Hello 🙂
I’m Michelle and I’m on what could be described as a coworking adventure.
It all started because I wanted a coworking space in the centre of town, for people like me who don’t need an office full time, but who do need somewhere to work, get online, hold the occasional meeting. More importantly, I wanted to be around like minded people, who I could bounce ideas off, learn from, and even have some fun with! So, I had this crazy idea that actually, maybe I should look into setting one up – if you want something done, do it yourself, right…
I’ve spent the last few months talking, thinking, researching the coworking movement; meeting some of Cardiff’s entrepreneurs and startup companies, and looking at the benefits that a coworking space could bring to Central Cardiff and its startup communities, from tech to bricks and mortar. I’ll be posting my thoughts in more detail on the blog as time goes by.
So, where am I now? Well, still working on it!! But I’d like to think my dream will become reality in the not too distant future! In the meantime, I’d welcome your thoughts and comments on what you’d like from a central Cardiff coworking space – you can email me, tweet me, head over to the survey or comment below!
Thank you, and keep checking back for updates on my adventure!
A new way of working in in Cardiff 
I added this to the survey, but to start a discussion:
If I was going to pay for such a space, I wouldn’t want to pay £15 per day, or a monthly £30 for X day’s usage. It just wouldn’t encourage me to use it. I’d pay £20 a month for ‘unlimited use’, with additional one-off payments for things like meeting room hire, photocopying and cups of coffee.
You could then have a ‘pro’ tier (say, £50 a month) which reserves you a desk for X days a month so that you’re guaranteed to get a space (no guarantee on the ‘starter’ tier).
The way I imagine the space would be to have a ‘main’ section with a big “dinner table” style desk or two – think 10 – 24 people. This would be for drop-in, standard subscription usage. Around the edge of the room you could have smaller desks, ranging from 2 – 4 seats for premium accounts or one-time upgrades. These could be used for when people want to work on an idea together with a bit of privacy, or book a regular desk for X days a week.
Off to the side I’d have two meeting rooms and a ‘cafe/bar’ style area to relax and chat.
It would also be worth making it easy to configure the main room as a conference area for people to book out or to run your own events from.
See here: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7223/7376508490_4f0924d140_c.jpg
thank you Gareth, food for thought – a drop-in subscription for people who don’t necessarily want full days is a good idea – though I think there is a market for the day rate also so possibly could offer a choice of both on the ‘menu’…and thank you for the link also 🙂