If you’re reading this blog post then you probably already know the story. In an nutshell, we opened our first space in Lowertown St. Paul in January 2010. Then, last July, we opened a space in Minneapolis, on the trading floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

Looking back, it would have been easier two years ago to open a greasy spoon or a coffee shop, something for which people already had a demonstrated need. But in fact very few people in the Twin Cities woke up on the morning of 1/4/10 with a coworking need. That’s to say that CoCo and The 3rd Place (which opened on the same day) had to create the local market coworking. From day one, we had to do a lot to prime the pump, from meetups to breakfasts, speakers – you name it we tried it. It didn’t help that construction on the Central Corridor light rail began right in front of our building – you guessed it – on 1/4/10.

Fortunately, optimism prevailed. And so did the patience of our early members, who endured ear- and bone-shattering construction without so much as a wince. We clearly benefited in those early days from the good will of so many of our friends, who were strong vocal supporters. Seriously, without the help of so many people, who talked us up, let us come and speak at events, agreed to bring their events to our humble space, helped us brainstorm new ideas – actually put in their hard-earned shekels to become members! – I’d be writing about an interesting experiment that didn’t quite take off.

But take off it has. Today the CoCo community is bustling, with a membership in the hundreds, and it continues to grow every day. If the greatest challenge in 2010 was just getting people to join, today it’s making sure that the CoCo experience remains meaningful for whomever chooses to join. More on that later.

Meanwhile, and at the risk of accidentally forgetting someone, I want to thank some people in particular for their incredible support over the last couple years.

• Jeff Heegaard (one of our partners), who took the leap of faith that got the ball rolling.
• Phil Wilson and Brian Stemmler – Whose “What is Coworking?” video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZf6NoLOuQ0 was not only funny but really helped us kick off the concept with a punch.
• Mykl Roventine, who brought the first SMBMSP tweet up to CoCo.
• Robert Speer, who signed up on the spot for our first-ever campsite.
• Ernest Grumbles, who bought the first membership – as a symbolic show of support.
• Peter Fleck, Gary Leatherman and Toby Cryns, who have shown themselves to be true coworkers to the core.
• Kyia Downing, who magically conjured up the CoCo name and convinced us to run with it. We’re so glad we followed her advice.
• Miles Mercer of the City of Minneapolis, who saw the potential of the Grain Exchange before we ever did.
• Cem and Casey of Project Skyway, who have been truly great partners.

So, what have we learned in two years?

• Coworking is not about office space - Let’s face it, a room with a bunch of people staring into laptops is not particularly interesting or inspiring. If that’s all there was to this coworking thing, we’d have lost interest long ago. We learned pretty quickly after opening that there was something special going on. We saw people lower their barriers, step out of their social comfort zones and develop meaningful bonds with complete strangers. As one member, a suburbanite who had been working from home prior to becoming a member, said, “this place has changed my life.”
• Coworking is a lousy business model - Only a few weeks into this venture, we knew that there was no way we were going to pay our mortgages and put our kids through school on the backs of a few freelancers. The basic coworking model, or at least as we saw it being executed at other spaces, looked like a break-even venture at best. That forced us to get creative and ask ourselves, who else could benefit (and pay) for the privilege of participating in a creative, collaborative community? That also led us to look beyond individual members and open the community to startups and small businesses and eventually to Project Skyway. We are still asking ourselves, “who else can we invite to this party?”
• Coworking is the beginning of something huge - If the predictions are right, there will be more and more independent workers and entrepreneurs in the coming years. This new generation of independent, entrepreneurial workers have a different set of needs than your average employee-a-day employee and they need a whole support ecosystem that doesn’t yet exist. It seems to us that there’s a great opportunity here!

So, with a little bit of experience under our belts, we’re heading into Year Three with some focus and a game plan: (Please, read on only if you’re a member or a coworking business enthusiast.)

