At the Coworking Europe Conference we took the chance to host a session at the 2nd day, the Unconference-Day. Since we are keen to exchange experiences with other Coworking Spaces, we offered a discussion round about Co-Learning. What offers do other Coworking Spaces have, which activities are they doing to foster education and knowledge as well as collaboration and community.
About 15 people joined our group and we had an interesting exchange. Many different approaches were mentioned, e.g. having a Coworking Space in the countryside with dedicated workshop offers for co-learning as well as coworking and co-living. Others do internal training for staff and let their staff then educate the coworkers or they offer workshops with a pay-what-you-can-effort pricing scheme.
We thank all participants for their input and the good discussion. As promised here are the notes from the session:
introduction round:
Jingjing: coming from China, living in Stuttgart
Leadership Trainer, HR development
education is the key to change people
Harald: Coworking Owner, Stuttgart
how could we enable more education within coworking spaces
Ramon: Betacowork Brussels
did run a lot of open events
now focus on piratical sides
internal meetings – coworkers teach coworkers
training for teams, which is open to coworkers too
staff has to present their learnings to the coworkers
next starting paid courses: professional courses to help people make more money (pricing, sales course)
Sarah: Italy torino, freelancer, working for coworking space
(events, location)
practical classes for free.
peer to peer education
is there a way bottom up to create peer to peer classes?
is it possible to have free events for coworkers, but paid form outside?
philipp, montreal
small space
dont do colearning
share expertise
but there is no space to really share
how could he enable to sharing?
francesca italy
interested in best practices
marcus, brazil
impact hub
have education – coworkers pay half price
some people who generously share their knowledge for free
some courses to pay what you could effort
sometimes one afternoon
henrik, sweden
from pension fund
is interested in three dimensions
colearning is third dimension, share abandoned space
ben, australia
coworking space of corporates, freelancers and creatives
does only basic things until now
next year more space for workshops and such
??? french, mutinery paris
one space in paris
another in country side -> farm with coworking and fablab
mutinery school -> users can share their knowledge
if it is paid or not is up the one who is offering
short courses during the week in paris
longer courses in the village
martine, french between bordeaux and toulouse
170qm
very new space
small community
workshops during week, 1 1/2 hours
small topics, organization, tools, new skills
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which topics are required?
– in germany: law and how to create a company?
– belgium: marketing, pricing (legal not so important)
– brazil: the legal part is not so important, freelancers care much more about their work . therefore help them in their core business, that is hard to do in a class, but how?
suggestion from sarah: three needs:
a) a specific need, e.g. tax/legal – offer an office hour
b) group need, help from peer to peer
c) freelancers have to be ahead: get inspired – the big thing a coworking space can do – „capacity building“ – here it is possible to use the power of coworkers
francesca:
incubator within coworking space
develop tools to make it easy to connect people
one day a month an accounter comes to help people
senior/retired people give time and offer consulting for free
workshops to share experience between freelancers and startups
how does the plattform at mutinery work?
have a teaching room, normal public room
if it is not booked it is used as a teaching room
plattform online, where people could offer their courses and other people could search
also the do research what the coworkers need
courses outside (in the village) for more then one day is better – no distraction, more learning then within three hours
seven students only (small groups)
do people come from alone and offer their courses?
it’s more pulling and asking the people if they could offer something
but at mutinery they offer a lot from alone
so how to choose which courses are held?
talk with them, communicate, talk a lot
also listen to the needs – if there is a demand then find someone who could offer the course
co-development / meetup
if one has a problem then post the question and bring people together to discuss the issue
martine: she is a teacher, sees the problem of how could coworkers be enabled to be better teacher?
– what is a good teacher? not every specialist is a good teacher!
how do we pay for the work to organize the courses?
first year didn’t make money
with the three day courses now the can make some money
people are willing to pay for the courses
usually it would cost 1500 – 3000, but at mutinery in country side it costs 500 eur
solution in Brazil, that people could pay what they could effort – normally the courses are at half price then, so some pay full price and others pay less
Thanks for sharing!!!