Fortunately, yesterday was a reasonably quiet day: Earthwise continued cutting glass bottles for their trasparent wall with earnest - they're looking for 4 friendly volunteers who want to learn the skill to come over on Monday and help out - which will make the job incredibly quick. I'm also wanting to design the bar using glass bottles, but I think we all need to get together and have a proper, sensible think about where we're going to put it.
Susanna came back from her holidays in Scotland much refreshed, but still concerned about where she's going to fit into the project. We talked for some hours and tried to work out where she was at and what her needs were. We concluded that, at least in the short term:
- she wants a space a couple of days a week to design and make furniture and to experiment with business models etc.
- she doesn't really want to administer the space
- that she needs somewhere to put her tools (some of which only she will use)
- I proposed that we make a lo-maintenance cowerking tool space for everyone at CW that is not shared publicly. Coachwerkers can put their tools in there and therefore free up their own space for creative stuff.
- In the future, if Soos' business models work out, perhaps we can expand towards a cowerking bench scheme like what they have here http://www.fishcontemporaryfurniture.com/scheme.htm - but at the moment we don't have enough room for this.
- We still need to finalise with S where that space will be and make some kind of written agreement about it so she can concentrate and help make it happen. (we need to make agreements with everyone)
I'm quite pleased, because I've spent a good few days trying to conjure up a workable, efficient and above all, simple system for Coachwerkers to communicate with each other, communicate with everyone else and show what's going on. Susanna & Nigel came for dinner and I showed them the new setup and they both seemed to think it was a good idea, which is encouraging. The basics of it are:
- a group email account, with sub-folders for each coachwerker where your name.coachwerks emails go.
- a group contacts list, with sub-folders for each of the Coachwerkers
- a group calendar, with everyone's calendars showing everything simultaneously (this will be very useful in the future when we have a sync'd booking system)
- group access to the website, which I am teaching everyone how to use and update (for group and personal blogging)
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I also talked with Nigel about a highly pressing matter for Coachwerks, which is how we make agreements with the Coachwerkers and how we receive payments for the space. I've sent him what I've got & we're going to start talking about it seriously very soon. Again, the aim is to be simple and to cut out excess work and red tape. We're not accountants and it doesn't have to be hard.
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Charlie's workshop was interesting - there were four of us in total. However, it was clear that we are not really ready for this kind of workshop - which required considerable concentration. We started in the large studio and then, because of the size, noise and slightly frenetic atmosphere, we moved into my house. I realise that this was also not right and in the future, if we want to make this kind of work, we're going to need a space that we can shape to our needs. There were just too many distractions and this really affected the dynamic of the group and consequently, the delivery of the workshop. I think that noisier workshops that involve building things will be ok right now, but it will be a little while before we should hold quiet ones, until we've got a proper quiet shared space sorted.
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that's it for now, I'll write one up this evening. I'll be going through our new communication system with everyone as and when I can grab ya!
G