Category: Startup

CoWorking: profit or non-profit

LaunchPad CoWorking An interview with Jerome Chang, founder of Blankspaces: Spike: You’re also using a for-profit business model (as is LaunchPad Coworking). How did you decide on this model? Did you take any heat for it? Jerome: I’m all for pushing collaboration and communities — if profit is what it takes to generate more participants … Continue reading “CoWorking: profit or non-profit”

LaunchPad CoWorking
An interview with Jerome Chang, founder of Blankspaces:

Spike: You’re also using a for-profit business model (as is LaunchPad Coworking). How did you decide on this model? Did you take any heat for it?
Jerome: I’m all for pushing collaboration and communities — if profit is what it takes to generate more participants and advance the cultural movement, then profit it is. Between the time and effort, money, and liability, we should be rewarded for that contribution and exposure. Besides, I didn’t know about coworking at all until I’d already started construction, so I was not “influenced” by the altruism.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that a Co-Working site needs to be a ‘company’ as opposed to a ‘charity’.

I’ve seen lots of non-profits fall by the wayside due to the founders needing to move on and it’s hard to find people with the right mentality to take over. I’ve seen non-profits founder because without the extra edge of needing to make a profit (and reaping benefits thereof) the good will can vanish.

I’m well aware that people working at a non-profit can draw salaries and that the non-profit moniker has been used in order to attract attention while the ‘workers’ draw insanely large salaries. I guess I’m not comfortable hiding behind the tax benefits of a non-profit while engaged in something that is creating things ‘for profit’.

But let’s run with the current school of thought. That CoWorkingBelfast will be a non-profit organisation.

That said – if I have anything to do with it, CoWorkingBelfast will have to be a shining light and not just a damp squib. I want it to be excellent, a model place to work and not just a set of desks in a dreary room above a bank. It has to make enough money to survive and prosper and not just be a half-empty space which has to resort to arcane marketing schemes disguised as trade shows in order to generate a bit of coin.

Part of the Co-Working Belfast ethos should, in my opinion, to create ‘industry culture’ in Northern Ireland. That’s got to be more than just creating a web portal (and how many of those have sprung up in the last year or so) but the creation of a lasting legacy, a tradition of fostering creativity in the technology sector. CoWorking is not about technology itself – it’s about connecting people where they were not previously connected.

Part of the culture of CoWorking Belfast should not only be the opportunities and connections which are brought about by proximity but also the potential for fostering tomorrow’s industry (you know, the people who will be paying taxes when you and I are in a home for the elderly). I have a plan which consists of nothing more than a couple of pledges, a holding page on a web site and a monthly bill which I’ll work to find sponsorship for – which will be wholly dedicated to finding people with energy, be they young in body or just young in mind, and giving them a place to work and express their creativity as well as providing mentoring (by using and abusing the people housed in the CoWorking building) – more on this later.

Through this meandering post I’m convincing myself that CoWorkingBelfast can be a no-profit. What do you think?

Related posts:

  1. Co-Working
  2. Coworking Microsupport
  3. coworking.ie
  4. Managers and non-Managers

Save your business.

From a post on Enterprise Ireland’s forum “We’re a small software consultancy in business since Q3 2006; we’ve recently lost our main customer (they’ve pulled out of Ireland), upon whom we were dependent for about 90% of our revenue; we’re a small team made up exclusively of engineers; in advance of winding the operation up, … Continue reading “Save your business.”

From a post on Enterprise Ireland’s forum

“We’re a small software consultancy in business since Q3 2006; we’ve recently lost our main customer (they’ve pulled out of Ireland), upon whom we were dependent for about 90% of our revenue; we’re a small team made up exclusively of engineers; in advance of winding the operation up, I would like to explore our options with regard to getting new business; we have deep familiarity with many technologies, mainly in the enterprise computing area and I think it would be a shame to go back to the day jobs, considering we have a very strong team and can compete on cost and results with just about any comparable firm, but alas we have no sales function to speak of.”

Contrast this with a famous Joel Spolsky quote:

Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf.
“It’s ok! I have great advisors standing on the shore telling me what to do!” they say, and then fall off the board, again and again. The standard cry of the MBA who believes that management is a generic function.
…
The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand.”

