Adding new sites should be easier. I get that this is a tradeoff between rapid engagement and trust, but since the project is so new it's vastly more likely that a visitor will want to add something as opposed to successfully looking it up.
Maybe the focus on cities, while great for the lookup scenario, should not play such a big role when adding data points. My suggestion: just open it up, have a form where any member can add a coffee shop, at any location (Google Maps-powered). As site admins you could review the submissions later and sort it out.
For example, I was initially motivated to add some places near me. That's in Germany, so no cities there yet. This means I've got to jump through the hoop of adding a city, at which point any user who was previously excited about adding stuff to the database becomes stranded and loses interest. I would like to add sites in different cities, so technically I would have to open up requests for 3 cities - in a sparsely populated area like Germany that's not feasible. I'm more interested in how far away a location is than what city it is in.
could you just your favorites here ? i was in germany in 2007 and 2010 for a total of 5 weeks and didn't find a single coffee shop that was conducive to working. thinking it's time to go visit friends again ...
That depends on what you're looking for, locally. Starbucks is always a pretty good option in Germany, but of course shops have varying levels of noise and connectivity.
The Starbucks in Frankfurt near the old stock exchange is pretty good if you can get a place at the big table it's even office-like, and generally shared by people doing the same thing. The Starbucks in Heidelberg works for me, but it's relatively small. There are also several non-chained coffee shops in these cities where you can feel right at home.
Also, if you're ever in Austria, Vienna is absolutely beautiful for coffee shop work.
The secret to finding these things in Germany is to know they come in clusters. For example, Berlin, Frankfurt and Heidelberg are pretty decent and you can find several nice coffee shops there. Find cities that are somewhat cosmopolitan, because size is a bad predictor for coffee shop density here. In between there are vast stretches of absolutely nothing, but then again distances in Germany are generally ridiculously small even though Germans don't think so.
This looks really useful! This isn't meant to be a criticism, but I was wondering how your website will overcome the issue of people not wanting to publicize their favorite work spot to prevent overcrowding? Also, from your experiences so far, are cafes happy to have people sit in their shop for extended periods? My impressions are that while some places (cough, nice people in Portland) encourage such behavior, others may not take to campers so nicely.
I would think that places who have wait staff would not appreciate people taking up tables without ordering since it would directly affect their pay. But a coffee shop that does mostly take-out business may not mind so much having the appearance of a busy, popular cafe.
I do think it's good to be mindful that you are utilizing a business's space and facilities, and they are able to provide these to you by selling food and drinks. So you should try to be a courteous customer and support their business.
We've gotten a lot of feedback from business owners that the average patron staying to get some work done is a good steward of their space and spends money often. We hear stories of people staying for hours and hours, not buying anything - but we've found this is just not the norm. With that said, we do encourage our community to support businesses with their evangelism AND money.
That's nice to hear, I've always wondered about that. I grew up in a small town where every business for young people to hang out would fail. It was partially because we didn't have much money to spend, but I realized later in life that we didn't feel any responsibility for supporting the businesses in return. It's not that we were selfish necessarily, we just didn't understand how things work. Then when a business would shut down we would all complain about how we had nowhere to go, but failed to consider the fact that we had utilized the place to the fullest extent without making many financial purchases. As I recall this happened with an arcade, a couple of coffee shops, a skating rink and various other businesses.
Now that I'm older I do see a lot more clearly that when you find a business that you like, you should make a point to support them and help them to stick around.
Local coffee shop owner here in town echoed that to me last year. The teens hanging out rarely buy anything. Adults 'hanging out' are often working (or studying) and are far more spendy(?). He counted me in that 'spendy' lot, but I'd rarely spend more than a couple bucks every hour ($4 coffee, then a few hours later a coke, banana or $2 tea). So... the 'non-spenders' really are not spending (I feel like a cheapskate half the time I was there).
If you're not there during peak times, then your presence potentially serves as some social proof that the place is worth visiting too. Probably better to have one customer on their laptop than a completely empty café.
Totally. I work from coffeeshops all the time and find it a form of good patronage to buy something every few hours and leave a tip. Most people I know do the same.
I tend to pick low periods in which to work out of my favorite cafe (mornings in China, because no one drinks coffee before noon here; also pervasive take out is an American thing), and I'm a reliable 52 RMB a day, so I'm pretty welcome.
i think this is one of those self-solving problems: if a place is busy enough that they don't want people working there, it's probably too busy to be a good place to work. If it's a good quiet place to work, they're probably grateful for your business.
