Social Network Analysis and Coworking spaces

I used to work in a coworking space in Australia called The York Butter Factory (or YBF). There, more than 50 startups and 300 employees were at the same place and working hard, but communications and collaborations were not efficient at all.

This is how the coworking space looks, and it's on two floors:

During my whole year there, I noticed that most of the people were staying only together within the same firm and desk, and they were not communicating at all - except rarely during some events.

The thing is, the turn over was very high: new startups were getting in and others were leaving every month, and sometimes we didn't even notice it - and I think this is a problem, because you are missing valuable opportunities.
You couldn't know who was who, and more especially: who gets skills and characteristics that you might need in the future. 

This is where the SNA could help and I will now explain how. In every startup' lives, you always need at some point someone with skills in programming, selling, speaking another language, or with maybe experience into raising funds, doing an IPO, or settling down into a new country for instance. (I am not saying someone that you could hire: just someone that could help you easily and probably for free as you are both from the same field).

I can't count how many times I have seen on the YBF Facebook group employees or CEO publishing posts, looking for someone - probably sitting just next to them and having the skills they were looking for. Most of the time, these posts were not working, simply because people always had something else to do rather than reading or answering them (I also have to admit that collaboration and mutual-help is not strong in the Australian culture where individualism is astoundingly high).

That is to say: SNA could now bring a tool allowing people to directly find someone next to them in the same coworking space with all the criteria required, so that you could directly find him, talk to him, and avoid the "Facebook experience".

Through an online survey when you get accepted into the YBF (or any other coworking space), qualitative and quantitative questions could be asked to this new employee, in several areas such as:

- Detailing your work-skills
- Sharing your past-experiences
- Giving your age & nationality
- Describing all the languages.

To get this: you need someone from India, knowing the culture, speaking the language, and with 5 years of experience at programming?
He or she is maybe at the second floor of your coworking space, and you didn't know it.

Ucinet and SNAs could display a map of everything you need:

As seen during our classes, the SNA method, through dichotomized data, could show the future collaborators you might need as I just explained. With a right click on the person and access to the attributes, you can find all the details you are looking for.

Indegrees and outdegrees from the nodes could be also used to go further.

Of course, there are other ways of finding these employees. The Facebook way showed some results, and if you are not too shy you can always talk around you and explain what you need. But this new way could change everything from the time saved to the 100% accurate results you are looking for and you could obtain. 

Collaboration and partnerships could be totally improve thanks to it, and I think it is an important part of our current world that a lot of developed countries can miss sometimes. 

Startups (to quote only one specified example) could grow quicker, save time, and get efficient results: everything they need to grow safely, hire new employees, and help the economy.

Finally, this idea could go even further by joining the datas from several other coworking spaces - from the same city, the same region, etc. I remember employees going from one to another one just to discover new ideas and new people, and I am really optimist on how this SNA ideas could radically improve their experience.

Thanks,

Arnaud Baczkowski.