The Rise of Coworking Spaces in Victoria - A New Way of Building Community
I work in an office and being completely honest, I truly love it. I like having a destination in the morning. I appreciate the delineation of work space and home space. And despite being somewhat of a introvert, I really like the happenstance camaraderie of the office. I came into the office through the entire pandemic, I have worked a couple of days here and there at home, but overall I have not truly tried to work from home. That said, I can understand why some people choose to work from home. It removes some of the social norms that an office has when it comes to dress and casual conversation; it can be significantly cheaper if you are driving, parking, and eating downtown during the course of a workday; it provides a safe place to work for those with health challenges; and you get back the time between work and home that was used as part of the commute. I am sure those that have done it over the last few years have many more benefits in mind for why they may choose to work at home, if it was a choice.
For other people, an office is a luxury that they don't have. Maybe their work took that option away; they work at a small company; or for themselves and having office space just isn't quite in the financial cards yet. Or is it? Even before the pandemic, we saw the rise of coworking spaces, companies like Wework.com were the jewels of Wall Street. (Ironically, it looks like the slow death of wework.com is finally upon us) In Victoria, there are at least three larger coworking places that I am aware of: Kwench, Regus and theDock. I believe there are a few smaller ones as well. These spaces give those people that don't have an office, but would like one, an alternative to building one at their home. These spaces are also an option for companies that are still too small to be able to afford their own dedicated office.
Generally, coworking spaces offer a mix of hot desks, dedicated desks and small office spaces. Usually there are a few of meeting rooms that can also be used. There is generally some lounge area available for the cowork space users as well. Some places like Regus allow you to just come in and use their lounge space to connect to their wi-fi and do some printing (for a price of course). I had been into Kwench a couple of times for events previously and had a tour of the space, but I had never actually been inside a cowork space during a workday and seen it being used. That was until the other day when due to some happenstance, I ended up sitting at theDock during their monthly salad loop lunch.
TheDock is a little bit different from some of the other coworking spaces around Victoria. The full title for the office is theDock - Centre for Social Impact. From the name I was fairly certain I wasn't going to find a bunch of day-traders or bitcoin dealers at the salad loop. Indeed, it was a robust group of those working in the social enterprise sphere for the most part. Apart from a couple of programmers, I am not sure many of those using the space work in a for-profit company. That said, being in the space, my first question wasn't the financial liquidity of the entities that were there. I was interested why anyone was there at all when we are told that most everyone truly wants to work at home.
I was met when I arrived at theDock by Colin Richards. A wonderfully nice person and he seemed truly happy to show me around the place. After getting me a coffee and sitting down at the salad loop, I asked him that question, why are people wanting to come in here? And he just said look around, there were twenty plus people in the room and the conversations were loud, animated and positive and most of all they were not restricted to those that worked in the same organization. People were chatting with those that they didn't know and those that worked in completely different spheres. Colin said that he saw his work not so much as renting office space, but creating community. I could see that it seemed to be working.
As I said, in my second article on revitalizing downtown Victoria last February, we are going to see a large amount of older office buildings becoming available in the next few years. This is due to larger organizations shedding unneeded space as their staff continue to work from home. Wouldn't it be great if we could fill at least a few of those empty office buildings with coworking spaces? There certainly seems to be demand, theDock has recently expanded to add a second floor to their operation. That brand new space is very nice and modern and I expect that it will appeal to young people looking to have a space to call their own. I know that if I was looking for a space to work, build community and find people to collaborate with, theDock would be at the top of my list. I also think that as we see a broader move from large organizations being the only option for a job, to many more small companies and organizations, the need for coworking space will only grow.
I find it so interesting to have had this chance to spend time in a place where all of the people there are choosing to come into the office and actually paying for the privilege. It is a very different vision than what we have been seeing in other sectors. The key is that it focuses on us as social animals and while I recognise the benefits of working at home, I believe that there true benefits to working in an office as well. The more coworking places that we can have filled downtown with workers, the better for the long term health of it and the broader community.
If you are interested in checking out theDock, you can find out a ton more about it on their website and I sure that Colin would be more than happy to show you around. Also as I am being so effusive about it, I should be very clear that this is not a paid article and I received no benefit from theDock or its parent organization Scale Collaborative, I was just really impressed with my time there.
I would love to hear from all of you on your experience. Have you used coworking space? What did you think the benefits for you were? What were some of the challenges? Let us know in the comments.