Co-working For Networking Entrepreneurs In Shanghai

Working independently in a place like Shanghai can be hard. The cafés are noisy, smoky and hard to focus in. Setting up shop in the comforts of your own home is overrated, lacking the social aspects of an office environment. You also don’t want to be cooped up in your apartment all day and night. Cafés and homes are not ideal locations for client meeting and presentations.

Enter co-working. Co-working is working independently with the added of advantage of possible synergy that can take place when you put innovative and talented people together in the same room. These people share one big office space with perks not available at the coffee joint or at home, such as conference rooms and opportunities for networking and socializing. Co-working sites generally charge daily and monthly rental rates per workstation.

This new trend in working started in 2005 in San Francisco where an inventor and open-source software developer coined the term “co-working.” BarCamp, another trend in the era of Web 2.0, also lent inspiration to the current co-working model. BarCamps are user-generated conferences, organized around a shared interest, where participants bounce ideas off one another. Wouldn’t it be great if going to the office was like going to BarCamp everyday?

From San Francisco, the work model came to Shanghai as an increasing number of intrepid entrepreneurs and independents look to do their own thing rather than pursue careers with large multinationals and state-owned enterprises. According to official figures in the annual employment report, since 2002 the number of freelancers in Shanghai doubled to 564,900 by the end of 2007, representing over 6% of the overall workforce.

Both 88 Spaces and Xindanwei offer the amenities available in traditional office settings, such as workstations with ergonomic chairs and ample table space, conference rooms, pantries stocked with coffee and tea, printers, copiers and fax machines. The rates are 100 RMB per day and 2,000 RMB per month. Commemorating its launch in late June 2009, 88 Spaces is offering a Founder’s membership rate of 10,000 RMB for half a year. The sites will also host monthly events for members and their friends as part of their community-building and networking initiatives. With exciting sites like 88 Spaces and Xindanwei setting up shop, the future looks bright for Shanghai’s entrepreneurs.

Xindanwei. Photograph by Luo Hao.

We at BloggerInsight recently moved to our new home 88 Spaces, an awesome co-working space in the heart of downtown Shanghai. Since our inception over a year ago, we’ve been based out of our homes, coffee shops and the web2asia startup incubator. Fully incubated now, we’ve got the chutzphah to set up camp at 88 Spaces where we are thrilled by the prospect of joining a community of likeminded techies, geeks, creatives and entrepreneurs.

Contributed by Mike Fung, Ying Xue