What's coworking? And why is it so awesome?

For entrepreneurs and other independent workers, coworking offices like Green Spaces are an ideal alternative to working at home.

With the economy in a long, slow recovery, with many people still looking for work, some have created their own jobs. Others have found that working for someone else is frustrating, unfulfilling, or just doesn't fit their personalities (I'm a part of the latter group). For whatever reason, more people than ever before are working for themselves. About a year and a half ago, I chose to join the growing group of American workers who are independent workers, and while it has been a tough climb to financial stability (and I still don't have health insurance), I'm making it work — and I love it. 

The advantages are numerous; working for yourself means you set your own hours and work when it suits you best — I like to meditate and work out in the mornings, and then eat a big, homemade breakfast, so I don't get to my desk until 11 a.m., but I work until 7 or 8 most evenings. This schedule takes advantage of the time that I'm most productive. Other advantages include being able to work while traveling, and taking weekdays off when I feel like it (and working on a Sunday instead). And yes, sometimes I work in my pajamas, and in any case, am always wearing something comfortable and in a relaxed, healthy environment with lots of fresh air and quiet (no water cooler chit-chat or random pointless conversations with coworkers to distract me — one of the things that drove me really insane working in an office). 

 

But if you work at home, you know the cons. Sometimes it can feel isolating, or a bit lonely. Receiving all your business mail at your home means you are giving your home address out to anyone who asks, and separating work from home life is a challenge.

 

Enter coworking offices. I have recently begun working at one part-time in NYC called Green Spaces (the same owners have a similar office in Denver, too). It is lively and dynamic, but not loud or distracting, filled with other eco- and socially involved entrepreneurs and independent workers. While I'm working in an environment that's definitely not lonely or isolating, there are other advantages, too. It is inherently more economically sustainable, and shared resources means that it's more eco-friendly. Green Spaces is even greener by providing compost and recycling, a dishwasher for reusing dishes and glassware, as well as recycled paper in the shared printer, and other healthy aspects, including the use of green cleaners (so I can literally breathe easier). I can also take advantage of conference rooms to do interviews or conduct meetings and network at weekly lunches to crowdsource opinions, ideas and feedback about my work from people who do different, but related types of work. 

 

As a part-time coworker at Green Spaces, I just bring my laptop and set up in the laptop lounge, which is so much better than fighting for space at a coffee shop and feeling the need to leave after a couple of hours. But if you are in need of a real desk, a dedicated phone line, and storage space, Green Spaces offers that as well. Check out the company's virtual tour for more details. 

 

Coworking is growing in popularity across the U.S. and Europe, and I think it's the future of how we work — near, but not always in our homes, coworking offices like Green Spaces allow us to get out and about without the distractions of a typical office. And it gives us independent workers a place to go and an excuse to get out of our pajamas every day.

Message in a Bottle

By Mera McGrew

Mission Blue is offering an exclusive online preview of New York artist, Asher Jay’s, newest art installation — Sea Speak Sphere: Message in a Bottle. The art installation is part of a larger conceptual, collaborative campaign that aims to highlight various ocean initiatives and advocates marine conservation.

Jay told Mission Blue, “ I just wanted to come up with a way in which I could speak up for the oceans but that would also encompass all the voices that are doing something similar.”

The art installation is made up of 100 painted bottles that bring to life personal statements or “blue memos” about the world’s ocean from some of the biggest names in marine biology, conservation, photography, exploration, journalism and more. Using recycled plastic bottles, scrap paper, and paint Jay has found a way to offer a visual voice to help communicate complex ocean issues, solution strategies and urgent blue memos.

“Sea Speak Sphere is about collaboration, community and a strong commitment to the cause,” explained Jay. “This is a very quick way to communicate, in a glimpse, something that people don’t take time to fully understand or didn’t previously have a particular interest in.”

The meticulously curated content of the installation serves as a call to action for people from all walks of life. Jay explained, “I feel like images have the power to mobilize the masses, and that is why I am doing this…”

The premier of Sea Speak Sphere: Message in a Bottle by Asher Jay will premiere this Friday June 8th, 6:30-8:30pm at Green Spaces in New York. Preview the installation here. Click through the gallery to get an exclusive look at 28 of the bottles paired with excerpts from the personal statements that were offered and which helped inspire the beautiful works of art.

For more information about Sea Speak Sphere visit the campaign website. To find out more about the premiere of the installation and tickets click here.