Now, I’m not promoting the use of the MBA as any yardstick of competency but I can both agree and disagree with Joel in the same quote based on the first paragraph from the Enterprise Ireland forum.

This small software consultancy has found itself up the creek without a paddle because they didn’t have someone smart in the ways of business at the helm. They may have had the best programmers they could source but their business is going down the toilet because they didn’t think of the business eventualities. They maybe didn’t think that their client would depart the country and this highlights two things to me:

  1. Don’t Assume Anything: The directors of the company were not directing. They were just managing. A director needs to be anticipating the direction of the company from the minutiae right up to the ten-thousand-foot view. They should have been expecting the worst. In my own experience, I’ve always considered what would happen if Mac-Sys had a credible competitor and it’s done us well. Now, with the Belfast Apple Store only weeks away, Mac-Sys will have another potential challenge. I think they will be okay due to other things they have in place but the reality of a competitor or a change in business has to be fully realised.
  2. Remove your Cataracts: The directors of the company are concerned because their client is leaving Ireland and they’re looking for alternatives. The most immediate thing that springs to mind is why their product is localised to Ireland? Can’t their client use their product elsewhere? Government agencies are always encouraging local companies to export – in this case there’s already a market. What about competitors? Can the product be re-purposed? Rather than winding up the company and posting on a local forum, they should get everyone who is able to walk out on the street looking for new software gigs).

This is why the person running a company, even a software company, needs to be a business person. She can be a programmer as well but she needs to understand the business world and take the unpredictability of business into account. It’s not the just the cult of the MBA who expects people to run organisations they don’t understand, Joel is taking for granted that the person running the software company is a programmer and therefore can understand business as well. While that may be great for him with his established pedigree, it’s not going to be the case for every person. Some people are lucky enough to be able to see with both sets of eyes: that of a programmer and a director. Some can’t. If you can’t you need to recognise this and stop running the company.

I was told a story a couple of years ago about a business that was kept running via multiple handouts from the directors and it wasn’t until the directors themselves were bankrupted that they thought to involve the workers in their own destiny. He was honest with the workers. He had no money left. And with only days to payday, he had to shut up shop unless they could do something. And do something is what they did. They worked on getting new customers, convinced them to pay within seven days and, most importantly, kept every promise they made.

Joel is fond of telling us that a great company needs great infrastructure and that the programmers may find themselves in the minority in a software company. Management is part of that infrastructure. Experienced programmers have been telling me over the last year that programming isn’t hard but you’ll hear an analogue from experienced business managers.

A software company certainly needs competent programmers – individuals who can work together to create a compelling product right from the sketch on the back of a napkin through to the version 1.0 and bug fixes. Without them you have no product. But without someone with a bit of business ken, you’ve no market.

Related posts:

  1. Managers and non-Managers
  2. Digital Circle going independent and my thoughts on the Future
  3. A Meandering Tale
  4. Turning code into product

Coworking Microsupport

Microfinance see Microcredit. –noun the lending of very small amounts of money at low interest, esp. to a start-up company or self-employed person. The problem with Microfinance and Microcredit is that, at the end of the day, someone ends up owing someone else money. And that’s a shaky way to get started in anything. The … Continue reading “Coworking Microsupport”

Microfinance

see Microcredit. –noun
the lending of very small amounts of money at low interest, esp. to a start-up company or self-employed person.

The problem with Microfinance and Microcredit is that, at the end of the day, someone ends up owing someone else money. And that’s a shaky way to get started in anything.

The concept of Microfinance for small businesses in return for equity in the business has already been successfully applied via Paul Graham’s Ycombinator.

Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started.
We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%).
What happens at Y Combinator? The most important thing we do is work with startups on their ideas. We’re hackers ourselves, and we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want. So we can usually see fairly quickly the direction in which a small idea should be expanded, or the point at which to begin attacking a large but vague one.

This seems to me to be a different slant on the pre-Bubble concept of ‘code for pizza’. I knew a couple of smart guys back pre-2000 who worked full time for companies in return for pizza and promises while in receipt of unemployment benefit – they were doing the right thing after all – making a real concerted effort to get off the unemployment line by trying to be employable. None of them are gazillionaires right now (which shows the benefits of contracts over promises).

While Northern Ireland has had the concept of the incubator for years (the first one I visited was the Fujitsu/University of Ulster funded incubator where I met the guys who were ‘Osarius’ who have now all moved on to bigger and better things), it was definitely in a larger scale. There were desks, offices, stationery. That’s not the sector I’m interested in.

With the work being done for the co-working space in Northern Ireland, it is my intent to fund a desk or two and provide some desktop computers (intel iMacs) in order to foster some idea of Microsupport for potential startup companies. It’s not about funding their pizza or foozball lifestyles because people who want to get things done will find a way – this is operational expenditure. The hard part for this sector is the capital expenditure. By providing up to date hardware and taking advantage of the bountiful free time that ‘young people’ have, I think there could be an excellent environment created in the co-working space to foster new and cool innovations coming out of Belfast. David Rice wrote that the co-working initiative is designed to espouse this single concept:

Bringing silicon valley thinking to Belfast by creating a cutting edge work space for digital and creative workers.

It’s my aim that one of the rooms in the upstairs be allocated to ‘incubation’ for a few potential movers and shakers out there who need that extra bit of support to get started. I don’t care whether they want to become movie makers, software engineers, web developers or digital artists – as long as they don’t just sit around surfing the web, it’s got to be better than nothing. I’ve not really talked about this with David, Andy or anyone else central to CoworkingBelfast so they may throw their hands up and tell me to piss off – but this is the concept. Most of the individuals involved in CoWorking Belfast are young men who probably would have loved to have a co-working space available to them especially with some up to date hardware starting up.

What would Co-Working Belfast get out of it? Another raison d’etre. Karma. Kudos. Reputation. And the feeling of doing the right thing. Maybe if they’re a success they’ll help fund the next iteration of CoWorking Belfast or whatever the new fad of the day is.

There are other similar methods of support out there which have a similar model but are not the same and therefore I think this brings a certain uniqueness. For example, Google’s Summer of Code provides a $5000 stipend for student developers for summer (around 3 months) of work on open source projects. Google funds around 400 students each summer this way (putting the bill at around $2 million) but then they are Google and have infinite money. There are also business incubation services in Northern Ireland available through InvestNI but the pitch is for the slightly later stage when the individuals know what they’re doing and need the incubation from hatchling to maturity.

To extend the metaphor, I’m talking about supporting the egg itself – until the egg cracks. It’s never been easier to start up a business and become the next Twitter, Youtube, Big Word Project or 37Signals and it is these kinds of business that we should be fostering. I think that the people involved in starting the co-working space in Belfast are best qualified to determine who uses the ‘hatchery’.

The co-working space itself won’t make Belfast like Silicon Valley by it’s presence, but by it’s vision.

Related posts:

  1. The State of Funding in 2009 in Northern Ireland
  2. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  3. Co-Working
  4. CoWorking: profit or non-profit

Belfast OpenCoffeeClub

The Belfast Open Coffee Club met tonight and managed to pull in more people than ever – twenty or so – and I was both pleased and disappointed that there are just too many smart, interesting people in the room and not enough time to talk to them all. If I didn’t say hello to … Continue reading “Belfast OpenCoffeeClub”

The Belfast Open Coffee Club met tonight and managed to pull in more people than ever – twenty or so – and I was both pleased and disappointed that there are just too many smart, interesting people in the room and not enough time to talk to them all. If I didn’t say hello to you directly, then I apologise. There were some people I wanted to grill mercilessly but I didn’t even get a chance to say Hello. You know who you are.

16:30 – Co-Working Belfast
A 20 minute walkaround the site puts some reality on the bones of what we’ve been thinking about. I’m liking what I saw in our review of the site (and I’ll post the recording video of our walkaround if people want to see it to get a feel for the site – it’s a 5 minute 58 MB .mp4 file and I’ve added a Youtube embed below which will give you a BlairWitch-esque view of the building). I’m pleased that we’ve got enough people to actually make this a going concern but the serious questions about what kind of support we will get from Belfast City Council and InvestNI are still unanswered.


