Station C Coworking opens in Montreal

Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault recently opened Station C, Montreal’s first coworking space. Congratulations Patrick and Daniel. Congratulations Montreal!
Patrick recently answered some questions for LaunchPad Coworking about how Station C is working out.

LPC: What inspired you to start Station C?
PT: We needed a place to work, I love working in cafes but they are often too crowded and I need more services like meeting rooms and printing, it’s also fun to work with a bunch of people, not just amongst people like happens in cafes. In terms of inspiration, probably Queen Street Commons for being pioneers, Citizen Space for Tara and Chris’ leadership and evangelizing and finally Workspace for the awesome space and showing it can work as a business.

LPC: How aware of other coworking endeavors were you when you got your idea?
PT: Very much so. Our initial idea, years ago, evolved by following other coworking projects. I’ve been following every detail of their process and I visited Workspace and Citizen Space last year, Bricolage this year with Dan who also visited Citizen last fall.

LPC: How does your model work?
PT: We have 16 workspaces, 8 for resident members who have fulltime access and a reserved desk. The other 8 are for flex members who also pay monthly but have access for a limited number of hours per week (14 or 28) which they’ll be able to book online soon.

LPC: Where are you currently as far as filling anchor/fulltime tenant slots and part time tenant slots?
PT: We’ve got our 8 residents. Actually, we already “cheated” and have 9 and are considering going to 12 because demand has been greater than expected and the Flex 28 isn’t popular at all. We’ve got 7 Flex 14s signed and a number of people are due to visit in the coming weeks so it’s going pretty well. We also have daily and weekly rates and have 2 people visiting for a month each.

LPC: Is this a for-profit model?
PT: Yes and no. We did set it up as a for-profit company but that’s for management and tax reasons. The business plan is largely non-profit. Our plans are structured to cover expenses and that’s about it, we are both keeping our “day jobs” (both freelancers), we setup Station C because we needed it as a tool for work and for our community ideas, not as a way to make a living. Revenue from events might make things a bit “looser” but basically we’ll be breaking even and if things go very well we might get paid for all the time we’ve put in ;).

LPC: Do you think some people think coworking is silly and will go away — that coworking spaces won’t “make it”? If so will you share some common criticisms you’ve heard and your response to that criticism?
PT: Actually, I have yet to hear any criticism. Every freelancer (and wannabe freelancer) I’ve spoken to loves the idea, not everyone needs it, but everyone loves the idea. The only “criticism” is from people who need a closed office but even then, they like the idea, it just doesn’t fit their needs.

LPC: What kind of work do you do — outside of Station C work? And/or Is Station C work now your fulltime gig?
PT: Some days of last week (first week open) did feel like it was a fulltime job but as I mentioned earlier, we’re both keeping our day jobs. I do web development, from standards compliant accessible xhtml-css (my original bread and butter) to building whole websites based on open source platforms such as Drupal and WordPress, I’m also transitioning to more consulting. Dan is a graphic designer who does creative strategy, probably his biggest project was designing the latest version of Bell.ca.

LPC: Prior to opening did you work alone a lot? And/or did you do some other, more informal version of coworking?
PT: I worked from cafes, including Laïka, a cafe / restaurant / bar that’s kind of the epicenter of the web in Montréal, it wasn’t official coworking but you’d run into a lot of people, have meetings there, start projects around a beer, etc. Also, Evan, one of our residents, setup something more along the lines of Jelly, which we called subStation and we did that for a few weeks while we were preparing the Station C space.

LPC: How do you prevent flex time reservation collision?
PT: Well for the first few weeks it’s going to be done manually, we also don’t have a full slate of Flex members so collisions won’t be that numerous. End of this month we’ll have an online system for reservations.

LPC: If you’re using reservation software, what is it? How do you like it?
PT: We’re modifying an existing open source platform and will be mixing it with Drupal for the content and member profiles.

LPC: What else?
PT: We’re having a Coworking Meetup in Austin March 7th, the first day of registration for SXSW, I hope everyone who’s in town and into coworking will join us. One of the things Dan and I want to start discussing is how we can make memberships “portable”, have deals in place for members of one coworking who show up in another one. I think coworking is a great complement to the “freelancing life” and can also be a great resource when “travorking”.