All photographs of original artwork taken by Dar Riser, Good Light Works. 

Green Spaces: Entrepreneurial Space in NY & Colorado

If you live in New York or Denver or are planning to set up an office in any of these locations, then consider checking out Green Spaces for your needs. This is because one of the aims of Green Spaces is to provide coworking office space for social technopreneurs. The good thing about Green Spaces is its environment itself. You will be surrounded with a community of people who are willing to do networking and work together with you.

Click here for the full story. Thanks for the mention, Techzed!

The state of the New York tech scene in 2012

It has only been a year and a half since I first moved to NYC, and since that time the scene itself lured me away from school, into hackathons, a startup job and now finally here at The Next Web. This all happened organically, where I changed from being a designer and musician into a full-blown geek, only because of how infectious the tech scene truly is here in New York.

Of course, the city drags you in and tries to spit you out, just as it does with startups fighting for funding, talent and space, but if you manage to survive the struggle is worth it. That’s the spirit here in NY — it’s equal parts love and aggression, where the traditionally rowdy city attitude merges with night-owl programmers, investors and scrappy entrepreneurs.

The spaces, places and meetups

The “Silicon Alley” nickname given to NYC once just represented Broadway, where a handful of impressive startups and incubators could be found from south Midtown and Flatiron all the way to the bottom of Soho, just before Chinatown. Now, NY’s tech scene reaches far beyond a single street or alley, with booming communities building up in Brooklyn, and plenty more spread out across Manhattan.

Back in August of last year, our own Courtney Boyd Myers covered The 5 Coolest Coworking Spaces in New York City, which featured the likes of General Assembly, a coworking and education powerhouse located just around the corner from a number of notable investors at 902 Broadway in the Flatiron District. Then there’s WeWork Labs, which has since undergone a massive expansion in NY andopened up offices in San Francisco.

Those two companies aren’t nearly alone, either. There’s New Work City, which Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson calls the “grandaddy” of NYC coworking spaces as it has been running for the past 4 years, the relaxed Dogpatch Labs, which has offices in Cambridge and San Francisco as well, Projective Space (formally known as SohoHaven), Hive at 55, Tech Space, Greendesk, Greenspaces, Coworking Brooklyn and WeCreateNYC. Then there’s a decently large list of accelerators and incubators, including ER Accelerator, the famed TechStars NY, which is about to graduate its latest class of startups, Betaworks, Dreamit Ventures and Founder Labs – just to name just a few.

So what’s changed in all these places since last year? Every single one of them is way harder to get into. Not only is space tight, but the competition is grueling, which means only the best survive. All in all, this represents much of what’s happening in New York. Of course, in a high-risk startup environment there will be flops, but there have also been enough success stories to start a mildly large encyclopedia about them. Best of all, the scene here is still growing.

Dave Tisch, Managing Director of Tech Stars NY, spoke to us about his thoughts on NY’s tech scene in general:

The growth of the NYC tech community has been well documented, that said, there are some major pieces that continue to go overlooked. The non-tech community in NYC and the surrounding communities are not over-saturated with beta testing, and represent such a variety of demographics, each subway stop is the home to a different community, that testing your product here is a unique advantage for many startups.

The density and variety of businesses are also a tremendous asset the city has to offer. And the general and genuine support of the startup community for each other here I think stands out. We are all in this together. I said previously, but I believe there will be some very big exits this year in NYC, which will help advance the ecosystem even further.

Thanks for the mention of us and our peer coworking spaces, TNW! Click here for the full story.

Green Spaces is a Coworking Hub for Social Startups

Name: Green Spaces

Big Idea: Green Spaces provides coworking office space in New York City and Denver to social entrepreneurs and non-profits.

Why It’s Working: Green Spaces does more than provide social companies a place to work. Networking opportunities, an intern program and a referral network are available to companies that call Green Spaces home.

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For Green Spaces co-founder Marissa Feinberg, the inspiration for the New York and Colorado-based green coworking network appeared simply by looking around at her network. She says that many of her like-minded peers enjoyed getting together to share ideas and discuss social entrepreneurship, so making it a full-time venture seemed natural.

“We thought, ‘Wow, look at what happens when we’re all in the same space frequently. Imagine if we worked together in the same space every day,’” Feinberg says.

