All the Cool Cities Have ‘Em: Let’s do a “Co-Working Space”
Like many regions throughout the US and elsewhere, Hampton Roads continues to seek a more definable sense of place that will help engage and crystallize our “creative class” and promote new models of innovation, entrepreneurship, and business formation. Meanwhile, even in a place as conservative and, well, stodgy as Hampton Roads, the nature of work continues to change, as more effective tools and ubiquitous communication infrastructures expand to support mobile and freelance professionals who can’t, or choose not to, spend their work time in traditional office settings or at home, alone, in their spare room. The result is that our region’s coffee shops, libraries, and food courts are increasingly full of consultants, writers, marketers, programmers, budding entrepreneurs, and other creative professionals banging away at laptops and smart phones, meeting around cramped restaurant tables, scribbling on napkins, and dealing with the inherent distractions and limitations of trying to accomplish meaningful work in public spaces. While there are obvious advantages to this sort of mobility, there is also a strong and growing need for an alternative that extends beyond the hour or two one can spend at Starbucks, but without the rigid and expensive commitment of renting a traditional office space. One small, but important, contribution to the above need is for a grass-roots group, with some support from our cities, universities, and others, to begin experimenting with the growing national trend toward “coworking”, which melds the freedom and mobility of café culture with the collaborative and results-oriented drive of the new generation of free-lancers, entrepreneurs, and the people who love them. In short, a coworking space is a store-front, or one-floor-up, cafe-like office/community/collaboration space designed for developers, writers, consultants, and entrepreneurs who don’t want to work in isolation, but realize the need to get out of the house, and beyond the coffee shop, to get some real work done. The idea is not new; model coworking spaces have been successful in New York City, Austin, Portland, Chicago, Charlottesville, and other cities where people have recognized a need to promote collaboration and “organic” interaction among and between freelancers and other mobile professionals. Many are stand-alone, for profit ventures, while others are run as not-for-profits with volunteer staff and sponsorships from local cities and businesses. Many are affiliated with universities or like-minded for-profit or not-for-profit organizations (sometimes even health clubs and coffee shops!). Some have fairly normal “working” hours, while others are aggressively unconventional, specifically aiming to attract people who already have “day jobs” and need a place to work, collaborate, and generally pursue their dreams late into the night. Regardless of the business model used, coworking spaces have been shown to be solidly self-sustaining; I even have a cool spreadsheet that shows how it all can work! They include small comfortable work spaces that can be rented by the day or by the week, with no commitment for longer-term use, along with real conference rooms and white boards and that foster informal group brainstorming sessions and as well as meaningful, hard-nosed deal-making. Coworking spaces also typically serve as the venue for related lunch-time and evening events of interest to freelancers and creative, entrepreneurial professionals. “Lunch and learn” sessions are often sponsored by local law firms, CPAs, and the like, and related evening events offer a chance for networking among the new generation of creative types who make little distinction between business and social relationships. Most-importantly, these spaces have been shown to make significant contributions to the energy and robustness of the local entrepreneurial environment, and have become an increasingly common way for cities to promote themselves as supportive of the new breed of entrepreneurial venture. It’s time for our region to start down this path, and explore how one, two, or a dozen such spaces can help define and expand the “sense of place” that is so lacking. A new, well-promoted coworking space will serving as the rallying point for solo entrepreneurs and creative professionals to congregate, collaborate, and generate the energy that is essential in a robust and creative entrepreneurial environment. In the last few months, a few people around town have taken on the task of “socializing” this idea to see who’s interested and willing to help. If you don’t know the cool folks at AltDaily.com, for example, you should. They, and others like them, have been wandering the streets of Norfolk and the other cities in the region to generate interest, explore business models (did I mention my cool spreadsheet?), and work out some of the strategies and tactics that we hope will result in a functioning coworking space sometime this Spring. Finally, part of this article was written in the Starbucks on 21st Street in Ghent, part of it was written in my library at home, and some of it came together while I was in my car on the way home from Washington, DC. Just think how much better it could have been if I’d had a place to go that was full of smart, creative people to bounce these ideas off of! Anyway, if you’re interested in being part of the conversation, let me know!
------------------------------------- Marty Kaszubowski is President of General Ideas, a Norfolk-based technology venture consultancy, helping early stage companies and solo entrepreneurs figure out what they want to be when they grow up. Marty is the former Director of the Hampton Roads Technology Incubator and a former President of the Hampton Roads Technology Council, and is a long-time participant in the on-going, regional efforts to promote a more robust entrepreneurial culture here in Hampton Roads. Marty can be reached at Marty@General-Ideas.com.
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