Creating Community in the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance: a Q&A with Susan Dorsch

One of the earliest gatherings of coworking spaces in Seattle, circa Nov. 2008

Way back in 2008, Office Nomads co-founders Susan Dorsch and Jacob Sayles saw the need for an alliance of coworking space operators in the Seattle area. They were looped in to the then-budding global coworking movement and wanted to create an in-person community among Seattle workspace operators.

The result was Coworking Seattle, which was the first coworking alliance in the world. The organization has since evolved into the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance (SCSA).

I spoke with Dorsch about the origins of the alliance, the importance of having peers who understand and support you, and how to lead with trust. Here are the highlights of our conversation.

Cat Johnson: Let’s start with a big picture question: What drives the SCSA? What is at the heart of it?

SD: I think it’s to remember what it is we’re doing here together as space operators. The point is not to get bogged down in more projects with one another, the point is to help one another so we can lean on one another when we need to. And of course to learn from each other along the way.

Your engagement with the alliance goes back to the very beginning. What is the alliance built on, and do you see those values still leading the community?

It’s been so awesome that Sharis Kevin of Makers Workspaces and Eliza Chan from Hing Hay Coworks have been taking on a lot more in making things rock and roll with the alliance. I’m so grateful for their contributions and how they’ve successfully taken the reins. It bodes well for our organization moving forward.

At times of transition, like we’ve experienced in the alliance, it’s a great opportunity to get back to the basics. We are talking more these days about the foundation of why we came together in the first place. It’s refreshing and important. We’ve been talking about our mission and how we can express it together.

The more national press coworking gets, and the more events and coworking conferences there are, we don’t want to out-alliance each other. I don’t want to lose the great, simple stuff about the SCSA in any other pursuit.

What is the most important thing the SCSA does?

There are so many things we could be doing. We could be going in on discounts for supplies; we could be doing marketing campaigns together. There’s all this “could” talk that’s exciting and fun and worth exploring and it’s important.

But it’s very easy to let that cloud up the most important thing, which is simply that we gather together each month. Our monthly gatherings mean that coworking owners and operators are getting to know each other. It’s rare for us to get to spend time with people who do the same work! The support we build in those meetings is paramount.

And by rotating our meeting location across our member spaces, we get to see one another’s operations in action – it’s awesome.  

What brought us together was coworking! Operators from Seattle, Redmond, and San Francisco.

Let’s back-step a bit. In the early days of coworking, why and how did the SCSA come together?

Around 2009, Jacob and I both had Google alerts for the words “coworking” and “Office Nomads.” There was so little happening in that world that we were doing everything we could to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

At the time, the majority of our conversations around coworking were all happening in the Coworking Google Group—that was the global conversation portal at the time. But each spring, we’d get the chance to connect with other coworking operators in real life at SXSW in Austin.  

We really wanted to have that same in-person experience here in Seattle.

Whenever we heard about other spaces getting started here, Jacob would immediate reach out to them and invite them to get a beer or hang out. He would tell them, ‘We don’t need to be doing this by ourselves—we don’t need to struggle with the same problems, let’s get together and work it out.’ That’s really all it was for a year or two.

Eventually we banded together under the Coworking Seattle name. Every space that came online, we would reach out to them and let them know we meet every month and that they should join us.

Around 2012, we rebranded as Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance. It was during a time when there were many more makerspaces coming online in Seattle. We felt a strong alliance with the makerspaces even though the work being done in them was different.

We wanted to be more inclusive of those spaces—in part to encourage them to come on-board with the alliance, and in part to take a stand when it came to Seattle, about working together in this new and different fashion—and that it can look a variety of different ways. We were also hoping artist collectives would join in the fray. That’s where the rebrand came from.

Coworking at Gasworks Park to celebrate Coworking Day 2011

Aside from the name change, how has the SCSA evolved over the years?

The alliance has grown and shrunk and evolved and gone through many iterations. Sometimes it’s more organized, sometimes it’s less organized. At one point we had a board. There have been different iterations but, in participating and observing over the years, what we tend to fall back on is getting together once a month and seeing what happens.

Realistically, anyone running a coworking space—whether they’re just getting started or have been doing it for years—tends to be pretty tapped. You get stretched pretty thin, resource-wise and it’s demanding in more than just a traditional work sense. There’s a lot of emotional work in coworking, because you’re working with other people. It can be a lot to expect that people will then spend what free time they have pushing forward yet another platform.

But most people who come onboard with the alliance really understand the value of knowing one another and physically being in a room together. Connecting online isn’t enough. It’s the difference between reading a post in the Facebook groups versus being in the room with people at a coworking conference. It’s totally different.

No matter how the alliance has evolved, we’ve always fallen back on getting together—even if we miss some meetings. If we do other stuff, that’s the icing on the cake. The cake is getting together.

A monthly meeting of the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance.

What do you want other members of the SCSA to know—especially newer space operators?

There are not a lot of people in the world who do the jobs we do and can understand, quickly, the type of challenges we face and the type of celebrations we get to have.

There is so much value in being able to put your head together with people who do similar work—even if it’s not the exact same.

It’s a relief, it’s a safe place to vent if you need to, and the value of that, for me, has been huge. You’re not going to get that from just leaning on your members for support, or just leaning on your friends to give you good ideas.

There are other people here who are interested in what you do.

The other big thing is we go to each other’s spaces. That’s another big win — you get cool ideas from taking tours of one another’s spaces and you get a better sense of what the other spaces in town are like so you can refer people to those spaces.

Sometimes people are surprised and taken aback (usually happily) when you recommend they check out another space that’s either near them, or may be a great fit for them.

Watching them try to process that you want them to be happy and in a space that works for them — whether it’s ours or another one — immediately takes the pressure off of them to feel like they’re making a charged decision about finding the perfect coworking space.

We’re all in it together to make sure you’re in the right space. I’m not here to take another space’s members. There’s plenty of business for all of us to thrive and do well. That’s not a typical mindset but I think it should be.

What are the biggest challenges of running, or participating in, a coworking alliance?

A lot of it is administrative. Somebody has to make time for the administrative stuff. Just the cat herding that goes on in any community. We all know it so well but we all get sucked into our own worlds.

That’s probably the hardest part. That, and effectively communicating with new members to get them onboarded.

Coworking operators and members bowling to celebrate Coworking Day, 2018

There’s a lot of trust between members of the SCSA. How is that trust established and maintained?

I was on a walk recently with Marnee Chua from Works Progress. The one piece that came about in that conversation is how important the level of trust we have with one another is, and how that’s not just something you can assume. We need to be reminded of how, and why, we trust one another.

That trust comes out in all sorts of different ways. For me, I try to lead by example. I never badmouth another space in front of a potential member. Well, I may have broken that a little bit with a big company that starts with We, but even with them, I have a great relationship with them here.

It’s also important to admit to each other when we’re struggling. Admitting challenges within the group sets a really good tone of support. People can openly share if they’ve been financially struggling, or whatever is going on it their space. We can talk about that and we’re not going to think you’re a terrible business person. It’s okay to have a hard time—it’s a journey we’re all on.

We’re like our own mini coworking space together. We all have to take care of one another and know that we all have the resource we need to do our best.

Connecting in-person with others at a monthly SCSA meeting.

What’s your best tip for keeping community alive as the workspace industry grows?

Don’t latch onto the “stuff” of an alliance, like marketing power and ways to save money.

That’s just the stuff. Watching the alliance over the years, participating spaces may have come for that potential, but they stay for the community. They stay because they’re building relationships with other people doing similar work, and they have people to lean on.

It’s very similar to a coworking space. People may come for the desk, but they stay for the people.