Like anything in business, coworking is evolving. Here’s where coworking stands today, and it’s looking good:

Definition. Wikipedia’s definition has gone from a cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents to
a style of work which involves a shared working environment; the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values, and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people

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First there was coworking without a space, aka coffeehouses with wi-fi. Then there were coworking spaces. Then came coworking spaces with general themes, like Green Spaces in Brookyln, NY. Next up in that evolution? Coworking with a specific social purpose.

One of the best grassroots examples is mission*social (pictured above) in San Francisco’s SoMa district, a large loft renting ‘social enterprise space’ at $2/s.f. and ‘cowork space’ at $300/mo. What’s unique is that a tech company, …

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Today’s ‘Crowdsourced placemaking in progress’: Creative coworking space is brought to you by the people behind the Artisphere, a 55,000 s.f. ‘arts space for everyone’ located in Rosslyn, Arlington County, Virginia. Think ‘arts center on steroids.‘

Within the Artisphere, the CoZone (future crowdsourcing website coming soon) will be a smallish but rather prolific coworking space that will be crowdsourced. The opening, along with the Artisphere, is scheduled for 10/10/10 (clever marketing …

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We all know the economy needs jobs. Not industrial economy jobs, which we’re transitioning away from, but knowledge economy jobs. But where did the Apples, Microsofts and HPs that fuel today’s economy come from? That’s right, startups.

Our entry Gazelles + Economic Gardening = Prosperity highlighted this very trend back in 2003. In 2007, we posted how every neighborhood needs a coworking space. Today we’re in a jobs crisis. The time is right to converge these two trends.

First, Blake

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New Orleans is attracting scores of entrepreneurs and small businesses, and there hasn’t been a better time to be a creative. “There has never been a better time in Louisiana for the creative class to thrive,” says state lieutenant governor, Mitchell J. Landrieu. Why such a bold statement?

First of all, the evidence.
- New Orleans’ metro area gained 100,000 nonfarm, post-Katrina jobs from October 2005 to June 2009, and by 2016 is expected to grow 24% from 2006 levels to 98.8% of

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Coworking “is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.“ This Urban Omnibus article Work and the Open Source City takes a contemporary look at coworking today. The two main types that are emerging…

The permanent coworking space - You can find a list here of the hundreds of permanent coworking sites around the world, typically run

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So here’s a scene… five fellow entrepreneurs having a spontaneous coworking session at someone’s home, and I decide to use the group to crowdsource the blog entry for today - here’s the result…

How crowdsourcing created a coworking opportunity in Arlington, Virginia.

Back in November 2008, I gave a presentation of the content on this site to a group of government and business leaders in Arlington (Leadership Arlington), which motivated an initiative to launch a crowdsourcing community of

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There’s no question coworking spaces are the place to work for independent creatives, but can it be a profitable business? The question isn’t raised in terms of how to make money off of independent creatives, but rather how to sustain a viable supply for the demand. As it stands, there still seems to be more free agents who are dissatisfied with working at home than there are coworking spaces to accommodate them, thus the popularity of coffeehouses during the day.

The general consensus among

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There’s no question what the first green business incubator is - it’s the Environmental Business Cluster in San Jose in 1994, christened by then Vice President Al Gore and still going strong. However, as you can see by its website (and the fact it started in a suburban office park with cubicles, though now located downtown), it’s not a coworking site. Btw, check out its graduate list of companies - I helped found the firm called Global Opportunity Villages in that incubator - a bit too

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Women make up a majority of those who start their own businesses, so it was a matter of time before that trend intersected with the coworking movement. It also helps to know that top women business builders are looking for creative and affordable environs.

Thus, we have In Good Company (IGC), an affordable/high-value coworking space in the creative capital of Manhattan (Flatiron district) - for women only. It has all the amenities you’d expect in a coworking site, like a conference room, open

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a video explaining what coworking means to creatives? There really wasn’t any until this one came along, produced by none other than the pioneers of one of the first coworking sites in the country, the Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, Washington DC.

Founded in 2001, the ‘Lab’ is peaking right now with a full house of entrepreneurs who rent workspaces full time and part time. They’re also one of the first to establish an online social network to

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The previous entry profiled the Architect magazine story, The Next Coffeehouse, and there’s one that truly stood out to me as something that a creative would say, “You know, I’d actually really want to work there.“

Designed by STUDIOS Architecture, their Modular Community Kitchen concept is the spatial inverse of the piazza, with a 60’ communal table serving as the ‘town square’. Greg Keffer, principal, provided some insight in this CoolTown interview:

Do you think the market is ready for

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Every major city nowadays has a coworking space, but what about a coworking district? That’s the plan with the nascent Adams Morgan Works program.

