dangerouslyawesome

In a post today on Not An MBA, the boys evaluated the business side of coworking.

And to be completely honest, I’m a little bothered by the category that we’ve been put into. We seem to be pushed aside in favor of the critically “for profit” models in terms of sustainability.

The irony in this? Between the list of Profit and Not-For Profit coworking ventures, we’re among the few to be turning ANY profit, even if its not a lot.

Before I go any further, please note: Drew and Todd, I’m not mad at you. I still like you guys. You just greased some already turning gears.

Non Profit isn’t a State of Mind

We’ve never claimed to be not-for-profit. We’re very much for profit. But our initial focus, outside of community building, was on break even.

Early on, Geoff and I discussed the benefits of going either way. We decided, together, that operating IndyHall as a for-profit business was absolutely critical.

There’s nothing in the world stopping a coworking community from operating within a profitable coworking space. But I think THAT is where the line is drawn.

This isn’t Chicken and Egg, People.

For the sake of this example, there are two types of coworking: communities, and spaces.

• You can operate a coworking community without a for-profit coworking space. Jelly is a fine example of that.

• You can operate a coworking space without a coworking community. You can provide all kinds of nice services and amenities. You can hope and pray and wish. And people will show up. In an ideal situation, they’ll even nest.

But this has been done before and, in my mind, isn’t particularly compelling.

That’s my opinion, but it’s also the opinion of many, as illustrated by the transition away from traditional incubator setups into the Y-Combinator (also see Colorado based TechStars, and Philly local DreamIT Ventures) model where you’re still evaluated as a participant of the space, but along with the space and small business services, you find yourself surrounded by like minded entrepreneurs at similar points in their business experience as one another. And just like “working alone sucks”, “starting a business alone sucks, too”.

You can jam services down people’s throats to attract them like moths to a lightbulb. Who DOESN’T want a swanky office. People will come for the shiny stuff, but you’re going to need some substance to keep them there. That substance? Culture.

So, it’s not Chicken and Egg?

Oh, right. I was making a point. My point was, if you establish a business before establishing the community, you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up imposing on the single most important asset of ANY coworking community.

The culture.

If you’ve created the business without the prior influence of the community of it’s users, you will inevitably be forced to make decisions for the business that are contrary to the members interests. THAT is business.

And culture, imposed upon a community, inevitably crumbles that community. Culture, carefully cultivated and built on top of, is sustainable.

I’m not saying you don’t need business. You do. You absolutely, positively do. If you’re thinking about starting a coworking space and don’t have any business experience, get a business adviser. NOW. I got lucky and got Geoff DiMasi as a partner.

Remember, I’m not saying that a community is the core. I’m saying the culture is. That’s a really big difference from the messages I’ve sent in the past. I’m going to be revisiting this a lot. In part, this is due to some realizations that ‘community’ as a term is getting dumbed down by overuse and overemphasis. Thanks, Kathy Sierra, for joining twitter and sharing this thought at just the right time.

Every coworking space has it’s own culture. Recently, Tara Hunt of Citizen Space (also one of the “not-for-profit” coworking spaces, as appointed by Not An MBA), remarked about how despite the 14+ person waiting list for Citizen Space, when she tried sending the people on the waiting list to any of the other spaces in the vicinity (and rumor has it that San Francisco has a BUNCH very diverse of coworking spaces and communities), the people on their waiting list said, “No, thanks. We don’t just want coworking. We want Citizen Space coworking. We’ll wait.”, or something to that effect.

I recently made my first visit to Citizen Space.

Yes, it’s beautiful.

Yes, it’s in a convenient location.

Most of all, for me, it felt like home. And that had nothing to do with the physical location, which was 3000 miles away from my REAL home. The culture was familiar.

Is Citizen Space for everybody? Of course not. That’s why San Francisco has a number of other coworking options. Is IndyHall for everybody? No way. And that’s why I eagerly await another variant of Philadelphia coworking. Please. Somebody step up. Do it you’re way. I’ll even help. Pick my brain. Anything you want, except a check. Cuz I don’t want you to be answering to me when you’re making plays with my money.

And, of course, I’m not in any kind of financial position to be investing. At least until someone figures out how to convert Whuffie to US Dollars. If you do figure that out, email me please.

Money Changes Everything

When you’ve got large sums of money and salaries on the line, your decision making skills are changed. It’s inevitable. It’s the most common issue I’ve seen with the relatively small contact I’ve had with startup founders.

