Blog of the Gate 3 WorkClub

Watching Signs Along the Way (with care).

I’m on flight 2609 bound for John Wayne airport headed to a meeting to discuss a possible future of workclubs. The captain has just made the announcement that we will be landing shortly – at GATE 3! What am I to make of this? A pure coincidence with the name I gave to my vision of the future of work? Or a portentious sign that this saga is indeed not yet done.

As I sit here, pondering the demise of Gate 3 WorkClub while sitting on a jet heading for gate 3, the role of serendipity presents me with some hard questions – how much credence to give to these unexpected events and unsought opportunities, and how much to rely purely on rational decision making; the business plan and careful analysis of the possible.

From the beginning, this adventure has been fraught with happenstance and coincidence that I have consciously decided to yield to.

The Connectivity Club

While this may be the first blogsite solely dedicated to discussing the emergence of this new work institution, it is by no means a totally new or unique idea.

The first posting in the category of convergent thinking is a site I just ran across it here. It describes “The Connectivity Club, how do you work and how do you study?” as “…a place for people to meet and exhange information…It offers individual and shared instruments for work, training, information and entertainment activities both distant and in the area.”

It is one of a number of "Sustainable Everyday Scenarios of Urban Life" including "The Food Atelier", "Mobility Agency" and "Energy Workshop".

As best I can tell the site is the work of the Faculty of Design at Milan Polytechnic, and the work derives from design school students around the world.

The End? Part 2 – What is a WorkClub?

I recently wrote to a correspondent that, though the club is closing down in Emeryville, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure that eventually “there are workclubs in every city in every corner of the world”.

Then I realized that I have never clearly articulated what a workclub is, if its not what we built in Emeryville. What have I learned about the essential elements of a workclub that I would like to see in every city? If the concept is to succeed, there are going to be a huge variety of forms and types that will be variations on a theme – but at their core they will need to reflect some common elements.

So here goes a first pass at a definition: a workclub is a congenial place, where people can find work community in a location that is easy and quick to get to and provides them the work amenties they need to do the portions of their work that are not best done at home or at a centralized corporate facility.

That’s quite a mouthful. And it involves a number of concepts that bear further definition.