{"id":266,"date":"2015-11-20T18:25:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T18:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opencoworking.org\/news\/?p=266"},"modified":"2015-11-20T19:51:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T19:51:15","slug":"who-wants-to-celebrate-coworking-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opencoworking.org\/news\/2015\/11\/20\/who-wants-to-celebrate-coworking-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Who wants to celebrate coworking with us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Tony Bacigalupo.<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I just returned from the\u00a0Coworking Europe conference in Milan, where I had the good fortune of meeting people from over a dozen different countries who are passionate about coworking and the good it can do for the people in their regions.<\/p>\n

It was, as always, an inspiration to be around so many awesome folks, but I couldn\u2019t help but come way feeling hungry for something more. I got this feeling like a lot of people care about this coworking thing, but so few feel like they fully understand it and fewer still feel comfortable talking about it with pride and fervor.<\/p>\n

This movement deserves celebration.<\/b> We know how awesome it is, how impactful it is, how much good it can do for the people who get to be a part of it. But that story\u2019s not out there, not nearly enough. People talk about coworking like it\u2019s a slightly different way to share office space, and that doesn\u2019t do this thing justice. Not even close.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just about renting desks, dammit. I want to shift that story.<\/b> The people who have been a part of this movement have been proud of coworking, but I think we can go further to be not just proud but vocally, visibly, forcefully proud.<\/p>\n

I want to see us inspiring others not just to start a coworking space in their community, but to join a movement that is changing things for the better.<\/p>\n

Coworking helps independent\u00a0workers battle isolation. Coworking empowers peers to develop their own economies in environments where job opportunities might otherwise not exist. Coworking gives people ways to hire each other, to make more money, to make friends, to feel like they belong to something.<\/p>\n

And I refuse to let anyone think of it as anything less.<\/p>\n

Working with Open Coworking, I intend over the next year to raise the profile of coworking as a movement and not just a business trend.<\/b> I intend to do that by continuing to develop better systems to rally volunteers to help us make improvements to the existing resources we have, so they\u2019ll be things we\u2019re proud to send people to. The wiki, the blog, all these things we have will only serve the next generation if we give them the love and care they deserve.<\/p>\n

As we go, we\u2019ll share our story of what we\u2019re doing with others so they can feel invited to join. We\u2019ll do a round of fundraising to help us get something we need but don\u2019t yet have: a real budget to hire people to do actually focus on working on the movement.<\/p>\n

Then, we\u2019ll use our growing new platform to go further.<\/b> We\u2019ll create better resources to educate organizers. We\u2019ll develop better ways to collect impact data that coworking spaces can use to prove the impact they have. And we\u2019ll look for ways to advocate on behalf of the movement in conversations with\u00a0institutions and governments who should be involved.<\/p>\n

A few things to ask of you:<\/p>\n