Indy Hall Featured in Knight Foundation & National League of Cities Report: Case Studies of U.S. Communities Creating Greater Civic Participation from the Bottom Up

Damn, that’s a mouthful of a post title, isn’ it?

To break it down, I met Chris Kingsley from the National League of Cities just over a year ago while he was working with the Knight Foundation to produce a report identifying bright spots in community engagement in cities across America. Pleased to find that Philadelphia was making the ranks of those bright spots, I happily shared what I’d seen over the previous 5 years of community engagement both within the scope of Indy Hall but also a number of significant shifts that I’d been noticing on a larger scale.

They’ve completed the report (pdf link), and I’m pretty proud of the amount of Indy Hall & Philadelphia story are told. Even a number of our members are highlighted in the photos. Enjoy the report embedded below.

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via Nlc

And as a bonus, here are the slides from a conference call about these topics that I participated in last week with Jeff Friedman & Paul Wright from the Office of New Urban Mechanics and Open Access Philadelphia.

Thanks so much to Chris Kingsley & NLC, The Knight Foundation, and most of all to my colleagues and community members that continue to inspire me with what’s possible when the community is running on all 8 cylinders of engagement.

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“More Friendly”

This one is from the Coworking google group:

“how do i make my coworking space a more friendly welcoming environment, it is already colourful and we have Graffiti , what else can we do?”

Lots of natural light can help, but…

Friendliness comes from people, not graffiti on the walls. People feel welcomed by other people, not inanimate things.

Take a close look at every interaction you have with members and potential members. Every time members sit next to each other, every time someone takes a tour or visits for an event.

Who are they? What do they talk about? What do they care about? Do they help each other? Why or why not?

Does anybody listen to them when they have ideas or problems or do they stay isolated and quiet?

Are there common interests that they can bond over besides their work?

Do they care about each other or only themselves?

Does your workspace serve a higher purpose than renting desks? What bigger goal do people become a part of by working from your space?

Is there anything meaningful about the experience of working there, or is it just another graffiti-fied office?

“Friendly” isn’t something you can install. It’s part of the culture, which comes from the people that work there, the experience that they share, and leadership from you.

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    Why economic development needs a more collaborative approach to building cities

    Philadelphia is becoming a test case for a new theory on how cities develop in 21st-Century America.

    The conventional wisdom used to be that economic development was the key to urban dynamism. Create the jobs, the people would follow, incomes would rise, and all would be well.

    Now an alternative idea has come along, preached by a number of urban analysts. It holds that quality of life has become the key element for a city’s prospects, because young adults demand it and many jobs no longer have to be in any one particular place. Establish an attractive setting, talented people will come, and, sooner or later, the jobs will, too.

    I pulled this from the opening paragraphs of the 2013 “State of the City” by Pew Charitable Trusts (warning, epic PDF behind that link). For the last 5 years, Pew has produced this report that’s packed with research and statistics that help highlight Philadelphia’s strengths and weaknesses. This years’ report is no exception, and is full of insights about how one of America’s largest cities is doing year over year.

    What is exceptional, though, is how this years’ report brings together the trends that we’ve been observing at a micro-scale with Indy Hall and a slightly larger scale with coworking in general.

    The environment matters, but not quite the way that traditional economic development thinks about environment.

    The Mistakes We Make

    In the case of coworking and community development, among the most common mistakes I see are founders & community managers who don’t leave enough room for their members to participate in co-creating the environment that they share.

    These coworking spaces put all of the emphasis on creating the environment so that it may be consumed as a service.

    These coworking spaces deal with the highest turnover rates, since their members perceive the environment as something to use and when it is no longer a need, neither is their membership.

    While all coworking spaces are at risk of the Tragedy of the Commons (where shared resources and common areas suffer from disproportionate wear and tear). But these coworking spaces and their members suffer the most when their members are less considerate of the people that they environment they share.

    Here’s what we know for certain: community members who contribute to the environment are the ones who will have the greatest sense of belonging to the community. Community members who contribute become natural evangelists, proudly sharing their participation with others and encouraging them to join in. Communities thrive when their members are “bought in” and feel a sense of ownership over the direction and evolution of the environment.

    Cities make the same mistakes

    “The conventional wisdom used to be that economic development was the key to urban dynamism. Create the jobs, the people would follow, incomes would rise, and all would be well.”

    The fantasy of these steps isn’t that they’re inherently wrong – in many cases, they’re right. The fantasy is in the illusion that “creating the jobs” is a single step. Or maybe, just maybe, the fantasy is in the illusion that “create the jobs” is a step at all – it’s part of the environment that needs to be co-created.

    And here’s what we know for certain: citizens who contribute to their environment are the ones who will have a greatest sense of belonging to the community, become natural evangelists for the city, and proudly share their participation with others and encourage them to join in.

    Economic development needs to be collaborative

    “Now an alternative idea has come along, preached by a number of urban analysts. It holds that quality of life has become the key element for a city’s prospects, because young adults demand it and many jobs no longer have to be in any one particular place. Establish an attractive setting, talented people will come, and, sooner or later, the jobs will, too.”

    Here’s the key to remember: the most attractive setting for the change-makers isn’t an environment that’s done, ready to be consumed as a service. Community members need buy in and ownership in order for economic development efforts to have a lasting effect.

    Let us know how we can contribute. Remember, if it’s change-makers you want, you show us something that needs changing, and be prepared to work along side us to make it happen.

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      Why Coworking is Growing in Australia, Part I: The Culture & Pace of Business

      I’ve been to Australia twice in the last 12 months. Three different cities. All for coworking related activities.

      Last July I jumped a plane to Sydney to work with Lachlan Hardy along with his friends Simon Wright & Scott Crawford on the launch and strategy for their newest addition to the Sydney coworking scene, The Workbench.

