I rarely blog about my actual main daily activity, which is not colouring in or watching Netflix, despite the rumours, although I do enjoy some daily art.
For those who do not follow me on social media, won’t have noticed that the normal stream of dog, cat and food pictures, have been replaced with pictures of sunny volcanic islands in the Atlantic. I am at the Copass Camp in Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, for a 10 day working/living together event.
I was talking about this idea of coworking not being the space recently with Bernie Mitchell and a student studying at LSE, who is doing a dissertation on coworking, that coworking is not about the physical space, it is about the people and the community that you build.
I am coworking currently, thousands of miles from home at Hub Fuerteventura, with people who share a common connection, it is not about where you do the coworking, it is about the people and whether or not there are shared common values, goals, causes, that will keep that connection going either physically or virtually.
Some coworking has already turned into a commodity, just another desk space at a price, a real estate product/service, that can be marketed and sold in the same way that any product or service can be.
The real coworking in my opinion can be perfectly epitomised by Indy Hall run by Alex Hillman, this is a story of community and not the space. It has taken a long time, but then the best things are worth taking time to create.
What I have realised in my current business, is that the ‘why’ of what I do, which is all about creating a alternative world based on people and values, not just for a tiny few, but for all, had separated from the ‘what’ I do, run a coworking space.
So I have founded the New World Project, with a small and growing group of people, to do exactly what my ‘why’ is and that will be by coworking with many of them often not in the same physical space.
The community is the coworking, the physical space is where the people of that community physically connect.
For those who need a real estate solution to satisfy a need for desk space, then there are and will be plenty of solutions available, but I question whether that is really coworking and not just a remodelled serviced office.
Philip Dodson 