Focusing on the community
As fast as is possible with just three staffers, we’re making all sorts of refinements that have to do with focusing our efforts on reinforcing two things: Members and Community. We want to cram as much value as possible into a membership and also strengthen the CoCo community (the two are related but not necessarily the same thing). So, for example…

• We are no longer renting our event space to people from outside the community. It’s way more work than we anticipated. But more importantly, it’s a distraction from our core purpose. Instead, we are going to create a pool of sponsorship dollars that allows us to say yet to events, meetups and user groups that are member-generated, such as Joseph Rueter’s recent Maker Bot meetup or Garrio Harrison’s WorkLab — in other words, innovative stuff that members feel passionate about. We’ll occasionally host larger cocktail parties that support the larger tech, entrepreneurial and creative communities – but only if they are events that have a strong benefit to our members.
• We’re hiring a host for St. Paul. This has been long overdue.
• In looking at our membership patterns, we realized that people just love the dedicated desk (“single campsite”) option. Just last month, we added 13 more dedicated desks in both locations. And this weekend, we’ll take delivery on 25 additional dedicated desks.
• In Minneapolis, we’re going to rearrange some furniture. What has been our event space in the back of the room will now be used for dedicated desks and focused (read: quiet) coworking. We’ll move the Surly (our meeting tent), the Campfire meeting settings and some new, moveable coworking tables onto what’s currently the coworking deck. This area will be dedicated to more “social” (read: talkative) coworking and will be the place where we hold meetups, user groups, etc.
• Later this year, we will launch an educational program that delivers unique, collaborative classes and workshops in the areas of technology, creative arts, business and personal growth.

Robotic hosts and other forms of automation
Honestly, we had no idea how much work is involved keeping track of things like payments, security, membership usage, room booking, network access, etc. Our goal is to automate or systematize whatever possible, so we can focus our best hours on members and the community.

Additional locations
This can happen only after we’ve gotten our operational ducks in a row. Only then, we’d like to open additional locations in some of the suburbs, with the goal of serving suburban coworkers and giving all members more options in where they work, meet and socialize.

We may be open to doing this through some kind of franchise approach. Or perhaps we’ll call it a “co-franchise” – not to be cute, but because the word “franchise” brings to mind soulless hotels and fast food joints, and we’re not interested in having soulless locations anywhere. Quite the contrary, we want every CoCo location to be anchored by an “owner” wants to nurture the local community as much as we do.

So, what do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this wild ride. Have you had any noteworthy experiences at CoCo? Do you see any opportunities we’re missing? Do you have any words of advice?

WCCO reporter Natalie Kane visited CoCo Minneapolis in October and produced a splendid piece about coworking at CoCo. She interviewed some of our members, including Valerie Wilcox-Esqueda and Shawn Wickam. Click through for the full article and video.

• 85% of coworkers said they are more motivated
• 90% report having better interaction with other people
• 42% report earning a higher income

• On-site host/concierge services
• Morning pastries from Aster Cafe
• Espresso drinks
• Daily lunch menu (including vegetarian options) from Republic
• On-site tech support for Apple and PC products
• Bike and hourly car rental facilities
• Storage facilities
• Access to Minneapolis Grain Exchange health club
• A weekly videocast by Chuck Olsen of the The UpTake
• Live podcasts by the Minnov8 gang
• A full lineup of social and educational events and activities (see below)

We’ll communicate more about these items as the details are finalized! Meanwhile, do you have any suggestions?

Photo credit: tonx

A tabula rasa: the trading floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (photo by Chuckumentary)

What’s the sound of 1 hand clapping? Who knows. But we can tell you that the sound of 10 hands sanding down a 100-year old wood floor is deafening!

As you read this, the trading floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange is being restored to its original lustre. The electricians have already run miles of power and data cables, so after a few coats of polyurethane next week, the space is going to be ready for brand new Steelcase furniture!

However…that furniture doesn’t arrive until July 7. As a result, we’re push our opening date for coworkers to July 12.

Our post-and-beam structural pieces arrive a week later and require some time to be installed, so we won’t be able to open our campsites until July 25.

All this gives us a little bit of breathing room and lets us extend our pre-registration offer (register now to lock in current rates for 6 months) to July 12! Learn more info on the offer.

