April 23rd, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
Mike Muller wrote up a great piece on the NYC Coworking scene in the Gotham Gazette. It covers both the global coworking movement and the local scene and does a great job introducing readers to what’s out there right now and how they can access it.
One fact worth noting is his research into how many people work from home. He cites a 2006 US Census survey which indicates that 4% of New Yorkers works from home.
Out of 3,597,547 workers aged 16 and over, that’s 143,901 people.
Wow.
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April 16th, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
We launched the New Work City site two weeks ago, and have had some fantastic response. Since many of the people who’ve signed up on the site weren’t yet familiar with the existing coworking community in NYC, we decided to have an event so everyone could get to know each other and so we could talk about our progress.
I also tried to make sure the discussion wasn’t one-way. It’s easy for me, or Sanford, or others to talk at length about coworking, but it’s important that everyone in the community be able to participate equally. There were a lot of new voices, and, they each had something important to contribute to the discussion.
As we went around the table, there was an obvious common thread: people are working at home, and it’s driving them crazy.
I noticed another pattern as well: coworking consistently attracts upbeat, self-motivated, interesting, intelligent people. And the enthusiasm among them is universal.
The main takeaway: the people who showed now all know each other a little better, and are now part of the community. And now they’re ready to help build New Work City and NYC’s larger coworking world.
We’re now hoping to have a critical mass in time to sign papers for June 1st. We’ll soon have letters of commitment drafted, so we can have a tangible list of how many people are seriously committed to joining and supporting our space. Starting with that, we can have a much better expectation of when we’ve hit our critical mass (by our current estimates, we’d need the equivalent of 21 full-time commitments to be able to move into the Balcony space– this can be broken down into different levels of membership, but it’s our basic target).
We’re off to a great start, but need to continue to get the word out to more people who’d be interested in this space. So if you know someone who you think might be interested, let them know!
More good things are in store for both CooBric and NWC. Exciting times!
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April 12th, 2008 by Sanford Dickert
As you know, a few of us (led by Tony) have been working hard to close on a space in NYC for coworking - and we have enjoyed some incredibly positive responses in the last two weeks that have helped us craft a working proposition for New Work City (things to come). In this search, a number of hard lessons have come to pass that I think should be considered in terms of facts and figures:
- Back in April of 2007, Darren Herman announced his desire to make a similar thing to our dream, and 45 days later realized the challenges that accompany this task and decided to pass on the idea.
In a separate conversation, Darren shared with me his challenges - especially the need to have a tight management on costs and a strong operational group to ensure delivery of the service and space.
But on top of it all, the challenge of running a space like his (and very similar to NWC) is a near-total dedication of core people to deliver 24/7/365. This is not a startup or a restaurant or some company that you might be able to turn off for the holidays - this is a social good, a service that often requires non-stop attention to the needs of the community.
Darren has been a terrific source of information and has helped us move forward through some interesting challenges.
- Recently, NYSIA closed its incubator amid difficulties getting continued of government funding to run the space.
In talks with Angelina Jao, there were many lessons that were captured in the efforts to build the Incubator - instructively, events that brought community members together into a common space.
I believe some of the challenges NYSIA had had to do with the cost of the space (55 Broad is a Class A building with excellent services) and a very high square-foot cost structure (services layered on top of the basic real-estate cost).
But, as we learned, another challenge was that NYSIA was more in line with a full-service office space, not necessarily a community space - like the one Darren was creating and NWC has our eyes on.
- Over a week ago, I attended the NY-Israel Tech Meetup at Blank-Rome (organized by Yaron Samid from Pando) where I luckily met Cheni Yerushalmi, one of the founders of Sunshine Suites.
Instead of being competitive about his offering or threatened by our vision, Cheni has been incredibly forthcoming and we have had a couple of meetings where we have discussed his vision and our vision of NWC and the challenges faced.Cheni brought home (for me in particular) the importance of understanding the challenges that exist in this cost structure and the need for slavish dedication to operational costs and services for an enterprise like Sunshine.
And while I may not share in Cheni’s aesthetic style for some of the common areas, he has had six years of on-the-job training which has brought to light a number of constraints that are not often thought of when an endeavor like coworking is undertaken and desires to expand. While I may not personally like the Suite structure that Cheni has built, I do see the benefit and vision that he has and completely recommend it for people who connect with it.
- We also met with John McGann from Nutopia and discussed a number of the lessons he has learned from building from his original vision back in the late 90s.
John has been incredibly generous with his insights and thoughts and helped us flesh out the finances for the space and given us a real-life point of view of the associated costs and concerns that await any space such as this.
