Coworking: Flash in the Pants Or The Future Of Business?

from Forbes Mag

The Dojo in New Orleans is a space anchored by WebDevrs, a mobile and web app development firm.

Gone are the days of working in a traditional office setting, where cubicles separate colleagues and the only social interactions occur around the water cooler.  The rise in coworking spaces around the world have left more people yearning for work environments that are collaborative, inspiring, and stimulating.  And, nothing sounds more uninspiring than working in a 6×6 foot box and convening around a water dispenser, as if it were an oracle that could explain the meaning of life, or, at the very least, prophesize the outcome of The Bachelor.

Coworking has witnessed a significant resurgence over the past few years with the increase of the contingent workers – professionals who work independently as freelancers, … Read More »

“Providence Effect” Can Most Definitely Benefit Coworking

by Robert Orr, Contributor @ The Bourse – New Haven’s Coworking Loft

The small scale incrementalism of the “Providence Effect” can most definitely benefit Coworking. The synergy of individuals getting stuff done in shared workspace, AKA coworking, is the happy bedfellow of the synergy of bustling small scale incremental urbanism. Bustle is the small scale stuff where Taleb’s messy antifragile world of disordered relationships flourish. Most definitely, it’s not the silver bullet “project” stuff born out of the cash and fossil energy flush 1980s that still captivates so many planners and economic development officials grasping today at lost causes.

So then what’s hot in bustling American urbanism today? Do a search and you’ll find hot cities pop up: Austin, Portland, Charlotte, Denver, Atlanta, Oklahoma City… Why is there never anything in New England?

…but not so fast cowboy. There’s something called the … Read More »

Economic Development – What are They Thinking?

by Robert Orr, Contributor @ The Bourse – New Haven’s Coworking Loft

Economic Development seems a total mystery when it comes to American cities. For those who bring enthusiasm and energy, fresh ideas, and hard cash to sorely “wanting” urban blight, but end up bashing their heads against inscrutable, intransigent and impregnable municipal policies that leave no choice but to walk away licking one’s wounds and scratching one’s head, Aaron Renn offers a poignant diagnosis in his blog Urbanophile. Renn answers the question:

Do Cities Really Want Economic Development?

by Aaron Renn

Ask any civic leader the number one thing they want for their town and “jobs,” economic development, is what they will likely tell you. Yet when you look at the incredibly poor economic development track record across America, despite various untold billions of public dollars pumped into projects ostensibly … Read More »

by Robert Orr, Contributor @ The Bourse – New Haven’s Coworking Loft

In these blogs, we have often drawn comparisons between coworking and the cities within which coworking is located. Here is another post inspired by the decline and regeneration of Rome, back from ashes. Rome’s experience as a city in decline for centuries, then sudden regeneration can offer lessons to modern American cities still struggling in decline on how they too can come back from ashes.

Back from Ashes – “Coworking” Glimmer in the Decline of Rome

One can draw parallels between the decline of American cities, such as New Haven (the largest city in Connecticut until 1935), brought on by the insidious cancer of automobiles in the 20th century to the decline of European cities, such as Rome, brought on by the insidious cancer of the Black Death in the 14th century. … Read More »

What do LA Freeways and the Lewis and Clark Expedition have in Common? Why do Science and Numbers Matter?

By Robert Orr, Master of Coworking New Haven @ The Bourse

On Los Angeles freeways as in the far reaches of the Louisiana Purchase “explorers” are quickly daunted by a sense that there’s no discernible order. All pathways and landmarks defy logic or categorization. But Angelenos and Lewis and Clark prescribe order from chaos through the use of numbers. For Angelenos it’s Freeway numbers, for Lewis and Clark it’s longitudes, latitudes, and temperatures.