Since then, Green Spaces has opened its doors to social entrepreneurs, non-profits and companies looking to work in a space that’s all about corporate responsibility. For a fixed rate, entrepreneurs and startups can access prime desk space Green Spaces’ Denver or Colorado office — each of which is eco-friendly and conservation-minded. Those with a little less cash to burn can set up shop in the building’s laptop lounge and take advantage of peer power. During the day, Feinberg says there are meetings in Green Spaces’ many conference rooms, workers composting their lunches at noon and countless pages printed using eco-friendly dyes from foods. And in the evenings, Feinberg says there are plenty of activities for members.

“By night, we have a great events hub, where people come in for networking, panel discussions, all sorts of dialogue to forward the sustainability movement and social entrepreneurship globally,” Feinberg explains.

But the social good mission runs deeper than providing a green office and mixers with eco-conscious entrepreneurs. Green Spaces offers a sustainable network of connections from its more than 100 partners in a variety of fields, including law, marketing and web design. This means that socially-conscious startups that really want to walk the walk can ensure that every aspect of the company — including who is involved as a freelancer — aligns with a larger goal towards conservation. This is Green Spaces’ ultimate mission — to offer an avenue for startups with few resources to embrace social responsibility while scaling up.

“We support the triple bottom-line company movement, which is about not just profit, but also the planet and people,” Feinberg says.

Feinberg believes that at large, coworking is on the rise, and she’s excited to have more companies with similar goals to adopt Green Spaces’ responsible lifestyle and deep contacts.

“We’re moving away from that rigid 9-to-5,” Feinberg adds. “People want to have a life. They want to work, they want to meet others, they want to make friends.”

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How Coworking is Changing the 21st Century Workplace

Freelancers and small businesses are increasingly proving themselves 21st Century economic powerhouses. Their small sizes allow them to flow with the currents of technological and cultural change in a way their larger, corporate counterparts can’t. They are cost-effective because they can keep a small core staff, bringing on specialists depending on their needs.

But where do they work? Many find themselves too big or busy to work from home, or too small to afford their own office.

For these homeless freelancers, small businesses and entrepreneurs, co-working spaces provide a great option. Individuals and small organizations can rent a desk or small office in a space filled with like-minded industries. Tenants share things like boardrooms, printers and other resources. Rent depends on your use of the space, e.g. NYC-based Green Spaces charges anywhere from $20/day to $550/month for a dedicated desk.

Because most are formed based on industry–e.g. there might be a tech, non-profit or ethical business co-working space–the environments foster community formation and collaboration. 

Click here to read the rest of the story. Thank you, David Friedlander, for the fab article on this movement!

64 Co-working Spaces For Every Entrepreneur

Last summer, you voted on the Top 10 Cities for Young Entrepreneurs. Now, we’re listing all the innovative co-working workspaces in those cities.

Here are 64 co-working spaces for every entrepreneur…

New York City

• Green Spaces NY – Collective workspace for sustainability-oriented small businesses. Green Spaces also has a Denver location.
• Green Desk – Locations in Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Greenpoint and soon to be Williamburg, this is one of the original co-working spaces in the 5 boroughs.
• Wix Lounge – This free co-working space is run by Wix Website Builder and provides a space for anyone to come and grab a desk.
• New Work City – Manhattan’s oldest community coworking space. Full-time, part-time, and drop-in memberships, as well as workshops and events.
• The Hive at 55 – Shared workspace for 30+ people, three private workrooms, as well as flexible space for conferences and workshops. Sponsored by the Alliance for Downtown New York.
• WeWorkNYC – Arguably the hottest co-working concept in the city with Midtown, Meatpacking and 2 SoHo locations.
• Grind Spaces – Located at 26th and Park in the Flatiron District, this space is one of the nicest designs in the city and a sponsor of Lean Startup Machine.

Thanks for the mention of us alongside our NYC peers!

Simplify Green: Tips on How to Go Eco - Easy Ways for Businesses to Save While Saving the Planet

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 4.20.12, BY FRAN GOLDEN

For small businesses, going green can be more than a do-good move inspired by Earth Day. Sustainability practices can actually help your bottom line.

"It's saving the planet. It's best to look at everything we do through a sustainable lens," U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) Deputy Administrator Marie Johns tells the Daily News.

"There's also a financial benefit. In the long run, it's going to end up saving costs."

When it comes to going green, you don't need much effort or cash to get started, experts say.

"The infrastructure of your company is an easy place for everyone to make a start," says Marissa Feinberg, co-founder of Green Spaces, a coworking space for eco-focused entrepreneurs in Tribeca.