Product managers do not make good CEOs. I mean, they can be one or the other, but it’s not a good idea for the product manger to BE the CEO. The results are obvious: product roadmap decisions driven by the guy dangling the checking account balance in front of you are not going to be the same as decisions made for the end goal.

What I am trying to get across is order of operations.

One foot before the other. Crawl before you walk. Walk before you run. Put on your pants before your shoes.

Build an unstoppable community to take part in the development of your business.

So Coworking is Profitable?

I’ve never ever gone on record saying coworking can’t be profitable. It can. I hope that someone (and it doesn’t need to be us) proves that it can be CRAZY profitable, just to prove the cynics wrong.

I just hope that doesnt attract the wrong people to the community.

I HAVE gone on record saying that our end-game isn’t to be rich from coworking. The true values are corollary, for the members and the owners. That does NOT mean, however, that they are intangible.

I HAVE gone on record saying that by making profit your number one priority, you’re going to have to work a whole lot harder to adapt your profitability to fit the needs of your community. It’s doable, but it’s challenging.

And I don’t know about you, but I prefer to work smarter and retain my quality of life than work more than I already have for an unknown, anticipated, calculated gain.

Philly’s own Josh Kopelman said at the recent kickoff of DreamIT Ventures first season,

“I’d rather back an entrepreneur who can adapt to change than an entrepreneur who claims he has all of the answers. Because, inevitably, every business plan starts out wrong.

Agile as a Business

Geoff has pointed out our decision to run this as a business is to be able to keep it open, iterate, and improve. We take this process for granted as we both come from agile software development backgrounds. The methodologies of Agile are second nature to us.

Having a strong and committed culture, our (paying) members help drive those iterations forward because it doesn’t just benefit IndyHall (the business).

It benefits IndyHall (the community).

It’s a little silly that this is the first post I’m making from San Francisco. I’ve got a bunch of other drafts started, but I wanted to get this one out now while it was fresh in my mind.

I learned a lot this week.

I’ve often described my past experiences at SXSW as somewhat sobering (not chemically, but psychologically). It was my first exposure to some of the people responsible for literally creating the internet, or critical parts of it that we all take for granted. And rather than be presented with an egomaniacal rock star, I found lots of people just like me, who wanted to do cool things with cool people.

I’ve had this experience repeatedly over the last 2 years. I’ve got some really incredible friends. I’m friends with some really incredible people.

Secret? One my “would be cool if…” ideas for this week was to sit down with Evan Williams and chat. Not about Twitter, not about anything in particular. Just in general as someone who has interest in his approach to business and thinks he’s done cool stuff. I still would love for that to take place at some point.

This week has been a difficult week for one of our favorite one to many real time device agnostic communications platform. Seems I picked a bad week to try to make my sit down with Ev happen.

I’m not going to go into the details of what’s been going on with Twitter, technically or socially. I reserve my own opinions, and many others reserve theirs. Way cool. Thats what happens when services transcend the usual verticals of user expectations. That’s not what I really want to write about.

What I wanted to remind myself, and everyone else is this:

The door above is the front door to Twitter HQ. Twitter isn’t a magical creature. It isn’t a mythical beast.

It’s the product of a lot of hard work by people who, unlike the conjurers that we sometimes make them out to be/expect them to be, still need to walk in that door at the beginning of the day, and out the door at the end.

We’re upset because we care. I get that.

Based on some of the information they’ve released, the team seems to being through some of the “converting a hang glider into a Boeing747 in mid-air” syndrome that I’ve alluded to in my own life, so I empathize.

The other side of things that I can parallel to my own experience is that, I hope, it’s not over. There’s lots more to pan out. This isn’t 100% uncharted territory, but there certainly is a good deal that’s new. If for nobody else, it’s new for the team who’s dealing with it right now.

I’m watching intently. I’m resisting the temptation to use Twitter as a self-referential kvetch-funneling megaphone, because that certainly isn’t helping the situation right now.

These websites live up in “the cloud”, but the people are real. And a lot of the time, the people are WAY cooler than the websites they drive. If decision making were easy, people would fuck up a whole lot less. And I don’t know when the last time you looked around you was, but there are way more failures than successes out there.

More on that notion later.

In other news, I finally got to pick up an official Twitter shirt. And I got to see Alex Payne and Brit Selvitelle for a few minutes (and hopefully again this weekend) and they’re two really rad dudes who walk through the aforementioned door every day.

And Ev…you were there today, but you looked busy, man. Didn’t want to bug you. So hopefully another time.

