This is such a helpful share, Alicia. I’m sure that it’ll resonate with a lot of people. Thank you for being candid!
A few thoughts on some of your bullet points:
- I think the market for coworking here is almost zilch. Technology and the way of life is very stalled here, or at least compared to what I’m used to. In NYC, everything is modern, cutting edge, competitive. In NYC, I felt in the back of the pack as far as being a web designer/developer goes, and here, it’s like all the design firms (there seem to be few or no freelancers) are 5+ years behind the times, and it shows everywhere. The American Dream is alive and well here, not the new ideals I’m used to seeing with creativity and technology and whatnot, and thus loving your work, having passions, forward-momentum… don’t seem to be huge priorities.
You just described my experience in Philadelphia in 2006, almost exactly. 
Down to the comparison to another city where I could easily see what I thought I wanted. In my case, that was SF, and the early coworking communities there.
There weren’t any packs of designers and developers. They were scattered, hidden in pockets, both everywhere and nowhere.
I’d be curious what kinds of aspirations people do have, even if they don’t talk about them without some active tummeling. I’ve learned over and over that the things that people talk about on the surface, especially when it comes to work, has very little to do with with they actually care about. You need to dig deeper. Get some distance from professional goals, and I bet you’ll start finding some new common ground and the finding shared vision for your first 10.
Perhaps most importantly: I think you’re doing yourself and your community a disservice by using NYC as a measuring stick. Don’t try to make Fayetteville more like NYC, try to make it a better version of itself. In order to do that, you need to get a much clearer picture of what people in Fayetteville think “better” could be.
- The biggest obstacle is literally communicating what coworking is all about to new people. New people simply think it’s networking, that we get together and chat for a few hours. Rarely do people bring work when we’ve met up at a coffee shop. So I’ve also found it difficult to work there, too, and we often abandon the session hours before we were scheduled to, because all we did was chat.
I looked for your new facebook group, I imagine you’re using similar language to what was on the meetup.
“Coworking is when people who work for themselves—freelancers, solopreneurs, sole proprietors, startups, consultants, etc.—come together and work alongside each other. It’s not merely networking; it’s actual working – with other people. We usually meet for several hours at a time at a coffee shop, the library, or somewhere else; we’re always looking for new places to cowork. The coworking community offers a common place to work, support, collaboration, and more.”
You know that thing where somebody tells you “don’t imagine a pink elephant” and then you can’t help yourself but think of what a pink elephant would look like"? That’s what you’re doing here.
Don’t say what you aren’t, instead, say exactly what you are. The more precise, the better. Something like:
“Your home office might be cozy, but I bet you’re not getting the best business advice from the dog. Even if you leave the house to work from a cafe, it isn’t that much better than working by yourself. Every couple of weeks, this group chooses the same cafe, or library, or living room to work from. Bring your laptop or notebook and plan to get some work done. The goal is to be more productive than we would be alone, and then we can celebrate that productivity at the end of the day”
You can adjust, and add even more detail, but framing it as work time followed by social time lets people know what to expect and when.
- We still struggle to find people who work for themselves, as there’s not much of that here. What I see in the coffee shops are students and army guys working on group projects.
Look beyond the existing cafe workers. “Work for themselves” is just one tiny demographic under a bigger umbrella of people who “can choose here they work, some or all of the time, and feel lonely.”
The real-est challenge I think you have is that a lot of people have big houses and yards and they aren’t “forced” out into public as much as in a city where space is a constraint. This is especially true during the work day.
So the question you need to answer is: what things cause them to leave their private spaces? Where do people gather, regardless of the kind of work they do? Get a better sense of that, and then narrow your search by demographics later.
- I’ve become a bit demoralized as an organizer. I’m not culturally used to it here. It appears I have higher expectations for just about everything – from work to friends to intellect to fashion, so I’ve gotten used to working from home and talking to friends up north, and am okay with trying this group out every other week or so. I thought I’d find more army spouses and girlfriends here like me, but the reality is that most people in the army aren’t from cities, and spouses are more concerned with raising children than building independent business.
This is rough, but a very real feeling. You can ignore it, or try to understand it better. I recommend the latter.
