Anyone been through a move?

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

I thought I’d reply here so everyone can benefit…

We did one big move from an 1,100ft2 space to a 1,500 ft space. Here are my lessons learned:

  1. be REALLY pregnant during the move so your members take pity on you and do the bulk of the work :wink:

  2. make a plan for furniture. Figure out if your current furniture works in your new space or not. Buy and sell accordingly

  3. Call to connect your internet at the new location the moment you sign your lease

  4. ask members to help with the move. They might find it fun, you can have pizza after and they get a sense of ownership right away over the new place

  5. minimize what needs to be moved. Toss paperwork, toss weird stuff you’ve accumulated and only take the necessities and key artifacts that are meaningful to your community. In our case, a unicorn pinata.

  6. move on a Friday and reopen on a Monday

  7. use the new space to get lots of feedback from members on what could be improved to make it even more awesome for them

  8. communicate a lot with your members about timing, involvement and logistics (mailing address changes mainly)

Angel

···

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 3:18:48 PM UTC-7, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

We went through a move in October of 2013 from our initial 450 square foot space (!!) to a whopping 1500 square feet. Everything Angel said was right on the money—make sure your utilities (most importantly Internet) are overlapping in service so you have no downtime, and schedule the move over the weekend. If you get your members on board to help out, the only expenses you should incur are the pizza and beer, and possibly the moving truck. A few of our members had pickup trucks, so we didn’t even have to worry about that part.

If I could have changed one thing, it would have been thinking through the layout a little better. We didn’t put any planning into that, and just set up desks wherever. It happened to work out ok, but we could have definitely laid the space out better with a little initial planning.

The big takeaway from those two points is this: get the members involved in the move. Let them take ownership of it. This is for philosophical reasons even more than the practical ones: you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.

···

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:18:48 PM UTC-5, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

"you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.”

1000000x this.

There’s nothing worse than stressing yourself to the limit during a move AND feeling like everybody hates you. :slight_smile:

···

The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Andy Soell [email protected] wrote:

We went through a move in October of 2013 from our initial 450 square foot space (!!) to a whopping 1500 square feet. Everything Angel said was right on the money—make sure your utilities (most importantly Internet) are overlapping in service so you have no downtime, and schedule the move over the weekend. If you get your members on board to help out, the only expenses you should incur are the pizza and beer, and possibly the moving truck. A few of our members had pickup trucks, so we didn’t even have to worry about that part.

If I could have changed one thing, it would have been thinking through the layout a little better. We didn’t put any planning into that, and just set up desks wherever. It happened to work out ok, but we could have definitely laid the space out better with a little initial planning.

The big takeaway from those two points is this: get the members involved in the move. Let them take ownership of it. This is for philosophical reasons even more than the practical ones: you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:18:48 PM UTC-5, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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We moved 2 x in 3 years.
Each time there was a lot of communication and excitement within the coworking community and each time we had almost 100% participation.

One was a move upstairs to a bigger space. The last move was down the street to entire new building. We threw a party. We had 3 “Grand Openings!”

Gotta milk it for it’s worth!

Chad Ballantyne

705.812.0689

ch…@thecreativespace.ca

Barrie’s Coworking Community

Perfect for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.

12 Dunlop St E, Barrie Ontario, L4M 1A3

Memberships start at $25/mth

www.thecreativespace.ca

705-812-0689

···

On Feb 13, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

"you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.”

1000000x this.

There’s nothing worse than stressing yourself to the limit during a move AND feeling like everybody hates you. :slight_smile:


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Andy Soell [email protected] wrote:

We went through a move in October of 2013 from our initial 450 square foot space (!!) to a whopping 1500 square feet. Everything Angel said was right on the money—make sure your utilities (most importantly Internet) are overlapping in service so you have no downtime, and schedule the move over the weekend. If you get your members on board to help out, the only expenses you should incur are the pizza and beer, and possibly the moving truck. A few of our members had pickup trucks, so we didn’t even have to worry about that part.

If I could have changed one thing, it would have been thinking through the layout a little better. We didn’t put any planning into that, and just set up desks wherever. It happened to work out ok, but we could have definitely laid the space out better with a little initial planning.

The big takeaway from those two points is this: get the members involved in the move. Let them take ownership of it. This is for philosophical reasons even more than the practical ones: you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:18:48 PM UTC-5, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].

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Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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First off, I want to thank everyone so much for the replies, over the last month I’ve gone from thinking the impending move (it’s not our choice, the building has been sold and we’re being forced out) almost certainly meant that we were finished, to thinking that this is actually a huge opportunity for us, and a lot of that is because of this google group. It’s not ideal timing, but we’ve found a new location that I think will be even better than our current space, and a landlord who really believes in what we’re doing. The interesting thing is that it’s a brand new building and if we sign on, it’ll be built out to our specifications, so as soon as we’re confirmed, I’m thinking we’ll have an open house for the new members to talk about how they want it to be built out.

