private desk. Drop-ins, who can access the space when other users are present and may take any empty seat, are free.

Sandbox Suites charges $495 per month for a private desk, 24-hour access and eight hours per month of conference room time. It has a sliding scale down to $135, which includes one day’s use per week, no private desk and no conference time. Drop-ins pay $20 for half a day or $38 for a full day.

Source: Chronicle research.

E-mail Ilana DeBare at idebare@sfchronicle.com.

BEFORE they were married in September, Nicci Young and Richard Wiese first had to split up. The problem was not romantic, but spatial: Ms. Young Wiese, who organizes community development safaris to Africa, and Mr. Wiese, a writer and explorer, found that their Upper East Side one-bedroom was not big enough for the two of them after both decided to work from home.

“He kept talking to me about his work, which is very interesting, but it was really taking time out of my workday,” Ms. Young Wiese said. “And when I was alone there was a sense of loneliness and procrastination.”

Mr. Wiese, who is writing a how-to book about exploration for teenagers, acknowledged the problem. “Nicci tends to be a lot more intense,” he said. “Especially with lighter work, I can be watching a ballgame. If I saw a funny e-mail coming through I’d want to share it. I’d get these glances from her, like, ‘I’m working!’”

Ms. Young Wiese is one of many of the millions of Americans now working outside traditional workplaces who have found themselves surprised by how difficult home-office life can be. It requires strict self-discipline and an ability to tune out spouses, children and pets. For the more sociable or emotionally needy, it can feel like house arrest, especially if the phone hasn’t rung in a while.

Ms. Young Wiese’s solution was to rent space in a communal office, an increasingly popular option for those who can afford it. (According to Sara Horowitz, the executive director of the Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the self-employed, the use of communal work spaces has been on the rise among members for about three years, “and in the last year it’s started accelerating.”) Those who can’t afford a separate space, or who find home too convenient or rewarding a workplace base to give up — learn to live with the challenges, coming up with smaller-scale solutions over time.

One of the hardest adjustments for those working from home is deciding when to take a break, and when to quit for the day. With the computer always beckoning and the commute measured in the time it takes to cross the living room, there’s always a reason to go back to work — or an excuse to avoid it. “It’s sort of a guilty feeling — I should be working,” said Kathy McHugh, a headhunter for high-tech companies who has worked out of her Manhattan apartment on and off for several years. “My office is two feet away.”

Children can be a distraction, as Barbara Magnoni, an international development consultant, discovered when she and Magali Montes, a business associate, tried to hold meetings in Ms. Magnoni’s apartment after picking up their children from school. “We’d meet at home with our kids running around and they would think it was a play date when it actually wasn’t,” Ms. Magnoni said.

Sid Holt, a media senior vice president whose office is in a barn a few steps from his house in northern Westchester County, described the difficulty of pacing himself. “There are no cigarette breaks,” he said. “You’re either working too hard or not hard enough.”

Mr. Holt said he finds it helpful to schedule his time in a way that mimics the nine-to-five life of his years spent working in a New York office. He tries to keep to a routine that includes breakfast at a local coffee shop — reminiscent of his ritual of picking up coffee and a bagel at Grand Central Terminal on the way to his former job — and a 10 a.m. conference call with three other employees of go2Media, a Boston-based mobile Web service for which he oversees editorial content.

The conference call and frequent e-mail exchanges with other employees contribute to a sense of accomplishment that would be harder to achieve if he were working entirely on his own, he said. And they also help him to feel that he has earned the reward that once greeted him on his return from Manhattan, and that he still uses to punctuate the day. “I say to myself, there’s a martini waiting for me down at the house and I’m leaving now.”

For home-office workers who aren’t in regular touch with colleagues or clients, a frequent complaint — even among those who say they are distracted by other members of their households — is of isolation. David Behl, a photographer whose studio is connected to his TriBeCa loft, said he enjoys working at home when the jobs are pouring in and the studio is filled with clients and assistants. But at other times, he added, he misses the studio he used to share with two other photographers. “You don’t see anybody,” he said. “You don’t go out for lunch. It’s easier to get depressed because there’s no one to complain to.”

Ms. McHugh said that business lunches can be a lifeline after a couple of weeks working from home, and that she often finds herself glomming onto her daughter when she gets home from high school in the afternoon. “I’m happy to see somebody who’s out in the world,” she said.

These issues have been observed at I.B.M., where a “mobile workforce” strategy has led to 30 percent of employees working full time from home (as well as a savings on office space that the company estimates at $100 million a year). “We found if you’re working from home and do not have an interaction with someone from work, or a client, or a physical meeting, after three days you start to feel isolated,” said Dan Pelino, who manages I.B.M.’s mobile workforce program. Soon after the company introduced the program in 2001, he added, “people have said to me, ‘I.B.M. stands for ‘I’m By Myself.’”

The company has tried to mitigate this problem with “mobility centers,” communal spaces that it maintains wherever it has offices, offering desks, phone and Internet lines, and office equipment for the periodic use of home-based workers.

It has also promoted “I.B.M. clubs,” meant to encourage employee bonding. Club members have taken day trips together to a zoo, traded cookie recipes and “gone to a race track and learned how to be a Nascar driver,” Mr. Pelino reported.

For those who can’t depend on corporate beneficence, it is now possible to rent a desk or office in communal work spaces all over the country. The Regus Group, a Dallas-based company that rents temporary office space around the world and has 17 locations in Manhattan alone, has been doubling its American business every two years, according to Guillermo Rotman, the company’s chief executive for the Americas. In addition to cubicles and individual offices in various configurations, its spaces all have business lounges with sofas, armchairs, Internet ports, coffee machines and companionship for those seeking it. (The company also sells $300-a-year passes to its business lounges, which number 950 around the world and cater to itinerant laptoppers.)

One Regus client in New York, David Robertson, said he had been looking forward to working at home from his lower Manhattan apartment when he took a job in 2006 with a start-up company that licenses images from college sports events, but that he lasted less than three months.

“There seemed to be a lot of distractions,” he said, “whether it was my children, or the refrigerator, or some home improvement project that was just sitting there staring at me.”

His company pays slightly less than $1,000 a month for the cubicle he selected over an office with a closing door because it presented more opportunities to socialize. He now wears a suit and tie to work when he wants to, and enjoys the reassuring cadences of the nine-to-five world, as well as the camaraderie of his new office mates.

“It’s not like they’re best friends,” he said of his fellow business lounge denizens and the Regus staff members who are there to support them. “But they’re adults you can have a conversation with.”

Ms. Young Wiese, who pays $650 a month for a desk in a communal office in a private house near her apartment, said she, too, is happy to be surrounded by office mates who are friendly, if less gregarious than Mr. Wiese. They share job leads with one another, they go out to lunch. (She added that she prefers these relationships to those in a traditional office. “You have this collegial atmosphere, but it’s not fraught with any work issues or roles or responsibilities,” she said.)

Several of them are women who, like her, have abandoned their home offices to their work-at-home husbands. Abby Vaughn, an advertising representative for Canadian newspapers, actually took over her husband’s space at the communal office when he was dismissed by the office manager after two weeks because his telephone manner was too loud. He is once again selling market research from home, while Ms. Vaughn goes off to the rented cubicle.

“He’s worked from his apartment for two years,” his wife explained. “He wasn’t used to being around people.”

reprinted from the New York Times 

SEATTLE (FORTUNE Small Business) — As a sole proprietor who works primarily online, every day I face a painful decision: work from home or go to a coffeehouse?

Working from home is awesome. No boss hanging over your shoulder. No need to shower. No human contact. No incentive to stay on task.

The coffeehouse comes with its own challenges. Overcaffeination. No place to make phone calls without being a jerk. Nowhere to meet with clients. You have to buy lunch.

Marketing consultant Chris Haddad has found a third option: coworking. Every weekday he heads to Office Nomads, a shared office space in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. For $475 a month, Haddad gets a permanent desk space (he’s bought his own snazzy stand-up desk), unlimited coffee and printing, 24-hour access, Wi-Fi and use of three conference rooms. He also gets some friendly coworkers who happen not to work for the same company.

