Queen Street Commons, Charlottetown, PE
The Queen Street Commons is a simple idea. Bring interesting people together to share space, services, and costs. The commons is set up with private work spaces, common rooms, meeting rooms, a kitchen, and an eating area. As a group we can do more and afford more.
Located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, the Queen Street Commons is a place for people to work, meet, and relax. The space is designed to be used by individuals and by groups. Services include wireless internet, printers, fax, phones, mail delivery, and boardroom.
Founded in 2005 - The QSC was one of the earliest Co Working Sites in the world.
Here are some pictures and more info:
Here is the Lounge where we hang out
The Kitchen has tables and benches - Not a lot of cooking goes on but it's a great place to have a bite and to make coffee etc
The Boardroom can hold large meetings and has a projector and screen
There are two workrooms that are like a university library - wireless and wire is available throughout
The front door has an electronic key that allows you access 24/7
The Queen Street Commons is organized to serve the common good of its members.
We come together to create the organizational power to obtain services in common that we could never afford on our own. We offer fellowship and community for those that work alone. We offer the opportunity to discover the value of interacting with others. We offer the opportunity to contribute to the common good. We offer a "Work Home".
Tangible Services
- Wireless Internet
- Mail collection – a Queen Street Address
- Photocopying
- Fax
- Board Room
- Kitchen
- Individual Telephone Extensions with Voicemail
- VOIP services. Local and long distance calling
We offer a very simple pricing model that you can find here
You can contact us here
Intangible Services
While the tangible services we offer are in themselves valuable, we hope that membership will confer a deeper value that is not easy to quantify. We hope that membership will offer opportunity, growth and influence.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, at the dawn of business, everyone worked at home. People found it convenient to spend the day in the close company of others who shared their common interests. One of the first venues was Lloyds Coffee House. Friends aggregated into booths and then into partnerships with each other. Those who wanted to do business with these "syndicates" wandered around the floor. From this simple beginning arose the world's most effective insurance business.
Today more and more of us also work from home. While the Internet offers us some community, we can feel isolated and we often find the costs of basic infrastructure expensive. In addition, we miss by our social isolation, the synchronicity of opportunity that arises from meeting regularly in person. Many of us also work in sectors, and on ideas, that are still in their infancy. We are therefore vulnerable to the no-sayers and to the mainstream. This type of work needs the protection of social space where we develop amongst ourselves the trust, the community and ultimately the power, to take these ideas into the light of day.
Our Norms
Membership of the Commons is therefore different from membership in a regular club or organization.
- Members of the Commons understand that making a commons work requires us to take no more than is sustainable for the other members.
- Members treat others as adults and expect to be treated as adults themselves.
- In practice this means that we take our big copy jobs outside Commons,
- That we use the meeting room in the knowledge that others might wish to use it as well.
- It means that now and then we bring in some coffee.
- It means that when another is being more selfish than is acceptable, that you call them on it.
The Commons takes us back to a time when we took responsibility for both ourselves and for the greater good of the whole. The Commons is a space where relationships are not positional but real. The Commons takes us back "home"; to where people feel most comfortable and productive.
The Commons will not therefore have a long list of rules but will operate on a set of social norms of good behaviour. Should disputes arise, the Council will settle them.
Here are the Kindergarten Guidelines/Norms that we take very seriously: