Re: [sudo-discuss] membership reboot?

re: Impact Hub. I spent a month there, attended numerous events and spoke with the organizers, room tenants, and members. My observations: It's a business. Like many for-good businesses, the Impact Hub adds a layer of societal benefit to its for-profit bottom line. Others have described this but I'll add that the Impact Hub Oakland is just a local component of an international network of such spaces, each culturally adapted to the local scene. Their landlord is independent from who they are or what they do (the way I hope Sudo Room's is from ours). As to the prices, they are pricy if you make $12/hour. Not so much if you bill $100/hour. They have to find a mix of paying customers that keep them liquid. They probably make their monthly nut by renting out the fifteen+ private offices (there's a waiting list). For those flying solo, they offer differential pricing to maximize revenue subject to capacity (if they could fill the floor every day at $1000/day, they would; since they can't, they sell some seats at $400/month, others for less). This is a real estate play. Their competitor is http://www.regus.com which rents office space by the hour/day/week/month, no questions asked so long as your corporate check clears. Impact Hub's advantage is that they pick cheaper digs, offer fewer amenities, but still are a step up from meetings at Farley's. And they come with a light veneer of social responsibility, which matters to some people. As a place to dock and meet for work, it's a clean, well lighted place for (mostly) free agents. Impact Hub is done for the next two years. They're full and now they have to optimize for steady low-cost low-churn operations. They may have new growth opportunity as their block is rebuilt with more retail, office, and residential construction. But for now, they are baked. What can Sudo learn from them? *Business models can be put at the service of a higher cause. * For example, we might have (raised the money and built out the space and rented the offices) so ongoing costs were covered. (Playing landlord.) But our choices would differ: We'd likely recruit different office tenants, define classes of membership according to our own expectations (full sudoers who subscribe to and affirm our values vs. tenants vs. guests). We'd provision the space differently, of course (more power-tool friendly). *​Small teams can run a huge space. * I think they started with three people and now have fewer than eight FTE, including an event coordinator and AV/electrical guy. They are open more than fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. *The External Community Layer is worth money. * They worked their professional, social, religious, and political networks to forge ties between Impact Hub Oakland and hundreds of other groups. Through reciprocity and trust-building they strengthened those ties. So when it came time to Kickstart and then when it came time to move and relaunch Uptown, their community rallied. They rallied because they felt aligned and connected to the people and the cause. *The External Community != Internal Community*They are actively cultivating their own in-house community among the people who show up frequently. For now it is mostly social and collegial but it's the natural first step for trust-building within the building. *People like to work at Ikea. * The place feels roomy, spare, very clean, coordinated, well lit, with fresh coffee, lots of power outlets, reasonable Wi-Fi, and minimal noise (no cafe Muzak). It has lots of nooks and crannies if the main floor doesn't suit you. There are four small quiet "phone booth" rooms for taking noisy mobile or video calls away from the quiet work areas. A conversation yurt. A bungee cord hammock. A classroom big enough for thirty. Liberal use of whiteboard paint, markers, and post-its. Two large configurable commons areas; I've seen them rearranged for product launch parties, hackathons, spirtual workshops, birthday parties.