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'Accelerate Serendipity': Independent Workers Turn to Coworking for Structure and Social Life

In shared workspaces across the country, the sharing is almost as important as the space.


David Walker, relaxing on a green couch in an old house in east Austin, was spending a quiet, rainy afternoon chatting and working on his scrapbook. But that gives you the wrong impression of Walker, the scrapbook, the house, the conversation, and even the couch.

Walker is the co-founder of Conjunctured, a coworking space in East Austin. Several years ago, after hosting a handful of jellies—an unfortunate nickname for informal work sessions at a local coffee shop—he and his business partner raised some money and rented the house, which they kitted out with desks, lockers, a kitchenette, and local art.

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Freelancers, Alone No More: Coworking Is Going Big Business How Big Business Are Using Coworking Spaces

There's a seismic shift in how large companies they are envisioning their own internal real estate. That shift is toward mobility.



When it came time for Warecorp to finally have a physical headquarters, CEO Chris Dykstra decided against the traditional office space route. Instead, the software and web services company bought a group membership at a downtown Minneapolis coworking space for its 10 U.S. employees to use when they aren’t visiting clients.

"I just thought, you know, there's really no reason why you couldn't just embed all of your infrastructure in existing coworking spaces," says Dykstra, whose office is now a “campsite,” a hexagon-shaped pod partitioned from others like it with semi-transparent screens.

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Work Displacement: Steven M. Johnson Imagines Future Workspaces

The miraculously inventive Steven M. Johnson thinks about improving the lives of the invisible but essential workers of the world.

Every three months, GOOD releases our quarterly magazine, which examines a given theme through our unique lens. Recent editions have covered topics like the impending global water crisis, the future of transportation, and the amazing rebuilding of New Orleans. This quarter's issue is about work, and we'll be rolling out a variety of stories all month.

Everything I’ve ever read about the “future of work” focuses exclusively on the information worker: science-fiction-worthy “telepresence” (beam me to my meeting, Scotty!), “hotel-ing” as a replacement for permanent desks, and so forth. But what of the majority of folks who work not at computers but in toll booths, drive-throughs, or agricultural fields? How can their future be improved and their work lives enhanced? Research yields an embarrassing lack of attention to their plight.

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