the one tool you need to run your coworking space
www.cobot.me
cobot was created to free coworking space managers from mundane tasks, giving them the time to do what is important: attending to their coworkers.
For space using our wifi integration feature, you can now set an expiry date for guest accounts.
This allows you for example to give the organizers of an event a guest account that they can use during the event. After that it expires automatically and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Dear Friends,
Never too late to say Happy New Year! 2012 has been good for coworking. Let 2013 be great.
During the last year, with more than 2000 coworking spaces around the world, the movement started to take the next level. The results from the last Global Coworking Survey, conducted by the people at Deskmag, showed that coworkers are also feeling the benefits of coworking - many report that they share knowledge and collaborate with others in their space and most of them plan to stay where they are in the new year. Everything indicates that more spaces will be started this year, and that those that opened in the last couple of years will get bigger, open new locations, and be more profitable. Good times for coworking.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing are the values that are helping the community of coworking managers to improve their spaces; and the many coworking meet-ups that happened in 2012 all around the world served as a platform to exchange ideas and stories. We made it to GCUC, Coworking Spain and Coworking Europe, where we had a great time and we came back from each of them with a long list of to-dos - from decoration for our space to new features for cobot.
We keep an eye on conferences for this year like the ones planned in Slovenia and Spain, and of course on JellyWeek and look forward to know more about GCUC 2013, Coworking Days and the rest of get-togethers and global activities taking place in 2013. The list will get longer and longer, but this is the fuel that keep us moving.
In between real-life-meetings we like to keep in touch and hear other space managers’ stories. During last year we had the great opportunity to have long talks with Felena from Hera Hub, Ky and Roz from CoInside and Eric from Mutinerie. They shared with us their first challenges as coworking managers and their vision of the future of coworking. Be sure to read the interviews today if you missed our newsletters, and let us know if you want to share your story as well.
We haven’t stopped improving Cobot either. 2012 has been intense: We did a complete redesign, we added features (such as the events calendar, the custom fields, custom tax rates and billing dates, pay for others or the customizable home pages).
We have also translated Cobot to four languages (French, Spanish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese) thanks to your participation in our translation project (where you can, by the way, help us with other languages as Italian or German - contact us), we connected Cobot with more third party services (mainly payment systems like Adyen), launched our network plans for those space that are growing and expanding, like Hera Hub… and since we like to keep moving we keep working in new updates that we will announce and release during the next weeks.
All this wouldn’t be possible without you! Cobot users, space managers, coworkers, contributors using our API; the curators behind Coworking Weekly, CoworkingWiki, all the conferences and events, and all those starting projects that work towards a better coworking community, such as the Coworking Visa Coworking Visa or the CoPass.
You gave us the motivation and feedback we need to do better every day. We want to say a big Thank You and make a wish for 2013: to hear even more from you.
Cheers, and Happy Coworking!
Cristina
We are happy to relase our latest feature: the event calendar.
All event management happens in a calendar similar to the booking calendar you already know. As the admin of a space you can add events. Your members can then see these on Cobot and RSVP with a click of a button.
Optionally you can charge for an event - the amount will be added to the member’s next invoice on Cobot.
This feature comes as what we call a Cobot App, which means in order to use it you have to install it once. To do that go to http://events.apps.cobot.me and log in. After that you will be redirected to your space on Cobot and the app is installed (under the Manage tab).
Please let us know what you think.
Resources with capacity
We just added a feature to the booking calendar: resources now have a capacity field. If the capacity is greater than one multiple people can book a resource at the same time.
The main use case is for coworking spaces who want to have their members book a desk before they come in: instead of having to add every desk in the space as a separate resource they can now add one Desk resource with a capacity according to the number of desks they have.
To start using this log into cobot and go to the admin section of your space. Click Setup, then on _Booking Calendar and add a resource.
We just added another feature: custom fields. Until now Cobot could store basic details like address and email for each member. In addition we provided questionnaires to ask coworkers for additional information.
Now admins can define custom fields to store any member data. This can be phone numbers, websites, twitter handles or whatever is interesting to the space.
