Hello all! I’m a general manager of a co-working space and I was just wondering how I can highlight/promote members and their business that use the space. Do other co-working places have physical membership boards or do they have an on-line platform? I want to encourage collaboration between people by providing a way for them to find out about other members. Any thoughts or suggestions?
We have a mix of both. We have a physical wall where we print everyone’s photo out and post it. At some point we started allowing people to attach their business card to their photo as well. We upload all the photos in to Nadine, our member management system, where people can browse through other members. Most people seem to use Cobot or Nexudus but essentially they all do the same things.
Keep in mind the real trick is to instill a culture where people talk to one another. The member board and the online systems only do a small fraction of the job and a common mistake I’ve seen is relying on them to do everything. If you have no systems but you mingle you will have more impact then if you have the most amazing systems but don’t mingle. Turns out this is a people problem not a technology problem.
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Jacob
On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Elisa Iannilli [email protected] wrote:
Hello all! I’m a general manager of a co-working space and I was just wondering how I can highlight/promote members and their business that use the space. Do other co-working places have physical membership boards or do they have an on-line platform? I want to encourage collaboration between people by providing a way for them to find out about other members. Any thoughts or suggestions?
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Can’t agree more with Jacob. Many of the spaces we work with use the online member directory, but the degree of success and engagement varies enormously based on how those tools are used and managed by the people running the space. I think the physical nature of a wall board is unbeatable, you can browse with your eyes rather than a track-pad, touch and flick through the different profiles, people can add and remove information quickly and without having to log in anywhere.
Online tools also have its place, so it may not be a case of one or the other. The online directories allow you to offer members a quick way of searching across your entire member base using one or a combination of key parameters, skills and/or interests, which may be difficult to achieve on a physical board… Some directories highlight who is currently physically in the space, which I think is pretty useful and encourages people to jump from the online world to a face to face conversation. In many cases, online directories also allow direct and private messages between members, without revealing their email address at that early stage.
So, I would say that each approach can solve parts of this puzzle and they both can be easily and successfully combined.
Adrian
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On Friday, September 25, 2015 at 5:41:27 PM UTC+1, Elisa Iannilli wrote:
Hello all! I’m a general manager of a co-working space and I was just wondering how I can highlight/promote members and their business that use the space. Do other co-working places have physical membership boards or do they have an on-line platform? I want to encourage collaboration between people by providing a way for them to find out about other members. Any thoughts or suggestions?