neat video about coworking by Jay Dedman and Ryan Hodson of the Hat Factory in San Francisco

Lots of us work at home now, either self-employed or telecommuting. Sometimes it can be lonely; other times one misses the interchange of ideas that comes from being with other people. That is where co-working comes in, where people share space and resources. "Over the past year or two, these co-working spaces have been sprouting up around the country in recognition of individual entrepreneurs who have taken to working out of coffee shops but who still desire the kind of human interaction that they can't really get there," says Jon Pierce, a software developer who co-founded the Beta House in Cambridge, Mass in February of this year to serve as a working space for independent Web developers, product managers and start-up owners.

It's not like office hotelling or rent-a-desk serviced spaces; "it's like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes."

According Brad Reed in Network World and IT Canada, there are roughly 16.2 million self-employed teleworkers and 12.4 million teleworkers employed by an outside party in the USA. "For the past 10 to 15 years, we've lived in an age where you can work in socks and underwear, but that doesn't prevent you from going insane," says Charles Planck of the Affinity Lab co-working space in Washington. "You find that if you're at home too much, you lose your edge in dealing with people."

MSM covers coworking (Is the Post Mainstream Media?)

According to Reed: "People who operate within co-working spaces often refer to their way of work as a "movement." Although co-working spaces have significant differences in both service and culture, co-working as a whole is generally defined by four major values: collaboration, openness, community and sustainability. Essentially, co-working spaces encourage their members to share as many of their ideas with each other as possible and to not feel they're in competition with their co-working colleagues." ::IT Canada

Not having heard the term, we found that like every open-source idea there is a wiki listing co-working venues all over the world, a coworking community blog, even googlemaps.:

View Larger Map

I may just get out of the spare bedroom and go check out our local Indoor Playground and see who's there.

Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:

• Gotta Get Outta the House? Consider Co-working
• Using Life Cycle Analysis to Reduce Emissions and Encourage Video Conferencing
• Wired on Working From Home
• Work From Home? What Do You Call it?

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