This was originally written as a guest post on Gus Sentementes’ BaltTech blog for the Baltimore Sun.

What if there was a place where freelancers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and financiers could meet up to collaborate on up-and-coming startup ideas? That place exists today, and it’s called Beehive Baltimore.

On October 1st, Beehive Baltimore will celebrate its first nine months of operation as a coworking facility, located in the Emerging Technology Center in Canton.

If you’re not familiar with coworking, it’s a shared workspace for creative professionals who might otherwise work at home or in a coffee shop. These days, anyone who works primarily via laptop and the internet is a great candidate for coworking!

Beehive Baltimore opened February 1, 2009 specifically to cater to these kinds of professionals, and the Beehive community now has over 40 members including people in web design, programming, marketing, public relations, finance and other information-based industries.

Last Thursday, we held an open house at the Hive for prospective members and others in the community to stop by, meet some of our members, and find out more about what coworking is all about.

Beehive is designed to be a community of peers, and does not aim to make a profit. Working in partnership with the Emerging Technology Center in Canton, Beehive aims to connect freelancers, seasoned entrepreneurs, and other professionals via long-term relationships that lead to mutual benefit – and possibly to new startups!

The Hive (as we call it) has also already given birth to multiple events and meet-ups that might not otherwise have a place to meet. Some of the groups that we either have hosted or have helped create include:

• Baltimore Angels (an angel investment group)
• Baltimore Hackers (a computer language study group)
• Baltimore/Washington Javascript meetup
• Baltimore Flash/Flex User Group (a group for users of Adobe’s Flex platform)
• Refresh Baltimore (a web professionals group)
• Barcamp Baltimore (a user-generated tech conference)
• TEDxMidAtlantic (coming on November 5th)

On October 1st at 12pm, Beehive Baltimore will host its first “Show and Tell” event, where participants are invited to share their projects, startups, or prototypes and get feedback from the group.

And on October 15th, Beehive Baltimore will be recognized by the Maryland Daily Record as an “Innovator of the Year.”

Several Beehive members and affiliates will be providing some guest posts for BaltTech over the next two weeks while Gus Sentementes is on vacation. So stay tuned for some voices from the Hive over the coming days!

Beehive Baltimore is part of a large coworking movement. Hundreds of cities all around the world from Los Angeles to Charlotte to Paris to Shanghai have implemented coworking facilities, and we see ourselves as connected to these communities.

And so coworking looks to be an integral part of the tech startup ecosystem – where entrepreneurs, creative talent, and angel investors can all come together to talk about the Next Big Idea.

To find out more about Beehive Baltimore, visit http://beehivebaltimore.org or email info@beehivebaltimore.org.

Coworking Is Like Barcamp Every Day

Last time we showed that the Barcamp format is a simple design that promotes certain behaviors and outcomes. Coworking is a design that promotes a similar set of behaviors on an ongoing basis. This shouldn’t be too surprising as both ideas were conceived and developed by a lot of the same people — Chris Messina and Tara Hunt, among others.

In this round, we’ll cover some of the underpinnings of the design of Coworking; in fact there is so much to cover, the next installment will be dedicated to coworking as well.

What Coworking Isn’t

Upon hearing about coworking (independent workers sharing workspace), most people immediately engage their left brains: OK, so you get a space and then split the rent — you get office amenities at a much lower cost, get out of the house, and work in a “real office.” People immediately assume it’s some kind of real estate play and is similar to the concept behind the postmodern “executive suite.” This conception is dead wrong.

This faulty conception is what has led some to think they would start a “coworking space” and then wade into a lease and other commitments assuming that if they build it, they will come. Who were they building it for? The fact is there is no guarantee that anyone will ever come to any coworking space. So, these folks are left holding the bag wondering what they did wrong.

They failed to build a community first.

Timeline: The Birth of Coworking in Baltimore

Implementing something like coworking or a barcamp is fairly straightforward, but just like making a recipe, the order in which you add ingredients is important. These were the steps we took:

