Reasons to co-work - it's not 'all' about the cakes, is it?!

Co-working space at Newcastle Business Village

The venue for our first co-working day back in June 2010, we revisited Newcastle Business Village on Thursday 17th Feb for Round 2.  The place has changed a bit since we were there last: the workspace is now open and bright, and the Village team were as welcoming and helpful as ever.

Newcastle Business Village's
home made chocolate brownies

We filled the space with co-workers by around 10 am, and all set to work using the fast WiFi connection that served us brilliantly all day.  Morning was interrupted only by the Centre Manager, Helen Reed's, home made chocolate brownies (yes really!) which went down a treat (and for some more than others - no names mentioned ...).

After lunch our SpoT chat took a slightly different format to usual, with a useful discussion around the table about  current projects, as well as sharing challenges and queries relating to homeworking.  The range of business activities around the table was diverse to say the last, ranging from a study into solid waste management in Europe through to the sale of Cloud-based accounting solutions.  The collaboration amongst the group, however, reaffirmed the fact that businesses don't need to be operating in the same sector to be able to connect.  The commonality was in the home base from which the companies operate and I suppose the sharing of cupcakes after lunch - other than one co-worker who chose to photograph her cupcake to illustrate to co-weight watchers what she hadn't eaten that day :).

'Those' Space on Tap cupcakes :)

When asked whether they managed to get as much work done as they would have done at home, the responses were mixed, mainly falling between 'the same' and 'more' which is great.  One co-worker said he'd achieved slightly less work than he would have done at home, but qualified that with "It depends on whether you consider networking (which was certainly useful) to be work". Well we do!

For a calendar of co-working days planned for March, April and May 2011 CLICK HERE