[Ismael Ghalimi at Monolab/Workspace, Palo Alto. Photo by shel]
I had a good time last week at the open house for Monolab/WorkSpace in Palo Alto. Monolab is one of three endeavors for Ismael Ghalimi, who is the founder-producer of Office 2.0 as well as founder-CEO of Intalio an Office 2.0 startup that has gained some traction.
When I last talked to Ismael, Monolab was going to be an incubator. Instead, it has followed an emerging trend and has been repositioned as a co-working space, focused on what Ismael calls "global micro corporations." These are small companies sometimes with just one or two people who serve geographically strewn customers or who have a small staff located across two or three continents.
The attractive Palo Alto Monolab is the first of what Ismael hopes will be a global network of similar workspaces. Tenants are treated as club members, and when they travel they will have space waiting for them at other Monolabs. In Palo Alto, each desk has huge Dell and Apple CRTs and members plug in their own computers. Cost is $1500 a month. You get to use facilities such as a shared conference room, a server and other first-rate resources in an upscale neighborhood.
Ismael told me he has already signed up a few tenants so far, one a mom whose kids are cramping her home office productivity, and another comprised of just two guys located in Asia and Palo Alto.
It seems like co-working is popping up in conversations a lot these days. During my brief, ill-fated tenure at WorkFast, Scoble and I interviewed Sanford Dickert, a pioneer in New York City co-working space. In San Francisco, my friends Tara Hunt and Chris Messina at Citizen Agency are recognized pioneers in co-working space. I have friends considering starting a co-work space in beach Half Moon Bay. Regus, the giants in old-fashioned executive offices are also pushing new concepts that sound very much to me like co-working.
This movement puzzles me from one standpoint. It is catching on during recessionary times when most people really don't need a co-working facility. The fact is that technology and economics make the need for shared spaced much less than what it used to be. Office 2.0 technologies, nearly ubiquitous and affordable broadband in the home make it unnecessary to leave your home to go to work. Mobile devices make it so that your office is where you are most of the time for most mobile professionals.
So why this upsurge in shared space?
I think it is being driven not by productivity needs but by human needs. We humans are social by nature. Social media is the next best thing to being their. But a virtual connection is not nearly as valuable as a real face-to-face connecton. My sense is that after a few years of home office and telecommuting, people just want to be around other people and co-working provides it.
If you think about it, we humans spend trillions of dollars to avoid loneliness. When regarded in that light, co-working spaces are a logical and relatively low cost option. It will be interesting to see how it develops over time.
