You may not realize, but whenever you sit down at your local coffee shop with a cappuccino and your computer, you’re “co-working.”

Co-working is a pattern of working that’s recently been gaining popularity with the proliferation of mobile tools such as notebooks and wireless internet. Since employees are now able to work from anywhere, sometimes with as little as a mobile phone, working “from home” (or at the bistro down the street from the office or in your PJs at 1AM) is as popular as ever. Co-working simply occurs when people work alone, together.

At a coffee shop, you may be working on a new business proposal for a new client pitch and the girl next to you may be working on the code for her employer 2,000 miles away. Either way, you’re both getting work done in the same space, but you’re each doing your own thing.

More formalized “co-working spaces” have been popping up in the past few years, all the way from San Francisco and New York City, to Austin (like the one I co-founded) to Paris, Tokyo, Johannesburg and everywhere in between. And it’s not just limited to posh metropolitan cities—even smaller cities and towns now claim co-working spaces.

Once they’re established, co-working communities tend to be about socializing and collaboration. When you finally gain enough trust from your employer or you go out on your own as an independent insert-title-of–knowledge-worker-here, you find that working from your desk at home isn’t as exciting as you thought it would be. Even the most introverted people need some semblance of social interaction outside of their dog and that huge pile of laundry on the bedroom floor; separation of work and home really is important, as it turns out.

My prediction is that co-working and collaboration spaces will continue in growth and popularity around the world. Members of Gen Y want autonomy and independence, but they still want to be around smart people who are being productive. We’ve been conditioned to work this way since college—I can clearly recall group all-nighters where I’d be working on my advertising projects and friends would be hacking away at their organic chemistry homework and English term papers.

It’s important to point out that the shared office space aspect of co-working isn’t what’s important and it definitely isn’t a novel concept. Executive suites have been around for decades, but they seem to lack a certain level of community and socializing—perhaps why Gen Y and their cohorts gravitate toward more informal and casual co-working spaces. Bosses and supervisors of Gen Y employees will be quick to point out the superfluous nature of co-working memberships, citing the expensive downtown offices the company leases, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Gen Y craves the cross-pollination, collaboration, socializing and stream of new and interesting people—collectively, a community—that exec suites and cubicles hinder in addition to their fellow employees at the office.

Traditional offices will not go away completely, but they will have to evolve to accommodate for a young, vocal workforce who wants an additional place to work added to the mix.

Chances are there’s already one, if not more coworking spaces in your city—if not someone is probably working on it as you read this. Check out the Co-working Wiki for more information on this trend and to see the massive list of international cities with a space. Most places tend to have a day-rate or a free day pass so you can try it on for size. Plan a day to visit one (they’re great when you’re traveling and need a cool place to work that’s not a corporate coffee shop with no free wi-fi). Working from a co-working space is a great change of pace and you’ll no doubt still get lots of work done and meet some cool people. But leave the stack of laundry at home.