···

On Friday, February 13, 2015 at 10:38:37 AM UTC-6, creativespace wrote:

We moved 2 x in 3 years.
Each time there was a lot of communication and excitement within the coworking community and each time we had almost 100% participation.

One was a move upstairs to a bigger space. The last move was down the street to entire new building. We threw a party. We had 3 “Grand Openings!”

Gotta milk it for it’s worth!

Chad Ballantyne

705.812.0689

ch…@thecreativespace.ca

Barrie’s Coworking Community

Perfect for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.

12 Dunlop St E, Barrie Ontario, L4M 1A3

Memberships start at $25/mth

www.thecreativespace.ca

705-812-0689

On Feb 13, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

"you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.”

1000000x this.

There’s nothing worse than stressing yourself to the limit during a move AND feeling like everybody hates you. :slight_smile:


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Andy Soell [email protected] wrote:

We went through a move in October of 2013 from our initial 450 square foot space (!!) to a whopping 1500 square feet. Everything Angel said was right on the money—make sure your utilities (most importantly Internet) are overlapping in service so you have no downtime, and schedule the move over the weekend. If you get your members on board to help out, the only expenses you should incur are the pizza and beer, and possibly the moving truck. A few of our members had pickup trucks, so we didn’t even have to worry about that part.

If I could have changed one thing, it would have been thinking through the layout a little better. We didn’t put any planning into that, and just set up desks wherever. It happened to work out ok, but we could have definitely laid the space out better with a little initial planning.

The big takeaway from those two points is this: get the members involved in the move. Let them take ownership of it. This is for philosophical reasons even more than the practical ones: you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:18:48 PM UTC-5, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

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When we moved 4.5 years ago we called it a weekend-long “comoving party”. It was loads of fun.

We were only moving a few hundred meters down the street. We had almost enough people turn up to create a human chain passing tables and chairs from the old space to the new.

I recommend a planning session at least a week before, probably a series of them. We didn’t and it made things much more stressful at times than it could have been. Either way your members will help make sure that nothing gets missed. Getting the internet connection ordered and installed as soon as possible should be your top priority beyond that. It was impossible for us to get a standard connection in the timeframe we had, we had to start with a wireless solution instead.

Good luck! :slight_smile:

···

On 13 February 2015 at 16:38, Chad Ballantyne [email protected] wrote:

We moved 2 x in 3 years.
Each time there was a lot of communication and excitement within the coworking community and each time we had almost 100% participation.

One was a move upstairs to a bigger space. The last move was down the street to entire new building. We threw a party. We had 3 “Grand Openings!”

Gotta milk it for it’s worth!

Chad Ballantyne

705.812.0689

ch…@thecreativespace.ca

Barrie’s Coworking Community

Perfect for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.

12 Dunlop St E, Barrie Ontario, L4M 1A3

Memberships start at $25/mth

www.thecreativespace.ca

705-812-0689

On Feb 13, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:

"you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.”

1000000x this.

There’s nothing worse than stressing yourself to the limit during a move AND feeling like everybody hates you. :slight_smile:


The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.

Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com

Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Andy Soell [email protected] wrote:

We went through a move in October of 2013 from our initial 450 square foot space (!!) to a whopping 1500 square feet. Everything Angel said was right on the money—make sure your utilities (most importantly Internet) are overlapping in service so you have no downtime, and schedule the move over the weekend. If you get your members on board to help out, the only expenses you should incur are the pizza and beer, and possibly the moving truck. A few of our members had pickup trucks, so we didn’t even have to worry about that part.

If I could have changed one thing, it would have been thinking through the layout a little better. We didn’t put any planning into that, and just set up desks wherever. It happened to work out ok, but we could have definitely laid the space out better with a little initial planning.

The big takeaway from those two points is this: get the members involved in the move. Let them take ownership of it. This is for philosophical reasons even more than the practical ones: you want the members to be excited about the move and feel like it was their move and not your move. The end result being that they’re going to be the ones excited about the new space, and that energy and excitement is going to shine through when you get people coming through the door interested in joining.

On Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 5:18:48 PM UTC-5, Jensen Yancey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious to know if anyone on here has ever dealt with moving locations and wouldn’t mind talking a bit about it. If so, shoot me an email at [email protected]

Thanks!

Jensen

Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Coworking” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].

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Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com


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Jonathan Markwell

Follow my adventures in space, time and code: http://jot.is/sustainablyindy

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