With 30 million people and counting working at home as we transition to a knowledge-based economy, coffeehouses and coworking sites are becoming increasingly popular, most of which thrive in natural cultural districts. Thus in Adams Morgan, Washington DC’s preeminent natural cultural district, a movement is underway to transform a rather dead day

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Not only are coworking spaces (shared open-plan entrepreneurial workplaces) fast becoming a standard office model in every city, but they’re starting to multiply.

San Francisco has at least four, one of the most recent being the largish (4500 s.f.) downtown Sandbox Suites (pictured above). Meanwhile, Seattle has several, the latest being GiraffeLabs (pictured below).

That doesn’t mean quantity trumps quality, as a single coworking space found out the hard way in the small town of Wassau, WI

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You’ve heard of live-work units where owners either live about their workplace or have extra room to work in their living space. However, how about a live-cowork space? That’s the Hat Factory in San Francisco.

In the evenings the Hat Factory (word on the street was that a former tenant made hats there) is home to three tech-oriented workers, but during business hours they open it up to about seven other untethered workers. As you can see, it has a much more lived-in feel than most coworking

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If you’re looking for an affordable, creative place to work or hang out, you’re in luck if you live in Pittsburgh, or more precisely, Bellevue, Pennsylvania, 4.5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. That’s where you’ll find the Creative Treehouse; a 7500 s.f. arts-oriented coworking space.  The key ingredients?  An inexpensive lease in a developing neighborhood.

The membership-structured (starting at a mere $25/month) space features:
- A creative service center that will allow businesses to

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Of course a coworking site in Paris would have a cafe. Strangely enough, it’s one of the only coworking sites to include one, especially given the official definition of coworking as a “cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.“

La Cantine opened January 30, 2008, with 2200 square feet dedicated to three spaces:

- a café and coffee bar for meet-ups, information, exhibitions and project testing;
- a collaborative space for project development (shared

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Creatives, free agents, entrepreneurs and mobile knowledge workers may be driving the economy, but they aren’t going to be driving to work. They prefer avoiding isolation at home, but there are only so many coffeehouses, and even fewer coworking sites.

One growing source of spontaneous workplaces are anchored coworking sites - coworking sites provided by established companies who not only have extra space, but enjoy reserving it for untethered creatives. PSFK: Trends and Inspiration profiles

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So where do the creatives in Seattle go to cowork when all the other options seem less than fabulous?

As of November 1st, many of them are heading over to Office Nomads, a 5000 s.f., 40-member much-larger-than-usual shared workplace in Capitol Hill, Seattle’s walkable, diverse counterculture mecca. Considering there are 20 million ‘personal businesses’ in the U.S., they’re increasingly not alone in their quest.

Founded by young entrepreneurs Jacob Sayles and Susan Evans, Nomads features:
-

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Maybe these refrains from Seattle entrepreneurs regarding office space, quoted in sound familiar…

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CooperBricolage (CooBric) is a coworking site company without a coworking site. They’re working on finding one, they say, but in the meantime they’re in the same dilemma as a lot of other entrepreneurs, free agents and home-workers who want a shared workplace to share ideas and conversation, but don’t have a common place to meet.

So CooBric found a cafe to serve as their interim coworking site, at Gramstand in Manhattan. Of course, it has to meet the coworking criteria: Progressive

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A quick refresher on what coworking is: “the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.“

As this article on the Coworking Blog reveals, profitability is a common coworking space challenge. The primary reason? Coworkers still find it more individually profitable to do business at the coffeehouse - it’s free with no commitments.

So

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You may be among the millions of people who wish their workplace was a little more, shall we say, inspiring. Well, if you want an example of what such an office could look like, you may want to visit eOffice in London. Click here for a larger photo.

First of all, it’s in the heart of Soho (see pic on our About page), the media hub of London and a magnet for cool cafes, bars and coffeehouses, creatives and entrepreneurs. What good is a an inspired workplace if it’s in the middle of an

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Part of Starbuck’s loyal following consists of entrepreneurs seeking creative places to work outside of the home, where the coffeehouse with wi-fi makes a pretty good alternative. After all, the CEO of Starbucks will tell you, “We’re not a coffee company, we’re a real estate company.“

At last there’s something better.  It’s called coworking, “the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can

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While The Work Factory, presented yesterday, is a model for the creative class workplace, how it was established is just as representative of its role in a progressive economy. Once again, in the words of co-founder Ted Randler:

“Last year Work Magazine (Richmond, VA’s slick biz dev mag) and C3 (profiled here) held a business conference call, “What’s the Big Idea?“ We brought together corporate executives, designers, academics and media folks to spend the day in seminars and sessions dealing

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