I’ll repeat what I said before: don’t project your expectations of what they should be like, on them. You can’t change other people, but you can help them change themselves towards something that *they *care about.
If you come to the table with a certain set of expectations, no matter how “optimistic” you are, you’re also putting up a wall for people who don’t share those expectations. It’s subtle and unintentional, but it’s there, and people can detect it.
If you change your mindset to one of curiosity, where you’re seeking to learn things from and about them instead of trying to show them “how to be,” I’d be willing to bet that your experiences will shift dramatically toward the more positive!
- I realized something about myself too, which is that at NWC, while I loved being around people who did all sorts of different things all the time, my closest friends (who I usually sat with) all did the same thing as me. I’ve not been as interested in coworking/jellying here when I’m not sitting next to other developers who I can bounce ideas off of or chat client work with. So I realized that for me, coworking is not just about variety, but finding colleagues who you have a lot in common with.
···
Again, goes back to my point about dropping the “demographics” part of your search, and focusing on what people care about.
In case you missed it on my newsletter, this post includes a primer for taking a Tummler mindset, which looks like these three main components at 10k feet:
Step 1 – Get curious, and stay curious.
Step 2 – Notice patterns. Patterns are opportunities to instigate.
Step 3 – Give other people permission participate.
Hopefully this helps refresh your optimism.
-Alex
–
/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia
On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Alicia Hurst [email protected] wrote:
Another update!
It’s been slow going to bring coworking to Fayetteville, NC. I’ve been talking with Robert from Bull City Coworking as well as Tony (from NWC) about the differences from what other cities have experienced.
- Last year when I started the group on Meetup, we had a new face every week and about 4-6 people per session, but when I left to go home to NYC for several months and await the decision of whether I was moving here or not, the group disintegrated. When I resumed coworking last month, no one new really came. So we decided to abandon Meetup, where the monthly fee was unnecessary, and we moved to a free, open Facebook group: http://facebook.com/groups/fayettevillecoworking. The thinking behind this was that everyone uses Facebook all the time. We already have 18 members on this new group because one of our members added a bunch of friends of hers she thought might be interested. Also, a woman from a different Facebook group I am a member of showed no interest in joining our Meetup group, but joined the Facebook group right away. However, only a few of the old members of the Meetup group have joined us on Facebook. So, that might provide some insight for someone looking to start a new community (but not coworking space) in the future.
- I think the market for coworking here is almost zilch. Technology and the way of life is very stalled here, or at least compared to what I’m used to. In NYC, everything is modern, cutting edge, competitive. In NYC, I felt in the back of the pack as far as being a web designer/developer goes, and here, it’s like all the design firms (there seem to be few or no freelancers) are 5+ years behind the times, and it shows everywhere. The American Dream is alive and well here, not the new ideals I’m used to seeing with creativity and technology and whatnot, and thus loving your work, having passions, forward-momentum… don’t seem to be huge priorities.
- The biggest obstacle is literally communicating what coworking is all about to new people. New people simply think it’s networking, that we get together and chat for a few hours. Rarely do people bring work when we’ve met up at a coffee shop. So I’ve also found it difficult to work there, too, and we often abandon the session hours before we were scheduled to, because all we did was chat.
- We still struggle to find people who work for themselves, as there’s not much of that here. What I see in the coffee shops are students and army guys working on group projects.
- I’ve become a bit demoralized as an organizer. I’m not culturally used to it here. It appears I have higher expectations for just about everything – from work to friends to intellect to fashion, so I’ve gotten used to working from home and talking to friends up north, and am okay with trying this group out every other week or so. I thought I’d find more army spouses and girlfriends here like me, but the reality is that most people in the army aren’t from cities, and spouses are more concerned with raising children than building independent business.
- I realized something about myself too, which is that at NWC, while I loved being around people who did all sorts of different things all the time, my closest friends (who I usually sat with) all did the same thing as me. I’ve not been as interested in coworking/jellying here when I’m not sitting next to other developers who I can bounce ideas off of or chat client work with. So I realized that for me, coworking is not just about variety, but finding colleagues who you have a lot in common with.
So, yeah, I just wanted to post what our progress is in case anyone else finds it interesting or has anything to share! Sorry it’s not the most peppy or optimistic of posts.
–
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