• July 2007: I heard about coworking online and discussed it at length with Noel Hidalgo while vacationing in Berlin, Germany
• September 2008: Discussed the concept with Alex Hillman from Philadelphia’s Indy Hall while vacationing in Vienna, Austria
• October 2008: Mentioned the idea to my friend local attorney and business leader Newt Fowler; traveled to Philadelphia to meet with IndyHall founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi who generously gave us a crash course in coworking dynamics
• November 1, 2008: Held a session at SocialDevCamp East 2 to gauge interest in coworking — formed a Google group with 30 members on the spot
• November 6, 2008: Had our first session at a local coffee shop to see if folks would show up; at least 10 did
• November 2008-January 2009: Regular coworking sessions at the coffee shop Tuesdays and Thursdays; each day had 5+ people show up
• December 2008: Sustained interest confirmed our idea that obtaining a space might be a workable idea; developed an arrangement with a local technology incubator location that would allow us to get started without assuming any significant risk
• January 2009: Incorporated Beehive Baltimore, LLC with a minimal amount of capital from three partners to insure the venture’s success. Secured charter member commitments from 20+ members which would insure our monthly rent number would be covered.
• February 1, 2009: Had a community “barn raising” where our members and their families came to assemble furniture and setup the Hive
• February 2, 2009: Grand opening day of work at the Hive with many members present. We’ve been growing and thriving ever since, hosting events like Twestival and Refresh Baltimore.
• February 15, 2009: Article in the Sunday Baltimore Sun about the launch of coworking in Baltimore

Coworking has an extremely bright future in Baltimore. At each stage along the way, we used tools like Twitter, Facebook, and events to discuss the initiative and get input from our community stakeholders. We figured out who would be served by coworking, drafted them into the discussion, and at each step made sure that we had buy-in from the people who would be the primary users. A chain of dozens of decisions led to a successful outcome; at any stage along the way, failure to observe and listen to our community could have aborted our efforts.

Now that our community is strong, we can exist anyplace; it’s not about the space, it’s about the people.

Some Traps to Avoid

Don’t try to “impress.” It doesn’t matter how “money” your space looks, or how “professional” it appears, or if it’s in a trendy place, or if it’s built with glass and granite. That said, having a pleasant workspace is always desirable, but people interested in coworking are generally not looking to convey a sense of status in their workspace. They are looking for community, company, and mental stimulation. You can get that in a modestly furnished workspace just as easily as in a high-rise office building. Find something that’s sufficiently good and pleasant; if you’re trying to impress people, you’re doing it wrong.

“Amenities” are nice, but people cowork to be around people. The trap of “shared expenses” often leads people to assume that one of the major draws must be that you can share toys like copiers, laser printers, air hockey tables, Xboxes, and fancy coffee machines. Sure, toys are nice. But folks can get good coffee or play videogames a lot of other places. What they can’t get is collaboration and community. Do that well and let the amenities take care of themselves.

Don’t overthink your rules and processes. A common worry among people not familiar with coworking in practice is that it can somehow be dominated by obnoxious personalities and that a well defined governance must be in place to manage everything. This is a huge waste of mental energy. If you build your community first and set the right pricing structure, everything will take care of itself. Communities are self reinforcing, and pricing sets disincentives for ne’er-do-wells. More on this later.

Remember that people are fragile and perishable. Your first and only asset is your community. Listen to them and be sensitive to their voices. They are your stakeholders. If you start holding coworking sessions in a place on the south side of town, don’t setup a formal coworking space on the north side of town and expect the same folks to show up. People are creatures of habit and have their own natural geographic orbits. If you do have to make a major change (like location), don’t assume that just making the change will make it so. Every decision that affects the community needs to be tested and validated by the community.

Don’t be afraid to lead. As a designer of your coworking community, don’t be afraid to make decisions and take steps that you sincerely believe are beneficial. The community will give you feedback if they think you need it. All groups need leadership, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because coworking is a community endeavor that all decisions must be made in tortured group meetings. Your community need not be a democracy, and it’s also not a commune. Your only mission is to be effective — so take the lead. Likewise, encourage other members of your community to take the lead and make stuff happen. If you get mired in egalitarian rhetoric, you’ll accomplish nothing, and people will get frustrated. Avoid meetings: use tools like email and Twitter to stay in constant communication, and opt for one-on-one facetime when that is what’s called for.

Don’t seek institutional validation. You may be tempted to leverage existing perceived power centers in your community to help “seed” your initiative. Don’t bother. It’ll come with strings attached, endless meetings, and you’ll spend lots of time explaining coworking to people who just won’t understand. Act and get things started; then await developments. Your community institutions and the press will scramble to understand what you’re doing once it’s clear you are successful. Then, you can accept partnerships that make sense: on your terms.

