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The crowd is changing, the topics are professionalizing and the competition is intensifying. The Global Coworking Unconference Conference in Austin was a huge day of information and interaction, where new space owners mixed with experienced operators, and big businesses dropped in to spy on the action. Everyone agreed that the movement is undergoing intense growth and change. As conference director Liz Elam said, “we’re at the bottom of the bell curve.”
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Ten cities in North America will be visited this March by Deskmag & Deskwanted’s Coworking Space Ship, a traveling mini-conference about the trends and changes in coworking worldwide. Deskmag writers and researchers will give short presentations. These free events are a chance for each city’s coworking enthusiasts to come together to learn, network and organize.
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In just a few weeks, coworking enthusiasts will travel to Austin to take part in the 2012 Global Coworking Unconference Conference. The second U.S. coworking gathering in the Texas capital will be an opportunity for seasoned experts to rub shoulders with new space operators, with topics and tracks catered for both.
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Worldwide Jellyweek runs from the 16th to the 22nd of January. Over the seven days, a diverse range of events have been organised in a diverse range of spaces, all underpinned by the notions of community and collaboration.
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The collective knowledge and skills of coworkers remains the most under-utilized resource of the coworking movement. One method of tapping into the shared intelligence of a network of individuals is Plug, an event format similar to a Jelly meet-up but with a twist: participants are asked by their host to solve a challenge during their working session. Plug began in Amsterdam one year ago, and is now a weekly event that draws on a network of over 200 individuals.
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When I was a kid with a new bag full of brightly colored jellybeans, each gushing with its own delectable flavor, I would taste each separately, and then proceed to dump a handful in mouth to see what intermingling of flavors would form in my mouth. So the metaphor can be transferred to the idea of a 'Jelly', whose conceptual origin comes from a friendly group of independent workers getting together in a living room in Brooklyn who called the gathering a jelly, after the bowl of jellybeans in the middle of the working table.
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The second day of the Coworking Europe conference was a series of self-organized interactive barcamp-style sessions. More than 200 people participated in a rolling program of fascinating discussions about the future of coworking. Deskmag and Deskwanted facilitated the afternoon and took notes from the sessions. Here is a series of our observations from the day. One of our favourite moments was Alex Hillman explaining why coworking sometimes seems like a cult.
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In Spain, coworkers are reshaping their working lives and society at the same time. In China, coworking communities of over 6000 people have emerged. In Germany, big companies are turning to coworking to re-energize their staff. In the US, shared workspaces of over 500 people are appearing. The first day of the 2nd Coworking Europe Conference heard a comprehensive summary of developments not just from across the continent, but from around the world. The event is developing as the most important focus point for the global coworking community. Here's Deskmag's notepad report from the first day.
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Do coworkers choose their working situation, or are they forced to become freelancers through unemployment and outsourcing? Two key perspectives will be presented at the upcoming Coworking Europe Conference in November 2011. Today, we provide you with a more detailed view at the conference's three day program.
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September is full of events for coworking spaces, coworkers and people who want to get involved with coworking. One of those is the German Coworking Week, hosted by more than twenty coworking spaces. Britain is fast becoming the land of Jellies, with more than sixty of them held next month. Another good way for coworkers and coworking spaces to promote their ideas is via the Social Media Week.
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What innovative forces can coworking bring to the economy? Why don’t business centers and coworking spaces belong in the same category? And why should any of this interest the average coworker who just wants to connect to a community? The second Coworking Europe conference, to be held this November in Berlin, will provide plenty of time and space for exploring these questions and more.
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After the summer holidays are over, freelancers return to their coworking spaces with fresh ideas and new projects. Conveniently, there are also a number of events that provide an opportunity to test out new ideas, make new connections, and learn more about coworking.
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Work and leisure are not best friends. And yet they increasingly intermingle. In new self-determined modes of work, people can craft their own individual schedule. However, many freelancers don't want to work in their leisure time. Rather, they'd like their working hours to be more like their leisure hours.
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Companies should start cycling their employees through coworking spaces in order to increase their contacts and boost their creativity. That’s the suggestion from Peter Bihr, a digital consultant who is curating the social media track at next week’s Next conference in Berlin. Bihr hopes coworkers will attend Next to inform the influential audience about the benefits of collaborative workspaces.
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Coworking spaces are full of entrepreneurs and start-ups, most of them involved in web technology. Which is why they should be interested in NEXT, the tech industry meet-up taking place in Berlin in a month. The main theme of the conference is “Data Love". How can coworkers make use of data? Can coworking spaces themselves improve their operation by better use of their own data?
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The first U.S. Coworking Unconference in Austin is over. Despite the enormous variety of topics, discussions focused on three main areas. How to build and open a coworking space? What successful business models have emerged, and which is the best and most effective? And how does the future of coworking look? The event ended with many responses and plenty of happy faces at a rooftop party in the Austin night air.
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"If you put a lot of smart people with different skills in a room and shake them together, something new comes out." It sounds like a original concept for coworking, but it’s also the goal of Peter Bihr, organizer of the Cognitive Cities Conference, which will be held at the end of February in Berlin. The conference seeks to find an answer to the question – how are cities changing by new technologies? Coworking is also on the list of topics. Today Deskmag gives a first preview of what could be discussed.
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At the European Coworking conference last November, participants from the United States lamented that coworking space operators don't have same opportunities to convene in person in the U.S. The upcoming Coworking Unconference in Austin, Texas, aims to change that.
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The European Jelly Week has demonstrated that there is a rapidly growing coworking scene across Europe that is starting to network together in decentralized ways. Deskmag today features a guest post by the organizer of the Jelly Week, Anni Roolf.