But of course, don't be a dick. If you're taking over a table for a couple hours you should buy some stuff.
Thanks! We've found that people are very willing to share their favorite places in an effort to promote the business. Business owners have welcomed our showcase of their businesses. Most coffee shops and cafes have long periods of slow traffic. Having people come to stay for awhile helps to keep a place busy. We've been told over and over that a "busy shop" is a "good shop".
I've tried to work out of a coffee shops in my hood from time to time and find that, at least on weekends, you have to wake up really early to score a spot in any of the several within reasonable distance. If I ever find my "secret spot" it wouldn't make sense to tell everyone about it, but then again maybe this kind of system could help dissipate that kind of congestion?
Hello HN! Workfrom was developed to help people find the best places to get work done. We look at WiFi, access to power, background noise, food options and more. We're expanding to new cities (US and international) and we rely on our community to help hunt down and source places we list. Anyone can add a location via our site. We'd love help finding places and please provide feedback about how we can make this better!
Nice job guys. I appreciate the optionality of having a password. I was also able to successfully use your site with only my phone, which some sites have issues with.
One suggestion, although it's helpful to have Wi-Fi passwords listed, I think your team should confirm with the business before posting it. They might want to be picky about who they give it to. I feel like me asking a coffee shop person for the password is an implicit question of whether it's OK for me to hang out with the laptop for a couple hours, and also gives them the chance to tell me if it's down right now.
Seconded. I was confused by the no password thing at first until I found the link on this page https://workfrom.co/worker that described it. Now I like it.
My thoughts on the matter is that so long as I always have drink/food in front of me (and I'm not purposely taking my time) then I'm probably earning my keep.
I've never been at a cafe that's run out of seats, either.
Where are you? I've been to many cafes that have run out of seats. In fact I've had to turn around and leave because there was no place for me to sit down. 2 examples off top of my head. Coffee Bar in SF and Bricks and Scones in LA. Both are larger than average as well but very very popular. I've seen most Starbucks in SF and Tokyo full as well. Some of the ones in Tokyo even have signs which effectively say "In consideration of other customers please don't stay a long time".
I'm in Melbourne, Australia. We have heaps and heaps of cafes here. We are known for our cafe culture. I can actually think of some that fill up, but there are still plenty where you could always reasonably expect a spare seat.
I remember the Starbucks at Shibuya Crossing was mind-blowingly packed.
I think that my argument assumes that you've chosen a cafe with consideration for whether they tend to run out of seats or not.
(Incidentally, I am relocating to Tokyo from Melbourne in a month or twos time. Any tips for me? Any little-known treasures in Japan that I should check out?)
I would love to as well - it's quiet and you can take a break to read a book whenever you want.
The problem with our library is that even though they have a 100mb internet connection, they filter everything. You can't use Git or SSH for example, so it does me no good as a place to work.
(There's an Enoch Pratt branch directly across from my favored coffee place in Roland Park, which would be just dandy if it didn't have the weirdest opening hours known to man. Closed on Thursdays and Sundays? Who does that?)
I would suggest you don't force people to sign up to add a location. I just didn't add Coffee Bar in the mission district because I simply can't be bothered to sign up.
Likewise. Wanted to add hackerspace Metrix:Create Space in Capitol Hill (WA) but even if I used a throwaway it wants me to validate my address. I can't possibly see the reason for this.
Alone, I get distracted easily. Around people, I'm less likely to browse away from work because I don't want to be seen as a slacker.
At home or the office, I get no sense of urgency. At a coffee shop, there's all sorts of time limits: from the draining battery to the feeling that after a few hours my welcome will be overstayed. So stuff needs to get done... rapidly.
When I'm near familiar people, my mind focuses a lot on their voices. When around strangers, it doesn't care; their voices and other sounds blur together into background noise.
I guess you could say that working from coffee shops is one way I "hack" myself into being productive. So I'm not surprised to see others enjoy working there too. But probably not for the exact same reasons. People's motives and preferences vary greatly.
Depends on the work I'm doing. It helps for creative work, but it's more challenging to do basic admin.
