I have recently been taking part in the planning of a coworking space in Cambridge. The idea was hatch by a friend of mine, Colin Carmichael who started the wheels in motion after running into a problem. After a couple of days of working remotely at local coffee shop the Melville Café, then the local library it became apparent he needed somewhere else to work, as neither venue was ideal.
For those not familiar with the concept of a coworking space, I’ll try to give a brief rundown. The idea is to create a working space for small business owners, sole proprietors, freelancers and non-profit organizations to have a place to meet and work. Office space is costly, running from $300 to $1000+ a month to rent your own business space. So many small businesses are like myself, they do their business working alone from their home and meet clients outside their homes at public places like restaurants or coffee shops. The problem with this kind of arrangement is it can tend to be rather isolating. I know myself sometimes you just get bored of your surroundings and want to get out of the house.
This is where a cowork comes in. It allows for a collaborative workspace where entrepreneurs can get outside of their regular work confines and get the opportunity to do some valuable business networking. I’ve been working on my own for roughly 8 months and sometimes you just wish you had somewhere to go to work, enabling you to separate your home and work life a bit.
Over the last 2 months a group of locals, mainly having been connected through Twitter are hashing out the groundwork for a coworking space to be located in downtown Galt. Colin has rather smartly setup a shared, public cowork Google doc for collecting Cambridge cowork ideas. If you feel like getting involved, feel free to get in touch and I’ll help you get in the loop. I also created a Twitter list of Cambridge Cowork contributors.