To set up custom fields go to Setup -> Custom fields and add a few fields:
After setting up the fields you can fill in the data for each member. Go to a member’s page and follow the ‘More fields’ button.
Location: Paris, France | Size: 400 sqm | Desk Seats: 70 | Event Capacity: Up to 120 guests
What is your vision of coworking?
We believe in a very simple model. Our motto is “Libres Ensemble” (“free together”). We think that independent workers can be divided into three main subcategories: The Creators (designers, developers…), the Communicators (bloggers, journalists…) and the Managers(entrepreneurs, consultants…). They can work alone, but these three types need each other.
For us, coworking is the way to bring them together and make something good take place. This is why we wanted to keep the space open to anyone.
How did you come across the idea of opening a coworking space? What issues did you have at the beginning and how did you solve them?
We thought of coworking independently of each other. One day we realized we all had the same problem and were thinking of a similar solution. We had entrepreneurial ideas, but couldn’t find a space that would fit our expectations. We carried on with other projects, and I moved to Berlin to do an internship.
During this time we also met the people from Betahaus, Utopic_us, Cowo360, and IndyHall, and they were a great inspiration for us. Two years ago, we decided we wanted to start our own space.
Being a freelancer in France is not so recognized as in the United States or Germany. Many people in France still thinks in terms of corporations, and even if it is not said out loud, people still think like this and their behaviour is affected by this belief. The mentality may not be the best for being a freelancer, but the situation is evolving in the right direction. Due to the financial crisis people are being pushed to find their own solutions, and this is a good moment to form a community. So we started creating one.
We worked on the concept, met other people. After three months we visited a space and the owner told us we could have it. They told us we could move in almost immediately, and the first month was for free! There was obviously something wrong with the place. We started working there until one day the police came and started changing the locks.
In two days we were back to where we started. This is how we built the core of Mutinerie: we did not have a space but the people were still with us, and many of them still are. We knew we were able to gather people together so we started looking for a better place. It took some time but we already had the community and a well-known blog. We started building the community without the space. We would organize events, do coworking in our flats, update the blog… In this phase of the project we spoke with more than 300 people, and they told others about our space.
So what does a day in your life typically look like? How do you run your space?
We are all working on this project full-time. We have a lot of events, around four per week, so we have to organize, move the furniture in the space, host the attendees, etc. We also take care of the financial aspects, communication, maintenance of the space, and plan improvements.
Cobot helps with this. We wanted to give a lot of flexibility to our coworkers, and it is hard and time consuming to do everything manually, that is, check members in, send invoices, etc. We could have chosen a simpler system, but cobot is flexible, the invoicing is pleasant, and the other options in the market were not so good at that time. Of course, cobot is not perfect and there are a lot of things that can be improved; being partially open-source could be a solution for this. We started to work with the API and are trying to build some additional apps, but unfortunately we are not developers.
What advice would you give to someone considering running a coworking space, and what are your wishes for the future of coworking?
There is a lot of advice in the web, which is cool, but you also have to find your own way. We at Mutinerie have a strong identity, and I like this very much. We have the pirates, the atmosphere, most of our furniture is recycled… We tried to do it our way, still listening to advice, for sure, but we wanted to have our own spirit. This is something we admire in spaces like Betahaus or Utopic_US, that they have an identity. We all want to work together, but we are all different and we should build different spaces.
We have no doubt that coworking is going to expand a lot more, and we think it is going to be more structured. A problem I see is that many spaces are run by people who don’t make a profit, and this may affect their motivation. We have to avoid burning out; we need to find the right balance, be fair, and offer great service, but at the same time we should be more structured and make sure that our spaces are financially sustainable. I hope the big players are going to keep the spirit and values and expand the concept in the right way. If it gets bigger, we may lose some things on the way, but we need to make sure we keep the original spirit. Coworking is here to stay. We are not amateurs anymore.
This is Mutinerie’s cobot space. Do you want one? Sign up for a free trial today!
Our friend Jaime Aranda, from WorkInCompany — the first coworking space in Sevilla, Spain — shared with us this amazing idea they had to give visibility to coworking.
CoworkingDays is a two-day event during which you just have to open the doors of your space or bring it to the streets.
