Coworking.org update: April 30, 2020

Introduction

Tony Bacigalupo here, I’m a director at Open Coworking Trust, a nonprofit that oversees the free resources that power the coworking movement. I wanted to create this so people know who’s working on what and how to get involved. Learn more at coworking.org. 

Coworking Library

• The Coworking Library is an open, interdisciplinary directory of research resources.
  
• People can submit resources themselves.
  
• More than 250 entries! (259 publications, spanning 6,890 pages.
)
  
• 11 languages: Bulgarian, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Ukranian
  
• Helps coworking space owners deal with researchers asking the same questions again and again
  
• To contribute: https://coworkinglibrary.com/contribute/
  

Crisis directory update

• Active participants of the Coworking Library are freelancers—the COVID crisis hit everyone hard at various levels
  
• http://crisis.directory
  

German Coworking Conference Update

• Put together a project team to turn the conference virtual
  
• German Coworking Federation made it happen
  
• https://coworking-germany.org/

ECA update

• London Coworking Assembly is working on putting together a collective to lobby the British government to categorize coworking as hospitality instead of as a landlord, which will free up support https://saveourlocalcoworking.co.uk/
  
• Also organizing European Freelancers Week in October
  
• ECA has a podcast
  
• Just took on a project - the Coworking Symposium in Prague in May for researchers
  
• For the above and more: https://coworkingassembly.eu/

Ashley update

• COHIP (Coworking Health Insurance Plan) provides dental, health, life, travel insurance to members of coworking spaces across Canada since 2013. Working with Canadian coworking space operators to extend benefits to their members with waived application fees, as a way to add an additional member perk to their virtual coworking memberships: http://cohip.ca
  
• Doing advocacy work on behalf of coworking collectives for the spaces themselves as small businesses and the members as small businesses as well http://creativeblueprint.ca
  
• Working on a Coworking Ontario Collective relaunch. It will be hosting a regional unconference. http://coworkingontario.ca

Also

• Coworking Visa now has over 458 spaces. When you join, your members get free access to all of the other spaces in the network for up to 3 days, free of charge! Learn more and register: http://coworking.org/visa
  
• Special guest visit from the wonderful Mia, founder of coworkingpets.com