#mrwatson

The second half of 2014 Martijn has started his internship at mr.Watson. Which started as a very last-minute internship, evolved into a great one. Martijn has designed and created a signing off our tagline on our wall (see the post below) and is now bringing mr.Watson into a coworking space with the first mr.Watson app! Not bad for a last-minute intern..

  You

Now we’re looking for you. But! Only if you want to leave your mark on mr.Watson. So, are you following a study in Communications and Interaction / multi-media Design (or something similar). Are you currently in your third year and interested in 'the internet of things', (interaction) design and/or programming? E-mail your motivation to [email protected] and perhaps we’ll be drinking a cup of coffee, which is the best one in town (no joke), soon.

  mr.Watson

To make this vacancy complete: mr.Watson builds communities in coworking spaces and we do this with our private social network designed for these environments. Because we think that people are more important than the square meters. The team exists out of 7 persons and they all have a Bachelor or Master degree.

  Plus, personal development is one of our top priorities. So be prepared to end your internship as a different person.

  Looking forward too your mail!

Fabian

A few months ago both me and Fabian had the chance to attend a storytelling masterclass by Simon Hodges (TEDx trainer). One of the most inspiring things that night was that Simon was able to force everyone, including me and Fabian, to get to your own core value. Why are you doing what you are doing? When do you feel on top of your game, what are you doing at that moment? The cool thing was that we both concluded that we truly love to bring people together and build communities. We do this in our personal lives, occasional side-projects and of course at mr.Watson. The fun thing is, I never realized that this was a part in almost everything I do. 

For those in doubt about what you are doing, I could really recommend it. 

And we want to stick with this, because we believe in the great value of a good community. But maybe even more important, this is what we love doing! 

It has been almost a month ago since I started my internship at mr. Watson. Time to reveal some of the things I have been doing so far. 

First of all let me introduce myself: I am Martijn, I love photography and computer graphics and I am a student in Communication and Multimedia Design. What does that mean (you may wonder), simply explained it means that I design creative solutions with interactive media. Like the Watsons, they’re building communities in coworking spaces. So what do I do at mr. Watson? I joined the mr. Watson team as an Interaction Design intern. That means that I create the communication between user and medium, input and output.

As somebody who has never worked in a coworking space before, there were several things I wanted to know before getting started on developing a concept. Since the mr. Watson platform is designed for coworking spaces, I had to know everything about them. I also had to learn about the coworking space we work in: Katshoek. 

The coworking space in Katshoek was founded in 2013 and now houses over 50 companies, startups and freelancers. When I just started at mr. Watson, I expected to work with a small crew of only 5 people, but I soon discovered that you actually work together with everybody around you. In Katshoek there are a lot of creative people who are willing to share their knowledge and experience, which creates an amazing atmosphere. 

In the past month I have been working mainly on one project: bringing mr. Watson into the physical space. Right now mr. Watson exists only on the web, so the only way members can communicate through the platform is via the internet. It is my goal to find a solution through research that will improve the sense of community in our coworking space.

Coworking Spaces The first thing I discovered about coworking spaces is that worldwide there are many different types of coworking spaces. Big ones like the Workbar in Boston with nearly 100 thousand square feet of office for rent. Small ones like Veel Hoeden in Pella, a small town in Iowa with a population of only ten thousand people. I even found about plans to build a coworking space on a boat that lies anchored off the shore of California: Blueseed. But all coworking spaces value the same things. Coworking spaces are about collaboration, openness, community, accessibility and sustainability. Coworking spaces strive to create an open environment where people can share and work together. mr.Watson is mainly interested in building communities, which brought me to another subject: the Sense of Community.

Sense of Community When I started my research on Sense of Community I discovered that ellaborate research had already been conducted by McMillan and Chavis. In their research they put that to build Sense of Community you have to consider four key values: membership, influence, integration & fulfillment of needs and shared emotional connection. McMillan and Chavis also developed the Sense of Community Index (SCI), which can be used to measure the Sense of Community. I found this extremely valuable for the next step of my research. With the SCI, I could easily get to know in what state the community of Katshoek currently was.

Katshoek Community The next step was to put the SCI in a survey that the community members could fill in. I asked the community to help me in my research and a staggering 32 people took part in the survey within a week: nearly a quarter of the entire community. The results (dutch) were very interesting, there were some people who rated the community extremely high but there was also one person who didn’t have anything good to say about it at all. Mostly the community in Katshoek got rated with an average of three out of five. There were several statements that scored rather low below the average. The results from these statements are exactly what I was looking for: problems to be solved, needs to be fulfilled or chances to be taken.