But these numbers are not so much scientific determinants as they are circumscribing nomenclature. Just as aboriginals develop complex naming systems to organize the complexities of nature within their imaginations, as documented by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his The Savage Mind, the mapping numbers of freeways and river routes render instant visualization nomenclature … Read More »

The Puzzle of Journalism in the Age of Apps and Digital Screens

By Josh Allen, Contributor @ The Bourse – New Haven Coworking Loft

In our age of “Breaking News” about celebrities and a stream of second by second tweets about our world’s tragedies (one of which is perhaps 99% of the content of those tweets), quality longform journalism is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Stories such as “Falling Man” by Tom Junod, stand out and linger in your memory past all the white noise around us. Real, lasting stories, written by some of the most talented journalists give us a full-bodied, richly textured understanding of our world, so very far beyond what we gain from the major “news” websites, TV stations, and local papers. Increasingly our news sources are becoming “streamlined” and “optimized” for digital screens of every shape and size. As … Read More »

At The Bourse, Coworking Means Getting Work Done
by Josh Allen, Contributor @ The Bourse Coworking Loft – Coworking New Haven

A recent article from a blogger in Brussels, Belgium detailed the fascinating rise, success, but somewhat shocking, sudden recent closure in November of 2012 of a coworking space called The HUB Brussels. It’s part cautionary tale, part investigation into what exactly went wrong in a place where things seemed to be going right. The blogger, who goes by the name Anis, clearly details how management at The HUB Brussels focused its energy on creating a passionate community, but did not facilitate the necessary parameters to keep that community coming back and engaged with each other and the space. The space was noisy, distracting, and inhibitive of real work getting done, rather than centered around cultivating a highly focused and energetic … Read More »

Coworking = Less Bills = Happy You
Rapid Growth For Your Business is at The Bourse, New Haven’s Coworking Loft

By Robert Orr, Master of Coworking New Haven @ The Bourse

These days, where can you find office space where you never have to worry about all those hidden charges on top of “rent” that crash any business plan. You know, all the bills for electric, heat, janitorial services, coffee (and all the related refrigerators, sinks, grinders, espresso machines, stocking coffee/tea varieties, microwaves, etc.), common area management (CAM) fees, building insurance, faxing/data plan, wireless services, printing, toilet paper, staples, rubber bands, etc., etc., etc. They never seem to stop. All month. Every month. All year. And how about the responsibility of finishing a term lease if business heads south, not to mention the hefty deposit up front?

Going it alone can be risky AND expensive!

Wouldn’t … Read More »

What’s all the Fuss over New Urbanism?
Posted by Robert Orr, Master of Coworking New Haven @ The Bourse Coworking Loft

Frequent posts on The Bourse Coworking Loft blog address issues of urbanism since urbanism is considered a key component of Coworking. Coworking is based on the fact that enterprise and imagination find far greater productivity in the company of like-minded people, just like the success of enterprise and imagination of people living in the thickly settled environment of cities.

New Urbanism, as a movement, has been a 30-year unearthing of those qualities which contribute to successful urbanism. Successful urbanism is simply those places that make it really worth it to be human.

Although architects initiated the New Urbanist movement thirty years ago, and architects succeeded in attracting a host of other professions to the … Read More »

Computing Just Might Write the Closing Act on the Self-Esteem Era, AKA Diversity
by Robert Orr, Master of Coworking New Haven @ The Bourse Coworking Loft

Coworking feeds off diversity. By bringing together people with diverse interests, backgrounds and perspectives Coworking offers the opportunity to grow enterprise and imagination in ways that individuals working alone can not. Diversity breeds prosperity. But what is diversity all about?

There’s an IBM ad that pops up on TV from time to time entitled, “Smarter Marketing: Seeing customers as individuals” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SbVnMMozY4&list=PL5DC1B85E4FEA6504). The video is brief but poignant in driving home the shortcomings of demographics. Demographics are the indicators that steer marketers. Demographics tend to paint people in standard groups, such as income level, marital status, race, religion, education, etc.

The IBM video reveals the leap in useful indicators gleaned from switching from “geographics to analytics,” painting people as … Read More »