My personal favorite kernel of truth came from a simple analogy he presented us - how people tend to work. His model was in terms of how people tend to study is essentially how people tend to work - they either:
- study by themselves - in their dorm room, in a cubicle or their research office
- study in a controlled community environment - quiet library or study room
- study in a more dynamic community environment - coffee shop or external study hall
When looking at the options in the marketspace, there are lots of the first (MicroOffice, TechSpace, Sunshine Suites), a couple of the second (paragraphNY) and a perceived availability of the latter (Starbucks, coffee shops in general).
But Nutopia, Darren’s vision and NWC are sorely missing in the marketspace which is more closely aligned as a mixing of the three.
- David Rose is launching a space at Rose Tech Ventures for $700 a desk (outside of SparkSpace incubator, IMHU), which is with the intent of cultivating serious entrepreneurs in a space where others can share.
In David’s situation, he has a direct benefit to the space - access to entrepreneurs who can cross-pollinate and a built-in marketing savings by having a group of NY Tech Ventures providing word-of-mouth marketing and foot traffic for potential deal flow for David and Rose Tech Ventures.
All of this reporting is meant to give you an insight into our efforts on moving forward with NWC and sharing with you - our community. Tony spends about half of his days working on this effort, with the intent of making it happen. We have been investigating options that help reduce our risk and merge our vision with symbiotic offerings as well.
At present, we have at least two organizations that are talking with us about a co-sharing of a community space, and one organization has expressed interest in sponsoring a “incubator”-like space if we can offer solid details on how and why. (more…)
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April 2nd, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
For the past few weeks, several of us have been working hard at efforts to establish a dedicated coworking space. There’s been a lot of interest, and we’ve got a lot of people and small businesses who are eager to get a space established.
These efforts now have a name. That name is New Work City.
New Work City is the name of the new coworking space we are putting together. While there is a strong level of interest right now, we will need more interest before the space can move forward. Once we hit the tipping point, we’ll be in a position to establish the space!
We’re hoping to move very quickly, in part because several of our members need to move their businesses very soon– and they can’t wait to get the space open!
So if you’re interested, add your name to our Membership Interest form.
We are also soliciting sponsorships. Sponsoring our space will be a fantastic way to show support for entrepreneurship in New York, and will help connect you with the vibrant NY independent and entrepreneurial community. You can list your interest for sponsorship here.
I’m really excited about all of this and especially about the enthusiasm of the early responses. Much more soon.
Also, it should be noted that CooBric will continue to run and grow– we’re continuing to build the community at Gramstand, which has grown nicely lately, and we look forward to both CooBric and New Work City growing and doing more awesome things together in the future.
These are exciting times!
Tony
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March 31st, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
While you can come cowork at Gramstand any day of the week, we thought it would be helpful to designate special days when you can count on someone being there who’s working on something specific.
Matt Cooperrider, a CooBric’er who’s helping an initiative to get a .nyc top level domain created, is kicking off this idea with “Grassroots Tuesday”. He’ll be there on Tuesdays working on his projects, and encouraging other people with similar interests to join him.
To help facilitate this, we’re also adding a Twitter account to keep up to date. Follow @CooBric on Twitter or check the wiki for details.
If you’d like to do something similar, email me (tony at coobric dot com) and we’ll hook you up.
Are you coming to Gramstand regularly already? What are you working on? What kinds of people would you like to work alongside?
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March 15th, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
Been waiting to check out the space? Come by this Thursday and hang out!
Bring your laptop and a friendly disposition. It’ll be fun. There’ll be grilled cheese.
Then we’ll head over to Lunasa for TechDrinks at 5:00 to celebrate a day well done!
RSVP for Coworking
RSVP for TechDrinks
See you there!
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March 14th, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
I just returned from SXSW, where I met some of the most prominent leaders of the coworking movement from all over the country.
I only had to spend a few moments with these folks to arrive at a powerful realization: Coworking is for real. It’s not simply a trend or a freelancer’s hobby; it is in fact part of a larger shift in the very way we work and live.
As the use of the internet becomes more widespread and as technology continues to improve, we find ourselves increasingly connected. More and more of the work that we do is done electronically, and less and less work requires actual face-to-face interaction.
If you didn’t have to drag yourself into an office to do your work, would you do it? You might likely not. But after working from home for two years now, I can say this: You don’t want to sit at home every day either.
Human beings are explorers. We’re also social beings. We want to get up and move around every day and find out what other humans are doing. If technology gives us the choice of where to do our work, we will seek out the places that accommodate our natural needs.