      This past February I returned, this time with Tony in tow. We spent a week in Gold Coast working with Libby Sander, one of our Masterclass alumni, as she launched a pop-up coworking space on the beach to activate the creative community in the region in anticipation of the new coworking community and space that she’s leading in Surfer’s Paradise. The following week, we flew to Melbourne to speak at and attend  the first national conference for coworking.

      In less than 12 months I’ve spent a cumulative 30 days in the country of Australia, all for coworking related activities. And I’m not surprised, since Australia is currently showing the highest growth of new coworking per capita anywhere in the world.

      So what the hell is going on down under?

      I noticed two patterns in the regional culture during my visits that I think are contributing to the outpaced growth of coworking in Oz, and have some related hopes and predictions.

      Part 1: The Culture & Pace of Business

      I’m generally cautious about making broad-strokes statements about cultures, but Australia is without a doubt one of the friendliest places I’ve ever been. Everyone is just so damn nice. I know that I’m lucky to have some of the built in “network” that I bring with me, and I’m a guest in the country, but even complete strangers seemed categorically welcoming. It’s almost as if the entire country is happy to see you. This experience goes above run of the mill politeness (which can be refreshing in itself) – there’s seemed to be a genuine spirit of generosity that I felt from every person that I met.

      I started to notice this have an impact on business interactions, too. In particular, I noticed the european business etiquette of “first we get to know each other, and then we do business together.“ I confirmed this with multiple Aussies, both natives and and expats. Further, I confirmed that pace varies a bit from city to city. In Sydney, for instance, business happens faster than in Melbourne. I think that this has something to do with the fact that Sydney is a bit bigger faster paced in general (though that trend appears to be reversing).

      I even heard more than one entrepreneur say that they much preferred living in Melbourne but went to Sydney to do business because they could close deals a lot faster. From my own personal experience, Sydney is to New York as Melbourne is to Philadelphia.

      But zooming out to a global view, Australia seems to have a more relationship-oriented business culture than transaction-oriented business culture, especially when you compare it to that of other major countries and continents like the US and the aggregate of the countries in Europe who have led the growth of coworking in the world until now.

      But why?

      My first theory is how cultures of business can be warped by industrial capitalism. More specifically, the deeper the impact of industrial businesses a region experiences, the more transactional that region’s culture becomes.

      For this reason, if I again compare and contrast the cultures of the 1) US, 2) Europe, and 3) Australia, I’d rank them in that order: from most transactional to least transactional.

      As a result, I  believe that this means that the US has the most cultural “recovery” to do from the industrial revolution, and needs to work the hardest to getting back to working relationships and “community” into business cultures again. This ranking also puts Australia at an advantage, needing to adapt less for coworking to naturally fit the business culture.

      I saw this most vividly expressed in the presence of institutions at the coworking events that I attended, in particular government and corporations. In the US and in Europe, institutions are discovering coworking and trying to fit it into their existing buckets of innovation, economic development, real estate, etc. I’ve spent a frustrating amount of time in both areas trying to help institutions understand how coworking works, and how they can benefit most from participating and learning rather than just putting a new coat of pain on their old, broken approaches.

      In Australia, many institutions already get that. They’re trying to figure out where they fit into the coworking ecosystem, rather than where the coworking ecosystem fits into their buckets.

      More than a new coat of paint

      I believe that Australia’s business culture, specifically a pace of business that more naturally allows for building relationships before pursuing transactions, makes it one of the ripest places in the world for growth of coworking, but also innovation in coworking. From what I’ve seen at Coworking Europe and GCUC, the two largest international coworking conferences, many global regions’ growth of coworking has begun to push beyond the early adopters, but in many of those cases “coworking” is just a new real estate model and less of a community development model.  In much of the US and Europe, coworking is quickly becoming a “coat of new paint on old, broken business”. 

      Don’t get me wrong, there’s some of this effect in Australia, too. But from what I’ve seen, Australia’s business culture is better suited to not screw it up. Coworking in Australia may be “behind” much of the rest of the world, but only because they started later. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Aussie coworking outpace other major coworking populations over the long run.

      Growth needs resilience

      It’s still far too early to tell, but my hope is that Australia steps back from “growth” mode soon and focuses on resilience. Right now they’re further along than I think they realize, but if they don’t buckle down soon and make that ecosystem sustainable, many opportunities to make coworking better in Australia and around the world will be wasted.

      There are still a lot of problems to solve in the world of coworking, and I genuinely believe that we’re going to start seeing lessons and solutions come out of Australian initiatives very soon.

      Up Next…

      In my next post, I’ll talk about the other cultural factor that I think is adding to the major growth of coworking in Australia. Stay tuned!

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        By putting people first…

        “Home, by putting people first, and then apps–by just flipping the order–is one of many small but meaningful changes in our relationship with technology over time.” – Mark Zuckerberg introducing Facebook’s newest iteration, “Home”

        To steal a riff from Clay Christensen, I don’t have an opinion on the new Facebook product. But I do have a theory, and my theory has an opinion.

        I’ve spent a lot of my adult life thinking about this kind of “orientation”, and I continue to develop sources for my own theories about putting people first. Coworking is my largest active manifestation of that, where we prioritize people ahead of desks and encourage our members to prioritize relationships ahead of transactions. I’ve studied business and technology, and learn more about both any given psychology or sociology book than I do from most of the business books and blog posts that I’ve read combined.

        The work I’ve done that’s led me to my theory has been largely personal and altruistic, but it hasn’t taken me long to recognize the powerful implications of the theory: putting people first is good for business.

        Facebook’s reason for putting people first is undeniably a business decision, but my theory’s opinion is that it’s more complex than most people realize.

         

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