Hey all, as the struggle for definition of coworking continues, I brought this up to Alex H. over drinks last night in Philly and he jokingly said defining coworking is like defining a restaurant, how do you define something that has so many forms?
Immediately we looked up the definition of restaurant and found an inspiring, albeit vague answer.
So with that in mind, I present to you the definition of restaurant (from wikipedia) : is a business which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money, either paid before the meal, after the meal, or with an open account. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of the main chef’s cuisines and service models.
I think the key take away from this exercise is that other large umbrella terms have been defined before, and the way to do it is by being very open ended and as inclusive as possible.
If we ad lib the relevant terms out and sub coworking related terms in, we might get exactly what we’re looking for. Let’s start with what the blanks should be and then we can massage the structure that holds the blanks together.
So in the spirit of a community defined definition, here is the ad lib I came up with (modeled after restaurant): COWORKING -
a style of work that involves blank 1, blank 2, and blank 3. Usually taking place in an office, coworking spaces are supported by members who offer money, blank 4, blank 5, and/or blank 6 in exchange for membership. Memberships generally include blank 7, blank 8, blank 9, blank 10, blank 11, but many coworking locations also offer blank 12, blank 13, blank 14, and blank 15 services. Coworking locations vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of the blank 16 and blank 17 models.
Fill in the blanks everyone! You can also opt to leave blanks blank when applicable.
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On Tuesday, October 7, 2014 3:35:16 PM UTC-5, Ramon Suarez wrote:
Thanks for that reply Alex. With that included here’s the whole list
- Calls itself a coworking space.
- Has a fully dedicated space for coworking (not just a few hours or a cafeteria shared with patrons).
- Has an active community of members, not just clients.
- Has a facilitator dedicated to connect the members and build trust among them, engaging in activities to build the coworking community.
- Treats coworkers as 1st class clients.
- Promotes and encourages collaboration, interaction and serendipity.
- Offers one or many kinds of membership (full or part time)
- Open decision-making: sets explicit, transparent, public limits on who can be a member and how they can participate; does not have implicit or hidden rules or processes for determining or excluding potential members.
We will review the map of coworking spaces in Belgium based on this list.
Now for the 1 Million question: should we weight this criteria? How?
Ramon Suarez
Serendipity Accelerator, Betacowork
Author: http://coworkinghandbook.com
email & hangouts: [email protected]
Phone: +3227376769
GSM: +32497556284
Twitter:http://twitter.com/ramonsuarez
Skype: ramonsuarezTry coworking: http://betacowork.com
On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 6:35 PM, Steve King [email protected] wrote:
I like the list as well as Alex’s add on open membership decision-making.
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