This is where coworking comes in. The location-independent worker needs places to go to do their work, where they can show up when they want and meet new people and friends.
At the Hotel San Jose in Austin, on Friday, I stood in a 50+ strong crowd of people, many of whom are running or starting spaces and communities all over the country (not just USA, either: Canada and France came too!), and the rest people interested and involved in the cause.
Speaking to these people, it’s clear that I was not in the company of any ordinary people—these people were largely successful, intelligent, experienced entrepreneurs, and they believe that they are onto something. The growth of interest in coworking has been palpable, and it continues to expand rapidly.
When my good friend and Indy Hall founder Alex Hillman and I parted ways last night, he left me with an incredible statement: “When I came to SXSW last year, I left with the goal of bringing coworking to Philly. This year, I want to bring coworking to the whole world.”
Count me in for that. I’ll start with New York 
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March 13th, 2008 by Sanford Dickert
 So, CooBric has been a bit quiet the past couple of weeks and we have been dutifully working on a couple of efforts. With Tony’s hard work, and connections with other interested parties, we have been strolling about looking a spaces and places for the next physical location for CooBric.
What does this mean? It means that we are interested in hearing what you are interested in doing for the next space. What is your vision of the next “coworking space”? With experiences in Cafe Fuego, Gramstand and House 2.0 - and chatting with other coworking types (ask Tony about his trip to SXSW), we are getting closer to making it a reality.
So, can you tell us what you’d like to see at a coworking space? Put it here on the blog so we (and others) can see. Would you like:
- a sofa or two
- a coffee maker, coffee shop inside, a restaurant
- open space or cubicles
- music for the room, or simply wifi for all
We are looking for people who are interested in being “anchor tenants” - individuals and organizations that are interested in sharing the risk of being charter members in the space. If you are interested, please email Tony (tony AT coobric….you know).
Looking forward to passing along some great news in the future.
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March 5th, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
Hi there, long time no talk! I missed you, for real.
Lots of cool things happening, the coworking movement is brewing and much is to be done.
More on that soon. For now, I present:
TechDrinks IV: A New Hope
Same deal as always: a happy hour for the NY Tech community… no presentations, no pitches, just cheap drinks, cheap & delicious food, great service and good company.
Here’s the deets:
Date: Thursday, 3/20
Time: 5pm - 9pm
Location: Lunasa Bar, 126 1st Ave @ St. Mark’s Place
RSVP: Meetup & Facebook
See you there!
Tony
(Edit: Renamed the event to “A New Hope” because that’s so much nicer
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February 7th, 2008 by Tony Bacigalupo
For the last 6 months or so, I’ve been talking to a lot of you fine people about coworking and NY Tech and where it’s all going. And you’ve all been really awesome and have had a lot to say about it.
I bought 250 business cards for CooBric around the end of September, and they’re pretty much all gone now. That means I’ve talked to at least that many of you at one point or another.
And I have to say, after handing out 250 business cards, I am amazed at what I’ve seen. NYC has a fantastic tech community, filled with some really exciting and inspirational people.
And if there’s one thing all of these people have agreed on, it’s this: a Manhattan coworking space and tech community center would be a great thing to have, both for individuals and for Silicon Alley as a whole.
Here’s the catch. It’s this money thing. Apparently, renting commercial space Manhattan requires buckets of it. Who knew, right?
So I sat down and crunched the numbers, and I was able to come up with a model that I believe will work. With just the right balance of (relatively) inexpensive space and carefully balanced membership rates, a coworking space can be sustainable in Manhattan*.
Nifty, right? Let’s sign a lease now, right? Not quite so simple, young Padawan**. First we need to quantitatively define the level of interest to determine the true viability of such a space. I think there’s sufficient interest, based on my personal interactions with people, but we need to gather those names together on one big list to prove it’s the case.
The next step is to create a name and a brand for the place and get a teaser site going to collect interest. That’s what I want you to help me with right now.
Head over to a special Bricabox designed for choosing a name for this space and think up the awesomest name you can, or choose from the existing awesome names. Things will move rather quickly from there.
We’re all in this together. Building a space such as this one is a huge undertaking, and it will only succeed because you want it to. Thanks to all of you for your continued support and enthusiasm.
Discussion continues on our Google Group!
* There are already a few short-term office spaces in Manhattan that may, to varying degrees, qualify as coworking spaces, depending on how you define it. I’m talking about something in the vein of Citizen Space and Indy Hall and others like them; that’s what we haven’t really seen yet.
** I made a Star Wars reference. Sorry. If you prefer Long Ranger references, you can substitute “Kemo Sabe”.
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