“I’ve been self-employed for four years now,” Haddad said. “It’s a lot of fun, I like doing it, but the walls close in really fast. There were several times where I realized I hadn’t put on pants or left the house in 30 hours.”

Haddad is Office Nomads’ first and, for now, only monthly member. “When I was first here, it was like, wow! It’s all the good things about having an office, which are coworkers, a separate place to go, more space,” Haddad said. “But there’s nobody standing over your shoulder making sure you’re not checking personal e-mail.”

Haddad also has a place to meet clients other than his small condo. When I drop by on a Wednesday morning, Haddad is in the conference room with a client. At a nearby desk is Eric Von Blom, who works remotely for an Arizona telecom.

“It was good for my relationship to come here,” he said. “I’d rather talk to these wonderful, freaky people than my wonderful, freaky cats.”

Von Blom gets free office space in exchange for being the Nomads’ office manager. Other regulars, mostly Web developers and copywriters, pay $20 for a day pass.

Coworking is a growing phenomenon - an online map of coworking spaces lists about three dozen spaces worldwide, most of which went into business in the last two years. One of the market’s earliest pioneers was Nutopia Workspace (named 116 West Houston until a recent move) in New York City, which opened in 2001.

Nutopia now has 300 members paying rates from $100 per month for a “virtual” presence (a mailing address and actual office use up to two days per month) to $800 for all-inclusive full-time access. On any given day, up to 40 members will be in the office, according to founder John McGann. He estimates that around a third of his clientele is small-business owners; the rest are freelancers and out-of-town workers who need an occasional Manhattan presence.

Nutopia was recently forced out of its longtime space by rising rents - a problem that, ironically, McGann expects to ultimately benefit his business.

“The rise in commercial rents is really hitting small businesses the hardest,” he said. “My rent doubled. Because of price hikes like that, more people are becoming familiar with coworking.”

Office Nomads’ office is a large, open-plan space in a pedestrian-oriented district of Seattle. It’s airy and bright, with exposed brick and a typical startup feel. There are no cubes or office doors. Conversation is encouraged.

“Somebody pops their head up, usually everybody’s heads pop up and everybody has this fun, random discussion, whether it’s talking about Britney Spears or talking about marketing,” said Office Nomads founder Susan Evans, 26.

I run my business from a closet
Evans and Jacob Sayles, 30, opened Office Nomads in November with their own investment capital. They’re also clients - both have other jobs and work on them from Office Nomads. Sayles telecommutes to a software developer and wanted a way to avoid home-office isolation. Evans works for an environmental nonprofit and was drawn to the idea of coworking as a commute-trip reduction strategy.

“Seattle talks a lot about their congestion problems,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way that people could telecommute and have it be efficient, effective, and not a burden to them?”

The space has four work zones, including a very quiet one known as The Cave, which is good for private calls. Unlike at a coffeehouse, however, it’s no breach of etiquette at Office Nomads to make phone calls. You can also shower at Office Nomads, an activity discouraged at most coffeehouses.

It would be hard to quantify the annual revenue of the nascent coworking market. Office Nomads itself has a long way to go before turning a profit.

“To stop hemorrhaging money, we need about 25 monthly members,” Evans said. “We can start paying both Jacob and me a meager salary at about 32 members.” The space maxes out at 40 members.

Evans has found that the benefits of coworking go well beyond getting people out of their cars. “It’s about having a work community and being around people who are also interested and inspired.”

I’m not ready to give up the coffeehouse just yet: $475/month is a lot of money. But on days when I have a lot of phone calls to make and a seductive pile of laundry at home, I’ll come back to Office Nomads for the $20 day pass. When I ask Evans how to connect to the network printer, she hands me a USB drive and quips, “You can’t bring a printer to a coffeehouse.”

Ditch your cubicle: A treadmill for a desk? Check out FSB’s full archive of stories about unusual business locations.

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