Shared work spaces a wave of the future

Posted on February 19, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |

“We’re seeing a clear trend to free agents and personal businesses, due to outsourcing, layoffs, and people looking for work-life balance or more work flexibility,” said King. “That’s going to result in more people working on their own either full or part time. Those folks need support. And what’s really cool about co-working is it solves that problem for a very modest amount of money.”

[From Shared work spaces a wave of the future]

I have a great arrangement with NewsGator, I predominately work in the Bay Area but have no fixed office by choice. The executive suite option was discussed when I first joined but I opted not to take it for two reasons.

I am pretty frugal when it comes to business expenses so paying $600+ a month for a suite just didn’t appeal to my fiscal sensibilities… I’d rather have that go to marketing and sales activities. Aside from finances, the primary reason I didn’t want this is that I enjoy my current arrangements far too much and don’t want to give them up.

My home office is well appointed and when the weather is nice I can open up the doors to my garden and it feels like I’m working outside. I have cable news running in the background, an industrial grade espresso machine, and most importantly, our neighborhood is very peaceful and quiet. This home office arrangement results in me driving a lot fewer miles providing I’m smart about scheduling my days, but having all of that I still crave the social interactions of being in an office environment.

At least a few days of the week you will find me at various offices around town, the places of business of friends and associates who are generous. Socialtext in Palo Alto is a prime example of this, Ross has always believed in community work spaces for anyone who wanted to drop in, use the network, and get some work done. Right next door to Socialtext is Echosign and when I ask Jason for a conference room to use he has been very accommodating. But my ace in the hole is a venture capital group up on Sand Hill Road that has been more than generous in extending “our casa is su casa” privileges to me. In fact, my business cards have their address on them.

I mentioned to Brian Reynard, founder of the Silicon Valley Executive Network, that we should pull together a list of offices that will extend guest privileges to the membership. The key to making this work is having a vetting process, as is the case with the SVEN membership, so that companies who open their doors to non-employees can rest assured that their spaces are not being abused and employees distracted.

This type of arrangement presents great collaboration opportunities as well. I know from my own experience that when an opportunity to help rises, I pitch in to help and I know for sure that other people in my situation do the same.

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