Turning the Vision into a Design

OK, so you get the vision of coworking — that it’s about community first and that you shouldn’t try to open a space without finding that community. Suppose you find your community and you’re ready to advance it to the next step — now what? We’ll cover this next time — how to design your coworking community for maximum joy and minimum administrivia. The good news is that you don’t need an elaborate set of processes or a council of elders. On the flip side, you do need to give it some thought. But, that’s what design is: thought.

See you next time — and we welcome your feedback on how you’re using design to shape your life!

In the circles I move in, there’s been a lot of discussion lately about Starfish and Spiders; reference to the 2006 book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

The idea behind the book, which I have not read (why should I have to fund these guys just to understand their point), is that top-down command and control style organizations resemble a spider, and that if the head of the spider is removed, the organization dies.

A starfish organization, in contrast, can survive damage, and in fact after one of its arms is severed can not only repair the arm, but the severed arm can re-grow a new body. Nice enough analogy, and good for getting the point across to thick-skulled CEO’s still mourning the apparent loss of their cheese.

However, I find the analogy a bit weak; the “starfish” concept doesn’t actually explain a lot of the behavioral properties that underlie “starfish” organizations. Folks in the coworking community rightly believe that it is a starfish-style movement: leaderless and self-healing.

Flocking behavior (as seen with birds and insects) is a more instructive analogy to me. On first glance, many naïvely assume that flocks follow a leader. Not true. Individual members of a flock obey just three simple rules, and this is all that’s required to produce complex flocking behavior:

• Separation: Steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
• Alignment: Steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
• Cohesion: Steer to move towards the average position of local flockmates

Quoting from Wikipedia (so it must be true), “In flocking simulations, there is no central control; each bird behaves autonomously. In other words, each bird has to decide for itself which flocks to consider as its environment. Usually environment is defined as a circle (2D) or sphere (3D) with a certain radius (representing reach). A basic implementation of a flocking algorithm has complexity O(n²) - each bird searches through all other birds to find those who falls into his environment.”

The implementation of coworking is flock-like. The spread of coworking is starfishy.

The reason why so many people have trouble defining coworking is because it defies centralized control, or the notion of a flock leader.  The reason why people say, “the only way to understand coworking is to do it,” is because it is fundamentally a flocking behavior which relies on individual execution of the flocking algorithm rules.

Flocking also explains why so many coworking environments end up selecting for the right people, with no defined rules or central control; each bird chooses whether the environment is right for her. The flock self selects.

So, if you’re having trouble explaining why your local coworking group has anything to do with starfish, maybe it’s time to start talking about your flock instead.

In September, I had the opportunity to hang out with Alex Hillman in Vienna, Austria at the wedding of our mutual friends Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, and while Alex and I had peripherally known of each other, we hadn’t had a chance to actually meet and talk.  It turned out we were both staying at the same hostel, and as a result we had a chance to talk about a bunch of stuff from projects to Alex’s pioneering work in developing coworking at IndyHall in Philadelphia.

I’d known about coworking and its evolution since 2007; in fact I talked with Noel Hidalgo on video about the concept in Berlin in July 2007, along with Travis Todd, but while I liked the idea of coworking I didn’t really have a way to put it in practice yet.

Well, after seeing events like SocialDevCamp, Ignite Baltimore, and TwinTech take root here in the Baltimore area, it became clear to me that the time was also ripe for coworking in Baltimore. As I shared the idea with friends and colleagues, it was clear that we could build momentum around the concept quickly.

So, on Saturday and with Alex’s help, we held a session on coworking at SocialDevCampEast2, and we went over the key concepts behind coworking, answered some questions, and by the end of the session had created a mailing list.  Yesterday we held the first “official” Baltimore coworking session at Bluehouse, and we expect to keep that up every Tuesday and Thursday until we establish a more permanent home.

Of all the insights that Alex has gained in running IndyHall, I’d say this is the most important: “If IndyHall, as a place, ceased to exist tomorrow, IndyHall would still exist as a community.”  And this is truly key. Too often, people get distracted with the particulars of a piece of real estate or a locale or amenities; none of that is central to the mission.  The most important thing is the community and the ideas they share. There will always be a place where that community can take root.

That being said, we are looking at various ways to give coworking in Baltimore a more permanent home, and we have a bunch of ideas about how to do that.  If you would like to be in on that conversation, I invite you to join the Coworking Baltimore Google Group.  And of course, stop by Bluehouse next week on Tuesday or Thursday, between 10am and 4pm!

Feel free to contact me with ideas or questions about coworking and how we can establish a sustainable, vibrant creative community here in Baltimore! I’m really looking forward to working with all of you.