So a quick recap for the skimmers among us:

CoCo Minneapolis rollout schedule

• July 12: Coworking begins Tuesday, July 12
• July 25: Campsites (group coworking spaces) open
• July 12: Pre-registration offer (current rates for 6 months) More info

Group spaces are going fast!
We’ve been surprised by the demand for group coworking spaces and permanent desks at CoCo Minneapolis. These spaces, or “campsites” as we call them, come in 3 sizes:

• Large Campsite (fits 8 people): sold out
• Medium Campsite (fits 6 people): 6 remaining
• Small Campsite (fits 4 people): 2 remaining
• Single Campsite (desk for 1 person): 2 remaining

If you are thinking about housing your team at CoCo, please contact us or visit one of our open houses, so we can answer your questions and help you make plans!

The floor plan below shows you which campsites are already reserved as of 6/28.

Key: SC = single campsite, L = large campsite, M = medium campsite, S = small campsite

Thanks to everyone who agreed to talk in front of the cameras. And a huge thanks to Mojo Solo (also members), who artfully  edited and stitched the video together.

New plans

We’ve added two new Individual plans:

• Full-time coworking with a dedicated desk ($350/mo)
• Student membership ($25/mo.)

We’ve added several Group plans for small businesses and work teams:

• Small Campsite – a fully-furnished work setting for up to 4 people ($900/mo)
• Medium Campsite – a fully-furnished work setting for up to 6 people ($1,200/mo.)
• Large Campsite – a fully-furnished work setting for up to 10 people ($1,500/mo.)

We’ve also added a Corporate membership for larger organizations that want to send individuals or teams to CoCo.

Until July 5 July 12, 2011 – you can lock in current pricing for 6-months!
We wanted to give new members an incentive to sign up sooner than later and at the same time help current members transition to the new rates.

• New members – if you register for a plan before July 5, you’ll pay current rates for the next 6 months. Please note that a one-time registration fee is required ($50 or $150 depending on your plan).
  
• Current members – You can lock in current pricing by making a 6 month commitment. We will collect the same registration fee, but it will be applied as a credit towards your next membership payment.

If you take advantage of this limited time offer, your membership pricing will be as follows:

• Part Time – $30/mo.
• Full Time  – $150/mo.
• Full Time with dedicated desk – $250/mo.
• Small Campsite (equivalent to a colocation bay in St. Paul) – $750/mo.
• Medium Campsite (Mpls only) – $1000/mo.
• Large Campsite (Mpls only) – $1,250/mo.

Please visit our membership pages to learn more about membership types and to register.

In his State of the City address today, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak announced that CoCo and Project Skyway will be teaming up in Minneapolis.

CoCo and Project Skyway have been looking separately for locations in Minneapolis. At the urging of the city, the two groups decided to operate out of the same space. A final space has not been selected, but the teams are considering buildings in downtown Minneapolis, near-Northeast, Loring Park and North Loop.

For CoCo, this will be its second location and will feature specially designed collaborative settings designed by the commercial furniture maker Steelcase. The new space will also feature several meeting locations for use by members for everyday meetings and by visiting organizations for off-site meetings.

About Project Skyway
Project Skyway is Minnesota’s first seed-stage tech startup accelerator program for motivated entrepreneurs. The program will build connections among entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and other innovation hubs, and bring them together both online and in physical space. The vision places emphasis on building companies with long-term, sustainable value, ethical practices, mentorship, and strong networks.

Project Skyway, Launch.MN and CoCo members pose with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak after his State of the City address. (l-r) Jeff Heegaard, Kyle Coolbroth, Judy Grundstrom, John Montague, Darren Cox, R.T. Rybak and Don Ball.

What follows are some quick highlights – essentially my reconstituted notes – from the conference. I’d certainly recommend GigaOm’s own recaps of the event, starting with Simon Mackie’s recap and then this directory of live blog coverage.

