Co-Working: Please Build This Space... | Hacker News Reader

Co-Working: Please Build This Space...

roblong.posterous.com

20 pointsanguslong14 comments

Are his kids really that loud? Why doesn't sound proof his office and discipline his kids for being too noisy. (I'm sure this would please his neighbours as well).

My parents would just banish us outside for the afternoon if we got noisy.

I was on a sales call once when my neighbor's kid burst into my house and started shouting in Bengali.

I managed to hit the phone's mute button while furiously gesturing at him to be quiet.

Because I don't speak Bengali, I had no idea what he wanted. I had no idea how he got into my house either. He stopped shouting, looked at me and scampered out the front door.

Turns out he was looking for his sister, who was playing with my kids, who I had banished from the house for being too loud.

Yeah, your kids should be quite and respectful... but in the real world sometimes that isn't going to happen because, well, they're kids. It just takes one time to make you feel a little uneasy about being on the phone during an important conference call.

I have three of them and luckily I don't need to be on the phone much, but my ultimate plan is to build a detached home office. Not a solution for everyone, but if you have the land and skills you can do it yourself with very little cost when you factor the value it adds to your home.

This article also points out a couple other bonuses, mainly that it gives you a physical divide between home and work, which I think is a hard problem for anyone that works at home.

http://shedblog.historicshed.com/2008/12/perfect-home-office...

Sound proofing is a possibility, but disciplining his kids for being too noisy? Having four kids myself, I'm busting up laughing picturing them sitting quietly around a table doing 'quiet things.'

Kids need to make noise - it's good for their development.

I feel like this idea is best executed with a co-op instead of a profit model. That's honestly how I feel about most co-working spaces. I don't really want to work somewhere where I don't have a say in who's there (if I'm paying the rent).. unless it's an 'executive suite'

I can tell you that what makes coworking magical is it's ability to connect people and create friendships that would otherwise not happen.

Coworking's weakness is the landlord business model is extremely low margin. In the suggested model in the article, $400 per member X 20 members = $8,000 per month. Now consider the rent of a warehouse downtown, utilities, paying someone to run the place, and buildout. It's a quick way to go out of business.

Now, if the coworking space is run as a loss leader for another business, that's another story.

At Conjunctured our other business is happy hours at Rio Rita's. We haven't found out how to make that profitable yet, but we're gonna' keep trying by god! :p

-Conjunctured Co-Founder

There's a great space in Santa Monica called CoLoft (http://www.coloft.com) that sounds like exactly what you want. Startup weekend was just hosted here this past Saturday.

If anyone is in the area stop by; I've been working here for around 3 weeks and it's been great. Definitely a lot more productive than at home, and the environment, people, and networking is great. Has two conference rooms, a "kitchen area", free organic coffee...

I love the idea, but I'd be surprised if nice space like that can be built in Austin, for $300-$400/month, with room for profit.

Do you have a garage? (Or, could you build another?)

Amortizing your monthly allowance, you could put some cash into the garage, and you're improving something you own.

Room for profit is the key. Comments from local folks in-the-know seem to say this has been investigated here in the ATX, and there isn't room for profit.

Alas, your garage idea might be the next step. (maybe a mobile geek-hut in the garage, with solatubes for a bit of natural light?)... hmmm

We run into the same issues here in Chicago. Rent is so high that having a co-working space is just as expensive as leasing your own office--the ones that are cheap aren't much better than working from a home office.

I really think these spaces need to be non-profit and supported by the workers that use it. If you insert a for-profit entity, it just doesn't work...

I'm not sure it can be built here either. Conjunctured is thriving on the Eastside doing co-working - but I think it's a labor of love.

The other spaces in town that are similar aren't going to make it I'm afraid.

I think the only way to make the economics work is to have founder also own the space, removing the layers of leasing agent and building owner from the equation.

This looks like the same idea as the hub:

http://kingscross.the-hub.net

It's a little more expensive, but that's London for you...

The only thing that makes the coworking model work is the community ties. That's also what makes it better than executive suites.

This guy just wants a cave, but a cave outside of his home.

That's not coworking, that's desk rentals.

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