Do you see the same people every day in coffee shops, tapping away at laptop keyboards? You might wonder if they don’t have an office to go to, and that may very well be the case.
There is a global movement slowly growing all over the World in response to the first brand new working class of the 21st-century: the digital nomad.
Some years ago in American coffee shops, freelance writers, designers, programmers and others who could do their work armed with nothing more than a laptop and a mobile phone started to notice each other. Every day they would turn up to the same places and see the same faces.
In effect, they were paying “rent” to the coffee shop by buying a fresh cup of something at least once an hour, but this was very cost-effective compared to the cost of an office.
However, they soon realised that if they clubbed together they could take over a large space each of them on their own couldn’t afford, and work together as a bunch of freelancers. This in turn gave a more structured office environment, but with each worker retaining the freedom of being their own boss.
This idea, named co-working, has started a quiet revolution across the globe that offers the chance to re-think how small businesses and freelancers work for ever.
Manchester’s efforts to date have been casual – an odd co-working day here or there – or quite small in the form of a few people in Hulme working out of a unit in the back of a cafe.
However there is clearly a growing need to serve Manchester’s own digital nomads. Whilst Manchester is well catered for in the serviced office market, it’s amongst the top 10 most expensive places to get office space in the World according to The Economist. Lease terms aren’t exactly friendly a lot of the time as well, and all the spaces this digital nomad has witnessed (I’m writing this on my sofa, before cracking on with work in coffee shops and on client sites the rest of the day), have been bland, cold or only suitable for very temporary stops. They cater to their own markets well, but where are the more creative spaces?
There is now an attempt through a non-profit co-operative called Fly The Coop to make co-working a permanent reality in Manchester. (disclaimer: I am on the founding board of FTC, and am currently serving as temporary chair, this is very much one of my “babies”, but it’s a non-profit: I’m not selling anything here).
We know for a fact there are several thousand people working in Manchester who could do with some permanent or semi-permanent space to work from. Walking around coffee shops in Manchester, the same faces appear day after day. Even the central library has a couple of familiar faces in the old technical library where the librarians have offered free laptop plug sockets for use by the weary nomad in need of some quiet time.
The board of FTC are currently trying to work out how best to serve this local community, and are hawking a survey for local nomads to fill in to assess viability of several options. As chief hawker, I’d like to gently ask for 10 minutes of your time. There are no prizes, and the only personal data we insist on having is your postcode (so we can do clever things around geographic distribution). Ah go on, you can get back to browsing the web in 10 minutes…
One of the fascinating things we’ve discovered so far is Manchester’s digital nomads all appear to be in the technology game – programmers, developers, web designers even. In other cities freelance writers can dominate the local scene. If you know people who qualify as a freelancer or small business without a permanent home, please send them this story as we’d love to hear from them – particularly if they aren’t from the digital sector.
I’m also personally interested in finding out if there more co-working spaces out there we don’t know about, interesting spaces that could be used, or stories of Manchester’s digital nomads: please make hearty use of the comment form below!
Dim Sum Digital 