Also, the distractions in an office are difficult to block because they all seem relevant to me, which puts me in a constant state of being alert to them. In a coffee shop, I know that the noise is completely irrelevant to me, so it just moves into the background.
I find it better because while it is louder, I can just tune it out, whereas I can't tune out people I know.
If they stand behind me I get the nagging feeling that they might want something even if they don't, and that's way more distracting than a cafe. Even if they're quiet.
I do indeed, its (in part) the ambient noise that makes it so productive. I've even resorted an "ambient noise" mp3 file that I occasionally play in the background when I'm not at a cafe ;)
Price: For example at some places I might recommend there's a "per hour" charge. Examples: The Workshop Cafe in SF is $2 a hour. The Epicenter Cafe in SF gives you passwords that are only valid for 1-2 hours depending on what you buy. The Terminal in Tokyo is $3 per half/hour or $22 max for the whole day but if you buy a $20 yearly membership it's $12 max for the day. They include unlimited soft drinks (soda, coffee, tea).
I didn't see how I would list that stuff on your site.
Another is I'd like to be able to vote or rate, comment. Maybe like Yelp? I just got to LA, one place that was recommended was "Paper or Plastik Cafe" but I didn't find it very friendly to working. At least half the cafe is marked as "No notebooks allowed" and the area where they are allowed is very dark and uninviting. Maybe it used to be more friendly to workers which is why it was recommended a couple of years ago but I wouldn't recommend it now.
It's a great idea. Only suggestion would be to make it easier to add cities and places and let the community report bad places, instead of what seems to be a review-first approach. I'd rather more content (and the ability to add content for my locals right away) than have to go through a "beta" phase to get the city up and running.
My first thought would be if he allows easy delisting or if it would require some form of legal arm twisting. I'm sure that busier places will not be happy with being on the list.
Am I the only one who prefers to work in public libraries? The San Mateo library has plenty of seating/power outlets, a respectable cafe, and free underground parking.
I did this for some time while unemployed but the public libraries here (Seattle) have absolutely awful Internet access. Probably due to the large number of transient people watching... videos.
I'm not sure how useful this would be. Do people willfully drive from work to a coffee shop in order to get work done, and not simply walk to their favorite coffee shop within walking distance? It seems like distance is more the contributing feature than anything else.
It doesn't have to be about professional day-job work alone; for example, I often bike to a coffee shop on weekends to work on my side projects, because it gets me out of my apartment and away from all the distractions therein.
It's down right now, but is this like the hotel wifi rating (http://www.hotelwifitest.com/) that was posted recently? I hope so, I've wasted quite a lot of time in coffee shops with terrible wifi.
That's great! However, I would like to be able to add places without the need to be on site at the time of writing (e.g using a geocoding service like Google Maps API)
Bookmarked for the next time I'm traveling and looking for a place to spend a few hours with my laptop. I might add a few places in Seattle, though my regular place is already there.
Small St. espresso is worth a look, although I'm not sure it would be that good for working from for a long time - but it depends on what you are working on.
Thank you. The work is related to writing, so most of the time I'd only be taking up the space for my laptop, and perhaps a notebook or two to keep notes.
I'd probably need at least 4-5 solid hours, during the working days of the week. Any other place you know of, please let me know. I'm trying out a few places, but I've found nothing of significance yet.
There are two flavors of coworking spaces, one where have a community office that allows you to work there on short notice without a lot of commitment, and the other one is basically a shared rented office space.
It may be cultural, but coworfing.com results for my country (Germany) yield only permanently shared office space. They're not places where you can just pop in every once in a while.
We are eager to find a home in Chicago. We need to hunt down some great places there first. We rely heavily on recommendations from the community. Once we have enough places to be useful, we make them visible on the site.
Maybe the focus on cities, while great for the lookup scenario, should not play such a big role when adding data points. My suggestion: just open it up, have a form where any member can add a coffee shop, at any location (Google Maps-powered). As site admins you could review the submissions later and sort it out.
For example, I was initially motivated to add some places near me. That's in Germany, so no cities there yet. This means I've got to jump through the hoop of adding a city, at which point any user who was previously excited about adding stuff to the database becomes stranded and loses interest. I would like to add sites in different cities, so technically I would have to open up requests for 3 cities - in a sparsely populated area like Germany that's not feasible. I'm more interested in how far away a location is than what city it is in.
Also, you should make use of the browser Geo API.