Philadelphia Coworking Survey, Use Cases, Pricing, Events, etc

I’ve just made a really big post to the Independents Hall Google Group. You can either read it there or in it’s entirety below the cut.

Hey IndyHall!

I feel like my emails tend to get crazy-long, but I hope you stick with me through this one. TONS of important stuff!!

First and foremost, please take <5 minutes and hit this 10 question survey. 5 of the questions ask you to rank importance on a scale of 1-5, and the others are a bit more specific. Finally, there’s an optional fieldfor your name and email, as well as a spot for additional thoughts that the survey might stir up. http://indyhall.wufoo.com/forms/independents-hall-member-survey/

Please, and pass it around to others who might be interested and for some reason arent on this list!

There’s a really important reason I’m sending out this survey: we’re close. Oh boy, are we close. At yesterday’s Cream Cheese Session, which was graciously hosted by Bart Mroz and had more new attendees(flickr) than ever before, we spent about an hour at the end of the day talking about the last couple of weeks of research and what we’ve come up with as far as locations and memberships.

Before sharing the entire discussion, I’d like to get some basic information from the rest of you who weren’t in attendance, and when we compare that to the conversation we had as a group, we’ll get a really good feel for the group’s direction as a whole.

In the mean time, once you’re done filling out the form, check out the start of the use cases that I’m working on. I took an article on Bootstrapper as a framework and am working from there. This document is very much alive and in progress, but since many people asked for this kind of material to be put down somewhere besides being in my head, I’ve gone ahead and done that. If you find typos/grammatical errors, feel free to log in and edit. If you feel you can contribute more to the cases, log in and do so. If you think of more cases that you’d like me to elaborate on, log in and add them. This is FOR YOU, and I plan to share this with the coworking community outside of Philadelphia as well.

These cases can be found at: http://wiki.independentshall.org/planning/howtousecoworking

Finally, and this is the most exciting thing I’ve got short of an actual place for us to move into:

PRICING

I know, I’ve been promising this one for a long time and it’s been incredibly difficult for people to gauge their commitment without figures to work from. Geoff and I have worked hard on a model that will allow the costs and risks be distributed across the entire community and therefore be very low for each involved individual. The current target pricing model falls into all of the estimates that we had originally mentioned.

http://wiki.independentshall.org/planning/membershipmodel

There are some numbers left to consider, things like non-member conference space usage, and specific utilities (VoIP and P.O. boxes are two options for things that we may provide, if people are interested, for nominal extra cost). And of course, until a lease is signed and final numbers are crunched, we can’t guarantee that things won’t flux BUT I’m committed to keeping things affordable and will do anything I can to mitigate cost increases.

FINALLY! Events!

July 12th and 13th is BlogPhiladelphia.

If you haven’t registered yet and plan to attend, do it now! It’s going to be awesome, and IndyHall needs to show our presence! Because the 13th is the Friday that we’d normally do our next Cream Cheese Session, it will be postponed until the following week, space to be determined.

BlogPhiladelphia/Independents Hall Party!

Thursday July 12th, from 8->???, we’re going to be co-sponsoring a social evening event at Triumph Brewery at 2nd and Chestnut in Old City! This is another opportunity for us to show off and talk about what we’ve been up to. Details: This event will include free pass around hors d’oeuvres being provided by Triumph. Beers will be $5 (they are a microbrew and have a whole slew of awesome beers), and the wine and liquor will be cash as well. BUT THERE’S A TWIST!!!

I’m implementing the microsponsorship model that I participated in at an impromptu party at SXSW(laughingsquid.com). The way it works is that anyone can open up a tab as a microsponsor of the event. I’ll have details about the smallest contribution allowed (I’m not sure Triumph allows pitchers) but the hope is that individuals and businesses will make small to medium contributions for the purpose of keeping the party going. To kick things off, WeKnowHTML/Independents Hall will be starting the night off with a $500 tab, and we’ll see where things go from there. I believe we have a handful of other microsponsors lined up to keep things moving just in case, but this should be a great time. Dress to impress, and have a great time!

Keep your eyes peeled for more Junto-related events too, I’ll announce more of those as details solidify.

That’s all for now. As always, if you have questions/thoughts/ideas, don’t hesitate to talk about them here, or hit me up on AIM, skype, or my cell phone.

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June 30, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Tags: , ,

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