Co-working groups are a variation on co-working spaces. I highly recommend employing this model and developing it as a women-centric variant of co-working spaces in order to achieve women’s business and life goals which exist outside of traditional business goals and operations.
Please note that many, if not most, women’s business aspirations do fit within traditional models. With the development of other models, that could change.
If the day is a Monday, it means I go to the Computer Lab at the YWCA and facilitate a co-working session for women bloggers. This is under the auspice of a Meetup.com group, Tucson Women Bloggers. I coordinate the group and have watched and nurtured as it has evolved into three branches that include training, co-working, and social gatherings.
Living your legacy, making your dreams and goals real when you are mature, is supported when you draw upon an encouraging network of women working toward similar goals on similar trajectories.
The Tucson Take On Co-Working Groups
In the our writing co-working group, one woman is simply writing her memoirs on a lab computer, saving the reports to a thumb drive, and printing the results, as well as saving them on a thumb drive. Putting them online is not her highest priority at this time, although she has done so in the past and may do so again.
Laptops, tablets and paper journals open. Some work on blog posts, entries in journals are made, and we collectively help women overcome snafus as they set up their blogs for the first time. Stories flow. Laughter breaks out. A very positive sense of achievement fills the room.
Co-working spaces evolve as niche-based solutions to contemporary, often urban, entrepreneurial and business needs.
In Tucson, where I am based, and which has a knack for creation of human-centered innovative solutions to urban needs.
Whether it is the rare bird of a community-based radio station, KXCI, or the community-based re-use network, FreeCyle, that started out in the Old Pueblo, Tucson nurtures community-innovation and solutions. And our old school establishments are very deeply rooted in ancient practice, our churches are often sanctuaries, real sanctuaries.
Co-working as an adaptive strategy in a new economy fits the way Tucson works. We are well into the fine-tuning process of this venture cycle. Early trials of the concept have closed their doors, as did Maker House in April of 2015.
Tucson Co-working Spaces
Gangplank broke away and reconfigured itself into Co-Lab that seems to be subsumed by Startup Tucson. The the focus is on venture and tech development. It does allow free drop-ins.
Spoke6, the first coworking space in Tucson, is still in business although its website is woefully out of date which never bodes well for a business.
Connect Coworking, like some other spaces, offers tiers of workspace/membership with rates available for limited daily access too.
Rail Yard is a newer entry into the co-working space market with two art and design community members operating the space.
Most of these spaces will gladly arrange tours and/offer free working days to present their spaces to you. Distinctly different atmospheres grace each establishment.
If living your legacy includes starting a business or nonprofit venture, check out local facilities where you
share overhead and support services and allow for synergistic interaction.
Groups and Spaces
One take that is unsupported by research, as far as I know, but makes for a reasonable hypothesis, is that traditional technology heavy co-working spaces are usually more male supported structures. Women have co-worked forever through the multitasking that is necessary for family and home maintenance, and networks for community support activities. I suspect that women focus on the processes in coworking spaces and men focus on the physical territory of the coworking space. Like all generalizations this is probably overstepping the bounds of credulity with snippets of wisdom and truth within it.