Keep your eyes out for the conference next year. It’s already been set to happen in Chang Mai!
I think that it is a challange for coworking spaces here, in Indonesia, to have a fully-functioned coworking community. Because my research on the freelancers that have been working in Coworking space, some of them are having difficulties on engaging other coworkers.
My observations match yours, with a few important caveats:
1 - maybe most importantly, this problem exists everywhere. As coworking as mainstreamed, we’ve ended up with lots of “fast food” coworking, positioned as a commodity good. I didn’t see any evidence of this being an above-average effect case in SE Asia.
**2 - **While Asia’s coworking options may be fewer than other areas where coworking has existed, longer but the maturity of the Asian market is AMAZINGLY advanced compared to anywhere else I’ve seen. Mark my words, the next 3-4 years are going to be very interesting for coworking in Asia
3 - Within the broader SE Asian coworking ecosystem, coworking is currently struggling it’s connection to “digital nomadism.” This topic was a big theme at the Coworking Asia conference, and I’ll be writing/talking a lot more about it in the coming weeks/months. But in short, many coworking spaces are finding themselves more populated by traveling westerners who are taking advantage of mobility to live in lots of beautiful places while maintaining their work flow with the help of places like coworking. While this has a potentially powerful economic effect, there’s a visible chasm between the minority of digital nomads who are being contentious contributors to the local ecosystems they visit…there’s a larger majority of people who come, consume, and leave. This creates some awkward feelings with the more local and even more semi-permanent expat communities. This high churn erodes both businesses and communities that it impacts, since real communities are more interdependent than roving populations of vacationers.
I met some awesome people who are working hard to think about ways to work in this chasm. It’s among the most interesting challenges that I noticed, and one I’m excited to be paying closer attention to!
-Alex
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On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 9:43 PM, Ilham Basya [email protected] wrote:
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your explanation. Unfortunately i wasn’t there, in the conference, but i would if i could, though.
The reason why I asked such questions is because, in Indonesia, learning commons is not a thing, we dont have an advanced learning system in our school days. So our generation does not recognize the potential of collaborating in such environment as, either learning commons or the coworking space.
And one of the coworking space that I’ve been visiting is focusing on building a community that will implement the concept of learning commons. I think that it is a challange for coworking spaces here, in Indonesia, to have a fully-functioned coworking community. Because my research on the freelancers that have been working in Coworking space, some of them are having difficulties on engaging other coworkers. Although there are some coworking space that already thrive by helping those interactions to happen, in my oppinion.
Thank you for the podcast link that you shared. I will definitely look into that. Is it okay if, in the future, i have more question about coworking, i email directly to you? Would love to have some conversation.
Best regards,
Ilham
On Friday, March 4, 2016 at 3:46:49 AM UTC+7, Alex Hillman wrote:
Hey Ilhan!
I was just in Indonesia last week - you weren’t at the Coworking Asia conference by chance were you?
I’ve looked at learning commons quite a bit, mostly in my research about libraries and creating programmable environments for learning.
More specifically though, I think there’s something really interesting in your question about the overlap between learning commons and Coworking communities.
One of the distinctions I’ve drawn is that while many communities gather around interests, the most successful coworking communities form as communities of practice. In that way, I actually think it’s hard to find a thriving coworking community that ISNT also a learning community and that the #1 source of learning isn’t necessarily formal instructors but peer to peer exhange among community members. That’s an important thing to notice.
One of my favorite episodes of my podcast is with a longtime Indy Hall member who is a learning researcher, and we talked a LOT about this topic. Check it out, I think you’ll find our conversation relevant to your studies: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com/episodes/5508-ep3-on-the-stack-with-alex-hillman-vanessa-gennarelli
Enjoy and let me know what you think 
-Alex
On Wednesday, March 2, 2016, Ilham Basya [email protected] wrote:
Dear awesome coworking community,
My name is Basya, I am from Indonesia. I am currently working on a thesis about Coworking space in Indonesia. Regarding my subject, I want to ask a few questions. First, is there anyone here familiar with the term learning commons ? If there is, i would like to know how would you explain the concept of learning commons.
Second question, by any chance, is it plausible if I say that the concept of **learning commons****exists inside the coworking culture ?
Thanks!
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