+++

One of the first noteworthy statistics we heard is that the average mobile worker is 46 years old and lives outside Silicon Valley. This is underscores the need to better understand workers and the scenarios

+++

In a discussion about how and why people adopt new technology, Sameer Patel, managing director of The Sovos Group used the example of his mother, who when he left India didn’t have computer. Two years later she was happily Skyping. The lesson: people (and employees) won’t and shouldn’t be expected to adopt technology for its own sake. Adoption, however, will naturally follow if new technology offers benefits that end-users can clearly see for themselves.

+++

Sococo software that gives a virtual company a Second Life type environment in which its workers can collaborate, IM and Web conference. Essentially, what you see is the floor plan of a metaphorical office with many different rooms that have different purposes. And you can choose what room you want to hang out in. It feels like a heavy metaphor, but I suspect that this (and perhaps other metaphors) might be just the crutch that is needed in order for some teams to transition to the cloud.

+++

Allen Delattre, Global Mng Dir, Technology Practice for Korn/Ferry was the first to call out what became a recurring theme at the conference: that moving to the cloud was no longer a technological issue, but a leadership issue. How do leaders effectively manage and motivate a dispersed and virtual work team?

+++

One of the highlights for me was a chat with John Seely Brown and John Hagel, from Deloitte’s Center for the Edge. I wasn’t familiar with their concept of the “edge” but it appears they’ve built a whole consulting practice around it. They talked about how in the past companies have tried to innovate by bringing the edge into the center (i.e., developing new tech and then institutionalizing it). They propose that it might make more sense nowadays to try to bring the center out to the edge. One example of this would be a “reverse mentorship,” in which, say, the CEO would be paired with a 20-something who has more access to (and naturally makes more use of) so-called “power tools” than people within the core of the org!

+++

Some folks were making the case for the “mobilocracy”. Evan Caplan, CEO of iPass said that according to a study they did of 2.5 million users, mobile workers put in 240 more hours per year.

He also discussed what his company refers to as the “device stack,” which is the triumvirate of the laptop, pad and smartphone. The thinking is that this threesome will become the standard mobile worker arsenal in pretty short order. The relationship between each of these items will be come an important consideration for solution designers.

+++

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff discussed their new Chatter social collaboration product. In the process, he dropped some neologisms, including “chatterlytics” and “chatterati” (how he refers to heavy Chatter users within the company).

He suggested the very real possibility that future compensation could be based one’s internal social standing (e.g., an internal Klout score).

+++

Another great term somebody used to describe the mobile worker lifestyle: “live/work arbitrage.”

+++

Now, the main reason we went to the conference wasn’t to hear about software, but to attend a panel on coworking, which featured owners from New Work City, PariSoma and NextSpace, as well as the founder of Loosecubes, a web site that lets you find an open meeting or work space anywhere in the world.

What became clear in the panel discussion is that coworking is growing up. It has served independent workers and entrepreneurs very well, but the panelists agreed that coworking might be relevant to a larger audience and to bigger organizations.

There definitely is a lot of curiosity about coworking from bigger organizations and people who don’t necessarily work in coworking spaces but are champions of entrepreneurship and innovation. Om Malik himself  has been a vocal proponent of coworking (which is evidenced by inclusion of a coworking breakout at his otherwise tech-oriented conference).

Of course, the verdict is out on how the burgeoning coworking movement will intersect the trend of worker mobilit and cloud computing, but we are optimistic that some future incarnation of the “office” will have its roots in the humble coworking space.

+++

Creative commons photo credit: rsmith179

So, like kids with a pair of golden tickets to a tour of Willie Wonka’s factory, we’re excited to be able to attend GigaOm’s Net:Work 2010 conference on Dec. 9 in San Francisco.

As they describe it Net:Work is

“…a new conference that highlights the opportunities that broadband and mobility have created for connecting work and workers and the technology that addresses the way corporations operate and conduct business.”

We hope to connect with like-minded folks who are curious about how the converging forces of technology, mobility and worker free-agency might reshape the way we all get work done in the coming decade. If you’re attending, please reach out and we’ll make plans to connect at the conference!