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Coworking – a movement changing the way we work – Coworking Europe 2011 conference

For the second year in a raw, Global Enterprise organises the Coworking Europe conference.  This year, the conference takes place in Berlin, Germany. 

There are over 375 million independent and mobile workers around the world, they do not work in the traditional office and they are propelling a massive change through collective necessity of workspace and a community with which to belong.

Coworking Europe 2011, organized by Enterprise Globale, CLUBOFFICE, and betahaus, with the support of Deskmag, will serve as an investigation into how spaces are developing as well as the greater effects on creativity, education, and entrepreneurship.

Over 200 people from Europe, China, and the U.S. will converge in Berlin 3-5 November at betahaus and CLUBOFFICE, two of Berlin’s very successful coworking spaces. Participants will represent the spectrum stakeholders in the emerging field delving into university systems, city development, start-up incubation, corporate entities, as well as community building within spaces themselves and creating broader networks for the individual coworkers.

The from coworking spaces to large corporations, the diversity of speakers is one of the strengths of this meeting of minds. Alex Hillman, founder of the coworking space Indy Hall and a figurehead in the global movement, will encourage discussion on the importance of community in taking coworking to the next level. Christoph Giesa from the Otto Group, a large German corporation, will share how even traditional companies have need to pay attention to the movement. Giesa says, “Like all big companies we are facing a shortage of skilled personnel, and we have to accept that there are people who want to work in a different way from now on.”

One of the leading publications documenting the movement, Deskmag, will also be presenting early results of the 2nd Global Coworking Survey. Findings of the research will be extremely valuable to current and potential space owners, learning from coworkers wants and needs, as well as from successful and failed spaces around the world.

There is not one voice which represents the coworking movement. They are in fact quite varied. All people who attend are encouraged to present in an accelerated Barcamp style session. Coworking Feng Shui? Coworking party planning? Green office conditions? Could be any or none of these ideas, the exciting thing will be to see what the coworking community would like to share with eachother.

Berlin holds one of the highest concentraions of cowokring spaces in the world. Coworking Europe will bring the crowd to them individual spaces for a first-hand experience in the different manifestations of coworking spaces in the city. Often the needs of the community found within the space define both the physical space and the community interactions.

The idea of coworking has progressed from its beginnings of groups of freelancers, who had been working alone, collaborating to create a new work environment. These days they are joined by employees of large companies, scientific researchers, students, and more. As with all new things the exciting thing is watching it transform and grow, utilising potential that was before unknown, and creating and idea that may change the way we all work.

www.coworkingconference.com

Notes to the editor:

The figure of over 375 million independent and mobile workers around the world comes from Foresster Research.
Coworking Europe was first held in 2010 in Brussels, Belgium, and was organized by Jean-Yves Huwart of Enterprise Globale.
Coworking Europe 2011 is co-organized by Enterprise Globale, CLUBOFFICE, and betahaus, with the support of Deskmag.

Global Enterprise is an economic “think and do tank”, which analyses new trends impacting modern economy dynamics : creativity, networks, collaboration, entrepreneurship, values, innovation are just some of the major topics covered every day. Global Enterprise is playing an active role in supporting economic operators to develop and browse new physical and digital ecosystems in order to grow their agility and their innovation potential.

CLUBOFFICE is a network of new workplaces where freelancers, enterprise employees and even entire companies can find more than just a space in which to work.

Betahaus is a coworking space which meets the requirements of independent creative professionals and knowledge workers, and expands their opportunities. In a mixture of relaxed coffee house atmosphere and concentrated working environment they create room between work and privacy in which innovation and creativity is fostered. is

Deskmag is the magazine about the new type of work and their places, how they look, how they function, how they could be improved and how we work in them. We especially focus on coworking spaces which are home to the new breed of independent workers and small companies.
Sponsor information:
Deskwanted allows easy online access to working spaces, enabling those with a need for a place to work to easily find their space.
Airbnb are proud to sponser Coworking Europe by providing accomodation to many of the international speakers. Airbnb connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay.

