[I’m draft­ing an expla­na­tion of Workan­tile Exchange, to be handed out to folks who are vis­it­ing for Out­reach Events. This may not be the final ver­sion, but I see no harm in post­ing it here.]

Workan­tile Exchange is a cowork­ing club for free­lancers and remote employees.

It’s not a cheap office. It’s not just for nerds. And it’s def­i­nitely not an “incubator”.

It’s a pro­fes­sional com­mu­nity of peers.

Mem­bers of the club can use the facil­ity at 118 S. Main Street in Ann Arbor when­ever they want, 24 hours a day. For work or meet­ings, pro­fes­sional or social inter­ac­tion, to get away or to get together.

Cur­rent Mem­bers’ “offi­cial” pro­fes­sions include archi­tec­ture, film pro­duc­tion, busi­ness devel­op­ment, sci­en­tific con­sult­ing, writ­ing, his­tory, graphic arts, music, engi­neer­ing, trad­ing, pub­lish­ing, pro­gram­ming, activism, jour­nal­ism, account­ing and marketing.

And you’ll find most folks around here know a lot of other use­ful stuff as well.

The Mis­sion

Workan­tile Exchange is a social enter­prise, and it’s been in exis­tence for about two years. At the moment there are about 60 Members.

Our mis­sion is to sup­port the exist­ing inde­pen­dence of our Mem­bers by reduc­ing their social and phys­i­cal iso­la­tion from col­leagues. To that end we pro­mote fel­low­ship, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and train­ing among our Mem­bers, and out­reach to the broader com­mu­nity. We help our Mem­bers col­lab­o­rate with one another, and not just in their work.

Why Would Any­one Do That?

Accord­ing to Forbes Mag­a­zine, at least 25% of the cur­rent US work­force are free­lancers. That num­ber is growing.

Our Mem­bers pay their monthly dues to cowork here because they have access to one another. Most of us have offices some­where else. As a rule we’re not look­ing for work, or swap­ping busi­ness cards to “net­work”, or try­ing to “grow”—at least not in the way most other busi­ness asso­ci­a­tions seem to think is crucial.

We don’t even sell stuff to one another. I know! What can we be thinking?

Because we’re tra­di­tion­ally phys­i­cally and socially iso­lated, inde­pen­dent work­ers and remote employ­ees often expe­ri­ence more pro­fes­sional risk than the equiv­a­lent cor­po­rate employ­ees sit­ting in well-​​staffed 9-​​to-​​5 office building.

So we work along­side one another. When you’re at Workan­tile Exchange, it’s not just your cat there in the room, it’s a bunch of real human peo­ple. Pro­fes­sion­als, each with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, who might have already dealt with the same prob­lems you’ve got. Who prob­a­bly have wildly dif­fer­ent and very use­ful skills and experience.

Cowork­ing together lets us bounce ideas off each other, hand off or sim­plify extra work, and draw on one another’s astound­ing col­lec­tive exper­tise. Unlike those sit­ting in their base­ment “home office”, we can inter­act with one another, whether it’s to ask a quick ques­tion or to get together with and form a well-​​staffed project team.

We all still work on dif­fer­ent things. We’re still inde­pen­dents and remote employ­ees. And to be hon­est we’re typ­i­cally very busy.

But by work­ing together, we’re all bet­ter off.

And of course there’s the Pizza Lunch. And the Bour­bon Tast­ing. And Game Night. And Night at the Races. And the Friendly League.…

The Club­house

We main­tain about 3200 square feet of open space in down­town Ann Arbor, in a ren­o­vated 1860s store­front. There are two small con­fer­ence rooms avail­able for Mem­bers to reserve, and a tiny phone room where you can use your cell phone. Oth­er­wise, the space is bro­ken up into two large shared spaces. All the fur­ni­ture is mobile, and Mem­bers are encour­aged to rearrange it to suit their needs. Nobody “gets a desk”.

The large ground floor “Café Level” tends to be the day­time, con­ver­sa­tional work­space. The large mez­za­nine “Train­ing Loft” tends to be the quiet day­time space, but has white­boards and pro­jec­tors so it gets used for events in evenings.

We also have a small kitchen with fridge and cof­feemaker, and of course a bath­room. There are lock­ers for Mem­bers’ day use, a pro­jec­tor for meet­ings, and indoor bike racks for smart com­muters. Some of our Mem­bers are kind enough to share their print­ers and scan­ners for office doc­u­ments. Healthy (and unhealthy) snacks are avail­able for a dona­tion. There’s even a cen­tral­ized speaker sys­tem that lets any Mem­ber play their music in the back­ground. Very soon we’ll be adding a small cir­cu­lat­ing library of books and games: entirely on loan from Mem­bers, made avail­able for other Mem­bers’ use.

Out­reach Events

You’re prob­a­bly read­ing this now because you’re attend­ing one of our Out­reach Events.

We know that space for pub­lic meet­ings in down­town Ann Arbor is at a premium.

We also think it’s cru­cial to bring together free­lancers, inde­pen­dents and remote employ­ees with the rest of the local community.

The best way we know to do that is by sup­port­ing users’ groups, train­ing classes, com­mu­nity fairs and parades, and sim­i­lar social events.

So we make our space avail­able for selected events in keep­ing with our mis­sion, and for events spon­sored by Workan­tile Mem­bers (as long as they don’t dis­rupt oth­ers’ work). We don’t charge much: 10% of fees col­lected. All we ask in return is that you allow inter­ested Workan­tile Mem­bers to attend your event, that you’re respect­ful of the space and the Workan­tile Mem­bers who’ve invited you to share it, and that you leave it at least as clean as you found it.

Con­tact our event coor­di­na­tors by email to ask about sched­ul­ing an event.

Mem­ber­ship

You don’t have to be a free­lancer or a remote employee to join. You just need to be a person.

No, really: Mem­ber­ship is not avail­able to cor­po­ra­tions or other insti­tu­tions. You per­son­ally are enrolling as a mem­ber of the club, even if some­body else is pay­ing for you.

Day Passes cost $15, and allow you to use the pub­lic spaces in the club­house. They don’t allow sched­uled reser­va­tions of the con­fer­ence rooms.

A Sup­port­ing Mem­ber­ship costs $100/​month, and gives you access to the club­house up to six days per month.

A Full Mem­ber­ship costs $160/​month, and gives you 24-​​hour access, 7 days a week. You’ll be expected to spend a cou­ple of hours a week par­tic­i­pat­ing in com­mu­nity events and sup­port­ing the mis­sion of Workan­tile Exchange.

A Nose-​​to-​​the-​​Grindstone Mem­ber­ship costs $250/​month, and gives you the same ben­e­fits as a Full Mem­ber­ship, with no social obligations.

For the time being there’s an infor­mal mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion process; the con­tact infor­ma­tion is on the website.

For more information

Infor­ma­tion on Workan­tile mem­ber­ship, sched­ul­ing an Out­reach Event, and Cowork­ing in gen­eral is avail­able at http://​workan​tile​.com