Geoff and I were out chatting about some things last night and in conversation I mentioned the term “Civic Entrepreneurship”. The word came out of my mouth nonchalantly, and frankly, I’m not sure where exactly I’d heard it before, or if I was using it in the appropriate context. Either way, Geoff’s reaction to the term and what it might mean, was enough to get me to think more about it on my walk home.

Confident it was impossible that I had coined the term myself, and curious about any kind of real context, I decided to ask google for a definition.

The first result, a newsletter from the Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin, caught my eye. The result summary contained enough information to match what I’d considered myself, so I dug deeper.

The term civic entrepreneur combines two important American traditions: entrepreneurship–the spirit of enterprise–and civic virtue–the spirit of community.¹

The article goes on to establish five important qualities in civic entrepreneurship.

1. Realistic understanding of contemporary economic realities and willingness to embrace those realities on a local level, building a foundation for larger future growth.
2. Results-driven attitude towards change. Focus on why things can happen, rather than why they cannot. Focus on mobilizing resources to an end game.
3. Collaborative leadership style, rather than leading with formal authority they lead with credibility. Strong ties between economic development and community development. Strong bridging between these two arenas.
4. Long-tail self interest. The individual leader’s end game is long term, short term and narrower goals are heavily focused directly on community involvement. “Give give give, till your face falls off”. Sound familiar?
5. Creating, and enabling, new leaders. Playing different roles within different teams. Heavy focus on teamwork and encouraging collaborative growth.

A lot of this rings so, so true to everything I’ve been immersed in for the last year and a half. But I’ve noticed something else.

A lot of “civic entrepreneurship” qualities read a whole lot like what’s evolved into this moving target people are calling “social media”. This piece, for me, is a great and humbling reminder that even new and exploratory concepts aren’t new, simply evolutions.

I laugh, often, when I (or anyone else, for that matter) are referred to as “social media experts”. How can you be an expert in something that most people struggle to define in the first place? It’s too new for there to be real experts.

Are you an expert simply by being an early adopter? I think that’s a difficult, and dangerous, thing to quantify given the connotations of “expert”.

Social Media leadership? Certainly. I know a lot of brilliant social media leaders. Social Media Innovaters? Absolutely.

Now. I’m not sure if you could call yourself a Civic Entrepreneurship expert, even though the arena is well defined, and well established. Proof? The points in the article cited above were written nearly 10 years ago.

I have to wonder how many participants of the social media space have read the newsletter. Or were they too busy suckling their RSS feeds looking for the latest trend to mimic.

Although, I have to think that there’s something intrinsically humbling, probably tied to quality number 4 above, that most “civic entrepreneurs” wouldn’t go so far as to call themselves an expert.

There’s a difference between calling yourself an expert, and being identified as one.

Be realistic. Be persistent. Share responsibilities. Be humble. Know your roots. Care.

At SXSW, during the coworking core conversation, Geoff made a point that blew my mind with it’s obviousness. That exact same point is relevant to this conversation as well:

These aren’t secrets to successful coworking. These aren’t secrets to successful business.

These are the secrets to being a good human being.

¹Reference: Civic Entrepreneurs: Economic Professional as Collaborative Leader

I leave in 6 full days for my first trip to San Francisco.

Needless to say, this trip is long overdue.

Fer Why?

The purpose of my arrival in SF is multifold:

• My friend Paul White is leading a class of MBA students from Temple University around the Valley, touring businesses that have varying approaches to design in their business process. I’m tagging along for some of those tours. More about this class, including their SF itinerary can be read on their site.
• Virgin America was running a ridiculously good deal. If I didn’t buy this ticket, I’d regret it.
• I’ve got some business contacts to follow up with
• As I said, I’ve never actually been to San Francisco…so the birthplace of “coworking” was we know it seems like an appropriate journey to be making
• I need an unwind in the worst way

Above all, I’ve got lots of friends to visit. Some I’ve met in real life (for the most part at SXSW). Some I’ve never met in the flesh. Some I’ve known for a reasonably long time. Others, I barely know.

So, in the spirit of the necessary unwind, and a test of my ability to convert online relationships into something a bit more tangible, I’ve decided to do a little experiment. And not unlike other experiments done in recent history…

Putting my indecisiveness to good use

As you may have noticed, I mentioned nothing about where I’m staying in San Francisco. That’s because I don’t plan on packing anything except for a small rolling suitcase, my backpack, and myself. I’m counting on my internet friends to help make sure I’m not sleeping on the streets.