"A lot of people are scared of going green because they don't know what it is. But even something like switching to recycled paper is a great start."

Going green doesn't mean you have to install solar panels or bamboo flooring or other costly upgrades, adds Zach Fried, a small business sustainability consultant with smartBizNY .

"Businesses that focus solely on products and other 'sexy' aspects of green may succumb to the common misperception that green is too expensive," he says.

"Yet, companies of all sizes that have become leaner and meaner through a sensible implementation of green measures can see reductions of 10% to 30% in their operating costs."

Replacing an old and inefficient boiler in your basement can save money, plus you can get help paying for an upgrade.

"Energy Star, NYSERDA and ConEd offer programs ranging from tax credits and rebates to energy audits," Fried says.

Green projects may qualify for federa
l government guaranteed loans , Johns says. The SBA also has a website in collaboration with the Navy (green.sba.gov).

Whether your business is home-based or brick-and-mortar, you can avoid feeling overwhelmed - what Fried calls "green paralysis" - with simple, basic changes to save money.

Adjusting climate controls, turning off lights and recycling efforts pay for themselves, can build momentum and add value to your business, he says. And greening doesn't mean giving up basic business functions.

At Green Spaces, for example, Feinberg says the Xerox machine turns itself off at night.

Another good way to look at going green is through collaboration. Feinberg says starting a carpooling program or sharing conference room space with other businesses is one way to start.

"Create a sharing movement in your office building," Feinberg says. "Sometimes, we have these huge highrises in the city and everyone does their own thing and don't collaborate."

And if you've got it, flaunt it, she adds. Green practices can put your business in a positive spotlight and attract customers.

Adds the SBA's Johns: "Many customers are looking for busi- nesses that are doing things in a green way."

TIPS ON HOW TO GO ECO

HERE ARE several ways your business can save some green by goin ggreen:

Create a green plan. Get the entire staff involved and nominate one member as the "green leader." Avoid broad state. ments about your commitment to greenness and focus on simple actions instead, says Zach Fried of smartBizNY.

Do more recycling. Try to improve on the city's minimum requirements. Make sure recycling bins are easily accessible to employees. And look at what can be reused, such as packaging materials.

Reduce paper. Encourage communications by email, share reports on PDFs, switch to paperless bill pay, print double-sided documents, and buy recycled paper.

Cut back on gas. Look at ways to reduce the commute of your employees by telecommuting, carpooling and buying hybrid company cars.

Save energy. Turn off lights at night and on weekends, shut down computers and copy machines (standby mode still draws power). Don't overheat or over cool your office. 

Use eco-friendly products. Go for recycled shipping materials, and nontoxic cleaning products. Green Spaces' Marissa Feinberg said the disposable cups used in her office are made of corn and are biodegradable - and are put in the office's compost bin.

Reuse office furniture. If you need furniture, don't shop new - go to Craigslist and look in the free section, or post your specific needs on Facebook or Twitter. 

How To Be Creative # 01: Surround Yourself With Good Company

We’re all about promoting creativity – it’s what we live to do and that’s why we’re launching a new series on what we know will help you make awesome. It’s in your reach, but like anything sometimes you just need a little nudge. Inertia’s a bitch like that.

Being creative is about sharing ideas. So much so that I’d say any of us are only as creative as the company we keep. By sharing ideas we’re clued in on the minds of others from different places and backgrounds, which I believe makes us that more likely to foster great ideas. It doesn’t have to be mind blowing like time travel or inventing the electric blanket mobile. Sometimes being creative is simply taking an idea one step further or applying a concept differently like T-post did with t-shirt magazine subscriptions.

Co-working is a great way to surround yourself with a diverse group of people. We do it here and learn so much from participating. It’s blown up on a worldwide scale, but you don’t really even have to be that organized. Who do you know in your life that has a really cool job or interesting side project? Strike up a conversation, take them to coffee or lunch and get them talking about their passion. You’ll be surprised how much hearing the excitement in their voice will motivate you.

Ready to take action? Be sure to check out:
Jelly
The HIVE
Green Spaces
Benefits of Co-working

Green Festival NYC at Green Spaces on NBC NY

This weekend Green Festival NYC will take over the Javits Center. It's no small feat to put together such a show. For Alix Davidson, this is the culmination of a lifetime of work. Green Spaces co-Founder Marissa Feinberg sings Alix's praises toward the end of the clip. Here's her story.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.