G2 Crowd – July 18, 2017

By | July 19, 2017

We begin with a deceptively complex question: Are people who work at coworking spaces called coworkers?

If so, should they be? Would the word still apply to our fellow employees at a job, regardless of office setting? Did the pioneers of the coworking revolution consider this dilemma during the naming process? (Was that the whole point?) And how can we know the difference when the word is used in a casual conversation?

Fittingly, as this terminology grows more pliant, so does the universal idea of an “office.” The origin story of coworking spaces may be as a haven for weary freelancers and other lone-wolf workers: a place to mingle, dress down and get their best work done on drastically different projects. But soon, entire companies caught wind of the cool vibes, migrating select groups or whole staffs to the nearest collective.

Source: Andrew Zangre, “The Many Faces of Coworking Spaces,” G2 Crowd