To be clear, I’m not asking for a penny. I’m simply asking for couches and, similarly, help knowing where would be cool to be on any given day or night. Any tips for where to go, and how to get there. Anything really. You get to help plan my trip. I’m happy to pay my way, I just think it will be a really fun experience and I want to share it.

I’m going to blog about this in 3 phases (and as such, three separate posts).

Ladies and gentlemen, lend me your sofas

The first, and the subject of this post is where to stay. I have outstanding offers from a couple of friends already, and I intend to take them up on the opportunities. I understand that most people in San Francisco have small apartments. I understand that a guest room is unlikely. I’m happy to have a sofa, or even a carpeted floor and pillow.

My itinerary so far:

I arrive at SFO at 8:20PM PST on Saturday, May 17th (this upcoming Saturday). I leave SFO at 11:15PM PST on Sunday, May 25th (the following Sunday).

So, readers, twitter followers, internet friends and IRL friends alike: do you have a place I can stay for a night or two? Leave me a comment if you’re interested with a valid email address and I’ll contact you personally for details.

And before I move on to blogging part two…thank you. I hope this turns into a really fun, relaxing, and special trip.

This afternoon I attended my first City Council hearing. Frankly, it was my first time inside City Hall. Today’s hearing was related to a topic that is known to be near and dear to my heart: the city support of the so-called “creative economy”.

I found out about this event, as most people did, last minute. And my desire to attend was minimal, chiefly because I have a strong distaste for the types of meetings that end up being mostly masturbatory: if I don’t leave a meeting with some sort of actionable item besides having another meeting, I’m usually pretty unhappy with the use of my time.

However, I was drawn to this event because a number of my peers, notably some that I have a pretty large amount of respect for, had been invited to present on panels to the hearing board. That group included Blake Jennelle, Philly Startup Leaders founder, and Matt Fisher, President of Night Kitchen Interactive and long time member of PANMA. I knew that these particular leaders shared my views of the local scene, shared opinions about the strengths and needs of our community, and were extremely capable of vocalizing these messages succinctly and effectively. If nothing else, I would have an educational experience in how a city council hearing is conducted, and support my friends. The only guaranteed loss was being indoors on such a beautiful spring afternoon.

As I was walking into City Hall, I decided that it would be interesting to live-twitter my experience. Not only for record keeping purposes…but sort of an experiment to share my at-the-moment opinions (as heat-of-the-moment as they were) with my followers.

So it began. I quickly learned that there was a video feed (which I’m working on finding an archive of), and others were watching from afar. And before I knew it…my twittering turned my timeline into a back channel for the Philadelphia City Council Public Hearing on the Creative Economy.

I’d be very surprised if this was actually the first time a government event had a backchannel…but what was interesting to me was that it ended up proving incredibly valuable. For a number of reasons.

First, as my original thought was, for record keeping. If you look over my tweets in chronological order, the hot-topics were tracked in twitter forever. Sweet.

Second, was me opening my brain. Not that I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but instead of passing notes or whispering in my neighbor’s ear, and being disruptive…I got to put my disruptive behavior to good use.

Third, and most interestingly, it engaged a number of people who could not be in the room do to prior commitments, or lack of notice. I’m lucky that I don’t have a boss I have to ask if I can take the afternoon off to go do something. Most people aren’t. Did all 1500+ people that follow me care about the contents of the hearing? Of course not. But a number of them certainly did. And some of them cared enough to chime in on the conversation. And thus, the backchannel was born.

Whats most interesting about the people who cared, is that not all of them were even in, or from, Philadelphia. One of the really important parts to remember about all of the creative economy and city branding initiatives that we’re involved in is that they are, at the very least, two-fold. There’s the need for better awareness inside our city limits, but just as valuable, are the external perceptions of our city, its economy, its workforce, and it’s general contributions to the rest of the world. So when people started listening, and better yet, chiming in from places like New York City, Kansas, Austin, and LA…the message was being spread MUCH further than the city council ever could have anticipated. And the best part about this message? It’s showing the rest of the world, not only that we’re doing something…but we’re looking to them to reciprocate in many of the potential relationships we’re creating.

Its worth noting that I only have a limited scope to this online backchannel…my own tweets and the tweets of the people I follow. If someone said something and I wasn’t following them, I missed it. If someone responded to one of the people I was following, I likely missed that as well. So the message may very well have gotten even further than I’m aware. And that’s freaking rad.

