Hello dear Gumbooteers, and welcome to another odd feature of Germany’s new job world: co-working spaces. This most recent development targets freelancers and self-employed people and thus mainly affects the “working poor” of the communications business. I guess it’s probably been around for a while in the US of A, but in Germany, this is currently “the hot thing”.
Be it an old factory, an abandoned office-building or something completely different: In this new idea that first hit
Sitting alone in your office, feeling depressed? Come on lady, that's so OVER...
Berlin (what other spot in Germany would be crazy enough for such an idea?) people get together, form a sort of collective with a small company as an organisational frame and offer cheap office space to freelancers – mostly like themselves. An interesting new form of community – and probably a necessary one!
I know that very situation from my own experience, that, according to many claims by people who are involved with this new “scene”, lead to the invention of co-working spaces. You sit in your home-office and, as we say in Germany, “the ceiling starts to fall on your head”, i.e. you feel crushed by silence, loneliness, frustration, or you can’t get your act together and concentrate… You need not have been a freelancer in order to know this set-up. Most people studying for exams or working on papers for university will be familiar with this eerie sort of desperation.
So – co-working spaces. The means to get out, for little money. The idea used to be around for a while for small companies (office centres), but now this mode of working obviously also reached the freelance-sector and is thus also affordable for people who really don’t have a lot of bakshish at their disposal in order to rent an office.
The advantages are clear: You’ve got no fixed rent, you only pay for the time that you’re actually there. If you’re there more often, you can get a desk “fixed” for you, otherwise you’ll just have to look for a free table. Which is good, because if you know you’re gonna work on this project for a month flat, you go in and rent for the time. If you’re not sure about your workload and jobs and assignments are only coming in sporadically, you’re free to go in for a day, or for hours even (or so I gather). You can also use meeting rooms for representative purposes.
A co-working initiative in Mainz, Germany.
And of course, there are always people around, if you need advice, if you need (say, from my perspective as a writer / editor) a photographer, a web designer, a guy who does graphic design – it’s networking and synergies galore! Because: If the photographer needs a bloke who writes copy, you’re there…
Plus – you get all the equipment used by the collective: Furniture, web access, phones, fax, printers, copying machines etc. Infrastructure, basically.
Many co-working projects even have their own cantina or restaurant, where you can get good food at reasonable prices – often organic and sometimes even tuned to the preferences of growing minorities such as vegetarians or even people who live as vegans (i.e. people who even refrain from consuming milk or any other form of animal proteins).
Co-working definitely is trend in Germany. Freelancers, people in creative jobs and start-up entrepreneurs seem to go
But beware: Most co-working spaces have rules. Messy tables for instance are not considered "cool".
for it and thrive on it because often, as hinted at above, synergies occur when they’re brought together. As in that old Clash song: “Career opportunity (the one that never knocks)”. Except for the fact that in this case, it seems to quite often do just that. And you get a wide range of social life to go with it, which is interesting if you’re new in town as a freelance-guy: The individual communities organize workshops, meet and greets, exhibitions – what not. And that while all the time the thing stays unbinding and completely flexible with regard to your commitment in working hours. Wait a minute – they must have stolen this idea from the Gumboot-team…!
You can get an overview of all German Coworking-initiatives here: