Location, Location, Location

When I was doing my original business market research for CCC I discovered that place is very important. This is the case for most physical businesses with public space. (ex. retail) Experienced business people express this with the refrain, “Location, Location, Location”

As I got into the day to day of running a coworking space the assumption about where our space is located seemed to be validated. I believe that being close to where people live, shop, and play is essential. But can coworking spaces exist in other places?

This is why I created the following survey. If you work at a Coworking space I’d really appreciate it if you could take it. The results are located here. You can even download the data and use it how you want.

I feel its essential we have big numbers of survey participants to validate or disprove this assumption. Once we’ve made it over two hundred participants I’ll elaborate more on why I think this is important.

Thanks!

The Journey to Build a Coworking Space

More specifically its a journey to build a sustainable coworking space. By sustainable I mean it should financially support itself and its operator (me) plus employees. I’m doing the best I can to document this unique journey. Mostly on the biz blog at carrborocoworking.com.

So far I’ve recorded five videos. Hope to do more. You can watch them here carrborocoworking.com/category/topic/video

This one is the latest.

Refresh the Triangle at Carrboro Creative Coworking

Thursday, Oct 23, 2008 from 6:30pm to 8pm Carrboro Creative Coworking will be hosting Refresh the Triangle. This is a great meetup that I’ve been to several times. (Not nearly as often as I’d like though.) Each time I’ve learned something valuable and met great people. We’ll have free pizza and drinks too.

Our topic is Unearthed Arcana for Web People. From the Refresh website:

Clinton Nixon, senior developer at Viget Labs, will present and facilitate this talk about how to avoid trivial, repetitive tasks and increase your productivity with your computer. We’ll cover both software you already have, and free/cheap software you might not. If you’ve got a tip of your own, bring it! We’ll have some free time to share at the end.

Check out all our events on our Google Calendar. Many more on the way!

Carrboro Coworking is moving along

Yesterday I signed a lease for office space in downtown Carrboro! After almost two years of work its FINALLY starting to happen. But this is only the beginning. So much more to do before we open. So much to do to run the space.

Last night I shared with friends and supporters the news.

Via Twitter
I signed a commercial office lease today for @carrborocowork WOOT!

Via the Carrboro Coworking Google Group and Facebook

Right now I’m sending my PR release to as many media folks as I can. Please forward this to people you know. CARRBORO CREATIVE COWORKING SIGNS THE DOTTED LINE PDF

To top it off I recorded a video last night. Its the first one in a series that will document the journey to create a coworking space. Should be a interesting roller coaster.

Please consider purchasing a seat, desk, or office at Carrboro Coworking now. I desperately need to pre-sell as many as I can. Contact me for more information. Lots of info on the biz website.

Carrboro Coworking gets a new Website

My business Carrboro Creative Coworking is about to pick up speed. Back in June the Board of Alderman at the Town of Carrboro approved a loan. Now we’re at the lease negotiation stage. Very soon I’ll be announcing a location. Its been a long journey. Almost two years ago I started this business in earnest. Ahead is the hard work setting up the space.

Yesterday I launched a new website that will be the online home to Carrboro Creative Coworking. It’s where I will reveal the location of the space, share rates of various coworker packages, blog about the business, accept your information if you’re interested in using the space, answer your questions, and much more.

Another feature of this site will be weekly video updates. I’m going to try and put up a short video once a week. (Its a true testament of how easy and quick that is that I’ll have the time to do such a thing.) It’ll start off as a interview, ala web cam style, of me telling you where I’m at.

CCC also has a twitter account, a Facebook page, and a Google Group. Three great ways to keep up with this journey that is a small business coworking space.

More Coworking at Our House

For a few months now we’ve had a standing offer for people to drop by our house on Thursdays and cowork. A few people came by and hung out. Had some great conversations. But we’d love to have even more people over.

So next week we’re going to give it a try on Monday, April 21. If you’d like to get some work done in a quite space with free wifi, coffee, and snacks let me know. (That link is to my contact form.) I’ll send you directions. BTW – we have two nice cats.

The drive to cowork on Monday was an email from Robert who is from out of town and checking out the Triangle as a place to live. Lets how him how cool our tech community is.

Food for thought: Several people have sent me this link to a Web Worker Daily blog post called Coworking Evolved. Its some good examples of creative work ideas and experiments. Very cool stuff. It also reminds me how nimble I must be as a coworking business person in the future to continue to provide a valuable service.