Press Contact:
Coworking Europe press contact:
Julius Ruecker, CLUBOFFICE
julius.ruecker [AT] club-office.com
Mobil +49 (0)1525 364 05 08
Office +49 (0)30 21 50 2041

A global survey on the benefits of coworking for coworkers

The economic think tank Entreprise Globale/Globecorp.biz and the Coworking Europe 2010 conference are partners in the first global survey on coworking users, initiated by the Technische Universität Berlin and Deskmag.

Click here to take part in the Global Coworking survey

This survey is part of an academic, non-commercial study examining the working conditions of coworkers in coworking spaces. It’s the first global survey on coworking. The results will be published for free on a magazine or blog in your country.

All replies are anonymous. We don’t at any point ask for your name, or the name of any coworking space.

The questionnaire is simple to use. You also can switch between languages in the upper right corner. The continue button is at the bottom of the page. Have fun and thank you for your participation!

This survey is organized or supported by:

Lukas de Pellegrin, Technical University of Berlin
Carsten Foertsch, Deskmag – Coworking Magazine
Jean Yves Huwart – Coworking Europe / Enterprise Globale – European conference on Coworking 2010
Carolyn Ockels, Coworking Labs – Coworking Research USA
Cadu de Castro Alves, Global Coworking Group
Anderson Costa, Movebla – Brazilian Coworking Magazine
Massimo Carraro, Cowo – Coworking Network Italy
Sebastian Sooth, Hallenprojekt – German Coworking Network
Manuel Zea Barral, Working Space, Coworking Madrid
Akira Matsuda, Coworking JP – Coworking Blog Japan
Nicolas Koreni, moboff – Japanese Coworking Network
Joel Alas, Deskwanted – Global Coworking Space Directory
Nathanaël Sorin-Richez, Silicon Sentier – La Cantine Paris
Pernilla Raj – Coworking Sweden

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Facebook is taking over Google : it sounds like the Web is becoming truly social

Everybody has noticed it. It is no anecdote :

Facebook has taken over Google as the most visited website in the US.

(source : http://www.sneijers.net)

There is no reason to believe the trend is to weaken. As far as Facebook keeps growing (above 400 millions users nowadays), the biggest social network in the world should soon takes the crown of world n°1 website off the head of Larry & Sergey’s search engine.

The web is already social, and Facebook sets the pace

As a matter of facts, the shift has occured, yet. The web is truly social.

Whereas Facebook grows in size, the social network remains far in the shadow of Google in terms of revenues. Those could reach 1 to 2 billions dollars in 2010,… twelve less than the latter.

Though, Facebook runs in the tracks of its forerunner. The Facebooks ads service sounds like a terrific, very accurate, advertisement tool that could become very popular in the years to come.

Moreover, today, lots of discussions, conversation, content sharing or news posting take place directly on Facebook. Companies have skipped the stage of setting up their own blog and rely solely on a Facebook page and/or Twitter account for their digital marketing.

Google Social Search and the race to catch up with the social web

So far, Google hasn’t lost the game. Despite its backfire in China, the search engine remains strongly armed.

However, recent initiatives induce Google is in a defensive position.

The company had to strike a financial deal with Twitter in order to index its content in its search results. Google has been challenged by internautes regarding the instant search.

Recently, Google announced a number of move toward more social search and actions. Not always succesful, so far.

Social network Orkut has hit in a limited number of countries.

Google Buzz hasn’t been a very big hit, useless to say.

With Google Social Search, the company of Mountain View is touching its core business.

The service, still under beta version, demonstrates how the social web is now taking the lead as opposed to the historical web.

Google Social Search relies on the social graphs the company has an access to, via Gmail and other logged in tools.

Hereby, though, Google implicitely recognize that social recommendation is more relevant than its search algorithm.

There, it is not sure Google is in a better position than Facebook…

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