Coworking is here to stay. The number of spaces grows every day as an answer to a growing demand. Independent professionals are the future and coworking plays a role in their growth and development; each of them represents an initiative, a little company that starts up strong, full of innovative ideas.
Coworking is entrepreneurship and thus its growth needs to be supported. Each coworking space is a project accelerator, each community is an idea development team with huge potential. Vertical collaboration between professionals is a takeoff ramp for those who are just beginning. The traditional atelier and Bauhaus reappear in a model where entrepreneurs and professionals share knowledge that directly reverses them, as shipping rejuvenating experiences or business premises.
Spaces prepared to get people ready to work constructively and are looking for new models. The perfect place to unlock the initiative and show to the young (and not so young) that the rules have changed. Communities that educate in a new way of working, to create another reality. Certainly, these are environments in which it is possible to create new jobs. Is there something better than teaching someone how to provide for themselves, to end youth unemployment? The reality is new and different tools, and coworking is the technique to communicate and convey how to use them.
Despite being an increasingly present reality for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and independent professionals, coworking is not yet as well-known as it should be. There is confusion about the concept and a growing opportunism around the term which subtracts from its true value. It is necessary to unite the creative community of coworking spaces, together sending a clear message to everyone, showing the great potential and the reason for this movement; a philosophy, or more than that: a lifestyle.
The CoworkingDay is a global action supported by thousands of existing coworking spaces. A call to join forces and coordinate actions in order to achieve presence in the media for two days, generating enough content to convey the potential of coworking.
Main ideas to convey: Globality, mobility, CoworkingVisa, global market opportunities. Locally creating professional / entrepreneur / business networking, a local economy. Entrepreneurship, acceleration, entrepreneurial community, dynamism, entrepreneurial mindset Creativity, design thinking, new ways of doing, experimentation, innovation Employment, self-employment, social activities, opportunities for the unemployed Community, do-it-with-others, collaboration, synergies, opportunities
How you do this will be convening for two days of action: an open day and a day of urban actions / outside spaces. Both actions will reach not only people who already know something of coworking but also those who have not had any contact yet. Everything will be coordinated with a common web and social networks, and news releases will be local, national, and international.
The first opportunity arises for mid-September. Then, with some lessons learned, we can start working on the next CoworkingDays in the second half of January. The idea aims to generate informative biannual coordinated actions to the fullest extent possible, which serves to give visibility to coworking itself, spaces, coworkers, and communities involved in this new way of doing.
The goal To be as noisy as possible
The content Not as important as the coordination. We all know how to give a talk about coworking, show people what we do, and show our spaces.
The difference We are all doing it on the same date, and we are telling the world about it.
The tools You just need to write an agenda, some lines with the times and the activities - Friday 14th September, Saturday 15th September, it does not need to be both days, and it does not have to be for a whole day. Send it together with pictures and links please!
How do I jump in? Friend CoworkingDays in Facebook Follow @CoworkingDays in Twitter Check out http://coworkingday.net
Please make sure to leave us a comment if you plan to join this initiative, we’d love to hear about your ideas for Coworking Days!
And remember! If you join this action, you’ll be able to save money and time using cobot to manage your space… while you cowork ;).
This has probably been the most and longest requested feature but today we are finally rolling it out. Admins can now change the date when the invoices for their members are sent.
We have an entry to the Invoices dropdown on the member page:
Which leads you to this form:
Today we are releasing an addition to our one time charges called services. Services let you create a list of things you often want to charge for. This way you don’t have to remember the price and put in a description every time yo want to charge somone, but can just select it from the list.
You can find services on the Add Charge page for a member.
We just rolled out a new feature that we call Pay for other members. It pretty much does what it says: you can assign a member John to pay for another member Max. From then on John will pay for everything we would normally charge Max, which means all one time charges, bookings and other fees will appear on John’s invoice instead of on Max’.
One use case is that a coworking space has a number of coworkers who are being paid for by their company. Cobot supports this now by adding the company as a member, all the employees as separate members and then assign the company account to pay for all the employees.
To enable this, as admin, go to a member, open the Invoicing dropdown menu and select Pay for other members. In the following form select a name, click the button and you are done.
