[loganfrederick]

Coworking spaces continue to grow in popularity where I live (Columbus, OH).

I've found that the actual amount of quality work done in these spaces isn't that high, and the spaces tend to be used more as a casual gathering space for different startups in the city to meet each other.

The two leaders in the area are Sandbox Columbus (http://sandboxcolumbus.com/) and Qwirk (http://qwirkcolumbus.com/).

[timdorr]

Sounds like something's gone wrong if you're not being productive when using the space. How often do you go there? It might have to do with the frequency of seeing others. There's going to be a certain amount of showing off when you see someone you haven't seen in a while and hasn't seen this cool new thing you've been working on. But that wears off after meeting up for a few days in a row.

Today I coded a new feature for my latest startup, gave a tour of the space to some people, learned about Chef and how I can use it for my fleet of servers, fixed some major bugs for clients, did some estimates for potential customers, installed a few Drupal modules. And I've only been here since noon.

It's all in how you use the space.

[billymeltdown]

That's interesting. I have friends in Toronto who do a Rails' Pub Night that has a similar purpose (casual gathering space for Rails-oriented startups), but we're pretty quiet and focused in our space (Wburg Coworking) unless it's beer-o-clock.