I’m currently sitting at a desk in the Betahaus Hamburg that opened its doors today with a breakfast. It’s a so-called coworking space that aims to solve a problem every independent knowledge worker faces today: They just need a place to go.

According to Seth Godin, that’s the only problem left why we still need offices today. The other six historical reasons to have an office are gone:

1. If you have a laptop, you probably have the machine already, in your house.
2. If you do work with a keyboard and a mouse, the items you need to work on are on your laptop, not in the office.
3. The boss can easily keep tabs on productivity digitally.
4. How many meetings are important? If you didn’t go, what would happen?
5. You can get energy from people other than those in the same company.
6. Of the 100 people in your office, how many do you collaborate with daily?
7. So go someplace. But it doesn’t have to be to your office.

Besides Betahaus, there is another coworking space in Hamburg that setup shop just a few weeks ago called Werkheim Hamburg. It’s located just a stone’s throw away from SinnerSchrader’s main office. (Yes, we still have one.) Werkheim resides in an office space where SinnerSchrader was located till 2001.

If you happen to look for a place to go, you might want to check out Hallenprojekt.de, a coworking network for digital workers and digital places. For some reasons, Betahaus Hamburg and Werkheim are not listed there, but many others are.