That right there deserves a starfish high-five.

Well, everyone – it’s been a pretty darned significant week here at Office Nomads, as well as in the coworking world in general.  A few exciting things to note:

1. The acquisition of coworking.com by the coworking community. The coworking community received a great opportunity this week to collectively purchase the coworking.com domain to utilize as a tool for the coworking community. This has been a truly inspiring experience that both Jacob and I are honored to be a part of. The domain purchase has also kicked-off a continuing conversation on the future of coworking and how the larger community’s needs can be met.  Read a nice long post on the matter by Alex Hillman of IndyHall in Philadelphia. See the initial website by visiting http://coworking.com. If you’re into coworking and want to see the overall conversation about the site and what it means for our community, check out the Coworking Google Group and hop into the conversation.
2. Great response to our new membership rates! After only two weeks of our new Office Nomads membership rates, we’ve seen 11 new members at one of the new Part-Time rates. Whoa!  We’re taking that to mean that y’all dig the new rates, so we’ll keep ‘em around. As always, if you’ve been meaning to come on by and check out what’s happening at Office Nomads, now’s the time to take us up on that free trial day.  The office is full and brimming, even on a sunny Seattle Friday!

Jacob and I have also been brainstorming away with how to help coworking grow and thrive in Seattle.  If you’d like to join in the conversation, please join us at the next Coworking Seattle meetup on Thursday, February 25 at Indie Ballard.

Have a great weekend everyone. I can’t wait to see what happens next week!!

Thanks to flickr user digicla for use of the starfish photo above under the creative common’s license.

It may seem silly to you, but for some of us the question “Does coworking have a hyphen?” is a big deal.  When I first came into Office Nomads and began writing for them, it was something we discussed for a long time. We ended up saying no to the hyphen. Although my initial instincts were for the hyphen, I now like it without. Independents Hall’s Alex Hillman is firm in his stance that coworking does not have a hyphen while most media outlets (especially the older, mainstream ones) are in the it-has-a-hyphen camp (read: co-working).

But I have to admit that I still feel a bit of ambiguity about the issue. I thought it worth sharing since Alex is initiating another push on the issue and it seems like the good thing to do to make sure everyone is aware of the battle they’re entering.

My understanding comes from the fact that I work as a journalist for a living and as such, I can tell you exactly why coworking appears and will continue to appear as “co-working” in most publications.

It’s the fault of the Associated Press Style Guide which is pretty much the base of every newspaper and magazine style guide out there. It has rules for just about anything from how to refer to Ford Motor Co. on the second reference (“Ford” not “FMC”) to when and how what state names should be abbreviated (There are eight that are not abbreviated: the five with five or less letters and the two that are not on the continent) to punctuation rules.

The copy editor who follows AP (and most of them follow some form of it) is going to default to a hyphen because AP says to:

co- Retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives and verb that indicate occupation or status: co-worker

Like it or not, any copy editor who sees that is going to change a reference to coworking to co-working. There’s even a note that many of the “co-” words that are listed in AP are in the dictionary without a hyphen, but are given one by AP in the “interest of consistency.” So even changing the dictionary won’t help, as Alex suggested. We’ve got to get the AP to notice. And they’ve got their hands full with a failing business model to manage and a world of news to cover so it may be a long road.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and this one can be no exception. If coworking becomes well known enough by the public as opposed to co-working, media will have to change. But for now, big, old media is going to hyphenate and the smartest course of action may be to try and educate the smaller, online, and less formal media covering us.

One last word, then I’ll get off my geeky punctuation soapbox: It’s important to note that most likely, it is not the reporter’s fault if there is a hyphen. A reporter might write it without a hyphen and may even note that the word is spelled without a hyphen according to the industry, but if the copy editor decided that a hyphen is warranted, then there is nothing a beat or features reporter can do. (If someone like Thomas Friedman writes about coworking (And he should. It’s right up his alley.), he can put up a good fight with his copy editor and might get a change, so someone should pitch him on the idea.)

I took the image from a really interesting post by Jason Kintzler on FastCompany.com about the relevance of AP in the new-media/Web 2.0 world. It’s worth the read.

Our friend Alex Hillman of IndyHall in Philadelphia recently posted one heck of an article on Mashable that is worth sharing.

You can read the entire article here.  For a quick taste, here are Alex’s 6 Reasons to Start Coworking:

1. You’re lonely
2. You need motivation
3. You love to learn new things
4. You have no idea what is going on in your region
5. Your work/life balance is out of whack
6. Sharing resources is RAD

Alex continues…

“Hot-desks and flex-offices serve a purpose, but to some degree, are designed for solidarity in similar ways to cafe-working is. Never mind the fact that their price points aren’t designed for cash-conscious independents.

Coworking is different. Operating a shared office space as a clubhouse for a community changes the game, and affords you endless opportunities for improving yourself as a professional, and putting your region on the map.

Check the coworking wiki to see if coworking is going on near you. No coworking space? Get started with a local Jelly chapter. Jelly is like coworking, but casual and nomadic. Think about the fun of crashing a cafe, someone’s living room, or anywhere that’s got wifi and comfy seats, with a bunch of friends and coworking for the day. It’s the ideal precursor to coworking, and a great way to start at the right place: the community.”

Alex, we couldn’t have said it better!