Jonathan Markwell, founder of The Skiff coworking community in Brighton, UK, introduces coworking at the Viña del Mar, Chile Start-Up Chile Meetup.

1. Building Coworking Communities
Jonathan Markwell
@jot

2. Who am I?
• Software Engineer
• 15 years building things with web
technologies
• Entrepreneur
• 5 years building things as an independent
worker

3. Highlights
• 1996 built my first website
• 2000 built my first web app
• 2002 interned at a startup
• 2004 American Express
• 2005 Enterprisers!
• 2006 founded my first company
• 2008 founded The Skiff
• 2011 Start-Up Chile!

4. Over 50 apps for
organisations including:

5. They are not what I am
most proud of...

6. My wife, Anna.
And the thing we started...

8. What is it?
• A nice environment for a community of
nomadic workers to meet and work in.
• People, a place and bare minimum set of
rules and resources.

9. People
• Engineers
• Writers
• Designers
• Producers
• Journalists
• Artists
• Entrepreneurs
• Almost anyone that is free to work where they
please

10. Place

11. Resources
• Water + tea & coffee
• Shelter + heat & light
• Toilets
• Power
• Internet
• Desks & Chairs

12. Rules? The 5 Ps
• Produce
• Play nice
• Participate
• Pay
• Party

13. How it works
• Desk and meeting spaces
• Members
• Events
• Volunteers "Captains"
• Management "The Admiralty"

14. Why I'm so proud
• Home to 10s of businesses and community
groups
• Hive to 100s of community members
• Hub for 1000s of visitors

15. Community Groups
• Async.js • Brighton Python Users Group • DevNest
• BarCampBrighton • Brighton Robotics • dotBrighton
• Brighton ALT.NET • Brighton Ruby Users Group • Five Pound App
• Brighton Creative Writing • Brighton System Administrators • Functional Brighton
Sessions & Network Engineers
• Institution of Engineering
• Brighton Drupal Meetup • Brighton Tuttle and Technology
• Brighton Future of News • BootCycle • MobileCamp Brighton
Group
• BuildBrighton • Rewired State
• Brighton iPhone Creators
• UX Brighton

16. History of The Skiff
• University of Sussex
• Linden Lab
• Sussex Innovation
• Inuda
Centre
• Space
• Brighton
• SXSW
• Open Coffee
• WiredSussex
• BarCamp
• Relocation
• The Werks

17. Coworking
“When I started coworking and created the term I very
consciously dropped the hyphen. My intention is for
coworking to be closer to the word collaboration, which
does not have a hyphen, rather than co-worker. I also
wanted the term to feel informal, and a dash
in coworking felt awkward and difficult to type.”
-Brad Neuberg, creator of coworking

18. History of the
Coworking Movement
• 2005 BarCamp & The Hat Factory
• 2006 Citizen Space
• Now ~400 around the world

19. Collaboration
The input and an output

20. Openness
Freedom, forkability & interoperability

21. Community
People not space

22. Accessibility
Self selection

23. Sustainability
Staying alive

24. Questions?
jon@inuda.com
@jot on Twitter

25. Coworking Viña
• Step 1: Who’s interested?
• Step 2: Lets try it for a day.
• Step 3: Lets keep trying it until there are so
many of us we need our own space.

26. Recommended
• Coworking.com
• Alex Hillman’s Coworking Workshop:
• https://indyhall.stagehq.com/events/1048
• The Lean Startup:
• http://theleanstartup.com/
• Founders at Work:
• http://www.foundersatwork.com/
• Paul Graham Essays:
• http://paulgraham.com/
• Hacker News
• http://news.ycombinator.com