Work Club: Offices for Free Agent Clusters

Gate3_entrance
Originally uploaded by neuralchemist.

Today's entrepreneurs are devouring large corporations from the inside. Fed up with the inane, creativity-crushing policies of their pointy-headed managers, more and more workers are striking out on their own and opening up businesses on kitchen tables, in basements and in funky loft apartments.

But what about in-the-flesh human community? The water cooler laughs about William Hung's heart-melting and side-splitting rendition of "She Bangs" the night before on American Idol. Getting the perfect referral to ace Friday's pitch while waiting at the elevator. Workers that hunker down too long at home sacrifice the unexpected windfalls of daily human interaction in an office.

So the agent needs an office that's not an office, a "third place." The solution might look a lot like Gate 3 WorkClub in Emeryville, California:

[WorkClub is] a collection of all the services you ever imagined to make your life easier - professional administrative assistance, computer support, marketing, business services, training, coaching, and more. It's a beautiful environment to work in, custom designed with a diverse variety of spaces to fit almost every work-style and preference.

In other words, it's the office, outsourced. Toss out your manager for the encouragement of a coach. Jettison the geeks from the IT dungeon for your own computer services consultant. Choose only what you need from a menu of services, you're in charge after all.

The modular environment includes lounges for sipping morning lattes with co-entrepreneurs, seminar rooms for classes and conferences, and a rooftop zen garden for morning meditation or afternoon chillouts. The cube farm is replaced by "touch down spaces" zoned by a "gradient of noise levels" including Buzz, Hush, Inner Sanctum, and Privacy Booths. And of course, there's plenty of team work spaces for brainstorming the next venture.

One other brilliant feature is the Lab. It's a space for usability engineers, ethnographers, lawyers, broadcasters, and others to do their thing:

• Software and hardware usability tests
• Marketing focus groups
• One-on-one interviews
• Depositions
• Jury testing
• Talking head interviews
• Qualitative research of all kinds

The work environments of the past are entering a new stage of evolution. Gate 3 offers a new hybrid of public and private -- a voluntary space -- a place you go by choice to do what you choose, where invention sparkles and conversation flows.

And remember (the first) Gate 3 is only one node on the network, more will follow. When boundaries dissolve you can answer emails in Starbucks and edit video in the park. The great Upholstery Wall of the Cubicle won't stop the world's net-nomads from pursuing opportunity wherever and whenever they find it.