There are a lot more thoughts I have about the contents of the event. Some of it was intensely, intensely positive. Some of it was intensely, intensely frustrating. I’ll save those thoughts for another post as my mind starts weaving things together. Most notably, though was some really really glowing support for the things I care the most about: Indyhall, of course, but also P’unk Ave and their Junto, Geoff DiMasi in general, and iSepta (a new app thats sprung up out of some really awesome organic collaboration between some IndyHall members). IndyHall, P’unk Ave, Geoff, and I were mentioned by no less 3 separate panelists. If the city didn’t know about us yet…they sure do now.

In the mean time, today was the day I realized the value of live, citizen journalism.

Today was a pretty important day.

The last few weeks have been VERY good to IndyHall and some of our other grassroots creative friends. One of the leaders of those groups, Blake Jennelle, asked me about the response from press. He asked if the recent spot on CBS Morning News, or the Philadelphia Business Journal piece, had yielded a lot of phone calls or inquiries with interest.

Frankly, they haven’t yielded much more than a bunch of congratulations from friends and family who were excited to see us recognized. And it’s something to keep my mom off my back about my lack of finishing my degree. All of which I’m EXTREMELY appreciative of. It’s ridiculously humbling to get this kind of credit when it’s due to way more people than just me. It’s also validating that the work we’re doing is being seen by a more mainstream audience. I’ve said before that I think coworking is about much more than just what we do at IndyHall, and what others do at their coworking spaces…it’s not about where people want to work, it’s about how.

But that’s not my point. At least not today.

So, what is the point?

My point is, a little spot on the email newsletter Daily Candy actually gave us WAY more response from new interested parties. Like, a lot. Tripled our highest traffic day on the blog, and more than a handful of phone calls and visits from new people who read about us and were interested in spots.

I’ve got a couple of theories why this somewhat “counterintuitive lesson in niche marketing”, as Blake so eloquently put it, occurred.

Link Love? Not here.

First is a basic fault of mainstream press, and one that I’m hardly the first to note: mainstream press does not link. Period. They keep eyeballs on their own sites, and have ZERO interest in sharing link love. It’s absurd, but it’s true, and eventually as the they’ll catch on, or they’ll die off. Either way, the problem will be solved, and nothing we do is going to change them.

Net Fishing vs. The Heavy Artillery

The more important reason, I think, simply has to do with the niche we market to, and who viewed the pieces of press. Both the CBS news, at 7:30am, and the Philadelphia Business Journal, are NOT primarily consumed by work-from-the-couch indies. So again…lots of eyeballs, little audience relevance.

It’s the difference between casting a net, and harpoon fishing. It seems that the Daily Candy piece, however, was like having a multi-harpoon-launching-fishing-gatling-gun.

We still love mainstream

Theres an immense amount of value of getting the coworking message to the masses. Ultimately, this movement is (I hope) going to shape their futures, and they should know we’re coming. Also, some messages need the attention of the masses. Mainstream press isn’t going away, don’t think that for a second. I’m just saying that in some cases, it may not be the place you should put your focus first.

If you want people to care, you have to show them that you care, first. And freaking mean it.

But apply this to your business, organization, or idea: rather than cast a net of press releases, think hard about your target(s). Casting a net takes a whole lot of energy with very little yield. Diligent and clearly targeted messaging, however, yields much greater results with the same amount of energy.

So next time you’re trying to get your idea out there, chew on this: try finding thought leaders in that target audience, and get friendly. Give them the attention they deserve. Read up on them. Hand craft emails. These people deserve your attention, since you’re asking it of them. Sending them a canned message is going to fall into the pile with all of the other canned PR. It’s worthless. It really is.

If you want these people to care, you need to prove that you give a shit about your own message. And I’m sorry, but a canned press release doesn’t scream “I care”.

Even though your target for making your message reach a widespread audience are “influencers”, because they can change winds, thought leaders tend to be more approachable, and guess who the influencers turn to for their next “big thing” to influence.

You got it. The thought leader that you planted a seed with.

Focus.

Bursting out to the masses with every little move you make, if you think about it, kinda turns into a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario. What happens when you actually DO make a move that’s notable.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t share your every move. I do it on twitter. I do it on the IndyHall blog. I do a fair amount of it here. But those are all opt in messaging, and the people who receive it are people who want to. If I’m lucky, some of those “followers” are thought leaders and influencers, and…

I guess that’s how we ended up in mainstream press in the first place.