Brent Ozar is a former member of Caroline Collective, a coworking space in Houston. As he posted regarding his departure — Ozar really loved the atmosphere but a couple of factors sent him back to his home office.
For starters, Ozar had a lot of gear, which, even after downsizing, proved too unwieldy to store in CC’s locker space. And it was too expensive to simply leave sitting out. But a bigger concern was that, as the space became more popular — it started being used for after-hours events which brought hundreds of non-coworkers into the space. These folks are no doubt for the most part are good people but there’s always that element of concern that arises when one’s work area could potentially be compromised by strangers.
This concern grew as Ozar found the space unlocked on some occasions when it shouldn’t have been and twice found strangers sleeping there. This made him worried for his own personal security, so he called it quits.
And not long ago CitizenSpace in San Francisco some guy — maybe homeless, maybe not — was setting up camp as a free drop-in way too regularly, disrupting others, eating food that wasn’t his, and using the shower. Apparently he’d done the same at the Hat Factory. No one wants to be a jerk about judging folks using the space, but it became pretty clear, pretty fast, that this guy was there to sleep, eat, and bathe, not contribute to collaboration. Eventually, after many attempts to politely get him to scram, the cops were called.
All businesses are subject to unwanted “clients” that have to be dealt with. There are all sorts of responses ranging from compassionate to frustrated to firm to scared-enough-to-call-in-the-cops. It’s a total drag, but it happens. As we contemplate how to best deal with the situation when it’s our turn at LaunchPad Coworking, it brings to the surface those uncomfortable feelings of boundaries — how to make them, how to keep them, how many are too many, and how to be fair.
I’m tired of the fear culture that’s pervaded our country for the past nine years. I want to believe that the vast majority of folks are going to have their hearts and minds and coworking attitudes in the right place when they show up. But I’m also limiting the number of employees who have keys to the place, and I’m installing a scanner so non-key employees can be tracked when coming or going. A police state? Hardly. Just an effort to keep track. We also have set hours, which helps a lot. We won’t have to keep track of who’s got keys since we don’t have 24-hour access.
I guess this is all part of the shaping of coworking spaces, the learn-as-we-go method of figuring out what’s going to work best — to hopefully strike a balance between security and openness. It’s great that so many coworking spaces have an open-door policy for drop-ins, and it sucks that such openness is bound to come with drawbacks.
What are your secuity concerns regarding coworking? Have you found any brilliant solutions?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Rob Ristroph // Dec 3, 2008 at 2:08 pm
If you read about or talk to people who have been involved in some of those back-to-the-land hippy communes, they have some interesting observations on freeloaders.
Some of those communes were supposed to generate income from farming, and the amount of work involved was disillusioning — new people would not stay long, so there always is a group of long-term hardcore folks, and a bunch of passers-through. It is common for wandering waifs to show up, take part in all the hippy stuff like singing and meditation and etc, show up for every mealtime but disappear when work was to be done.
Some of these places evolved ways to deal with that, like occasionally having a 3 or 4 day period where everyone provided their own food and intensely focused on a particular project, and the freeloaders would starve and wander off.
I don’t know how to keep the obnoxious types out of a coworking space. Maybe having a membership fee, but one that could be waived in return for some type of work like mopping the floor after hours to keep budgeted but productive members, would work ?
I am looking forward to seeing how launchpad works out. I have customers who have computers in a datacenter in your building, so your location could work out very well for me.
2 Julie Gomoll // Dec 3, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Glad to hear our location will work well for you :)
I’d love to hear some reports from other coworking spaces as to whether or not they’re getting problem visitors or not. I suspect it will be a lesser issue for us simply because we won’t offer free drop-ins (although the cafe is free and open to the public, and we’ll have no problem with “campers”.)
I worry about the many coworking spaces that are handing out keys to lots of people. We hope that everyone’s trustworthy, of course, but I can’t help but envision the headaches that come with having to change the locks, then distribute new keys, then having it happen again… Then again, maybe I’m just old and jaded (insert smile or frown emoticon here - whichever works).
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