5 minute YouTube video

The site itself needs a lot of work but it’s big enough for the purposes. There’s work that needs done ‘structurally’ in terms of the removal of a stud wall and the creation of some partition and there’s going to need to be significant investment in terms of equipment – desks, chairs, locks – never mind computing infrastructure. But, in the end, I like it.

That said – it’s not a site like some of the others we’ve seen – which have artistic ceilings and look more like art studios than workplaces. It’s going to be grassroots, it’s basic but it’s sustainable and provides what I’d consider to be a basis for future movement.

19:00 – OpenCoffee Club
There were too may clusters of people talking to allow me to cover them all here but the ones which I witnessed were:

  • Will King, Darryl Collins and David Braziel – talking about the integration of location-significant data. I saw some demos showing heatmaps of Flickr pics over Northern Ireland, crime statistics, wifi points and some neat ‘cluster’ widgets which allowed information to be collected in easily understood ways.
  • I spoke perhaps at length (and with a bit of spittle) about the purpose of the Belfast OpenCoffeeClub in the formation of Northern Ireland’s future progress in technology. I was, of course, preaching to the converted so I have to apologise to Russell and Lee who had to listen to me rant about what the future might hold and how it was vitally important for the grassroots organisations to present themselves sensibly and with direction to government in order to achieve change. The people in that room were , in effect, the Digital Circle. We had application designers for desktop, mobile and web, GIS specialists, creatives, movie makers, animators, musicians, wireless enthusiasts and, last and least, me.
  • Andy and I spoke for a few minutes about Co-Working Belfast and I do feel a little guilty about stealing the spotlight at times and speaking too much. It’s an area I’m incredibly passionate about and sometimes that enthusiasm is a little hard to contain. We received some encouraging remarks but I think there’s some more marketing and work required before we can say that CoWorking Belfast will be filled to capacity.
  • The subject of the OpenCoffeeClub BBQ was also discussed. Philip will be driving a 7 seater people carrier down and we have half a dozen people to go in it. Some people need to be back earlier than others but we shall work through that – the plan at the moment is to drive down on the Tuesday afternoon, stay over, attend the BBQ, then stay over again and leave first thing in the morning in order to get back for a decent hour (lunchtime). I’ll be organising accommodation tomorrow. Confirmed names for the car are: Philip, Matt, Andy, Damien, Stuart and Mairin. Will is also going down separately.
  • There were other discussions of potential TechLudd, CreativeCamp and other copies of events happening around the world. I think it’s great but it would also be nice to do something original. More on those as we get more information.

As 21:00 came, I had to leave due to family commitments but it was extremely encouraging to see so many people there and I’m sure that if circumstances has been different, we’d have seen half a dozen more.

Roll on next time!

Related posts:

  1. CreativeCamp Belfast
  2. BarCamp Belfast this coming Saturday!
  3. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  4. Coworking Microsupport

BOCC Tomorrow

Tomorrow evening, Belfast Open Coffee Club will be meeting at Charlies (the green umbrella shape in the middle of the Google Map link there). I’m speculating that topics will include: OpenCoffee BBQ on the 16th, iPhone 3G and O2’s information flow, game development, Ruby on Rails (and whether it scales), the FailWhale, Digital Circle and … Continue reading “BOCC Tomorrow”

Tomorrow evening, Belfast Open Coffee Club will be meeting at Charlies (the green umbrella shape in the middle of the Google Map link there).

I’m speculating that topics will include: OpenCoffee BBQ on the 16th, iPhone 3G and O2’s information flow, game development, Ruby on Rails (and whether it scales), the FailWhale, Digital Circle and a whole heap on Co-Working. Topics that I don’t think will get a lot of airplay would include Big Brother, the US election nonsense and Starbucks closing an additional 500 sites in the US.

It would be swell if you could make it.

And, Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

Related posts:

  1. Digital Circle going independent and my thoughts on the Future
  2. AR
  3. DIGITAL CIRCLE STEERING GROUP ELECTIONS
  4. Fucking walk the walk rather than just talking the talk

Co-Working 2008

Pat Phelan writes about Co-Working in Cork: so if you could get 20 people to invest €25 per week, co working should be incredibly simple plus €50 from each to start-up ?? It really requires people who are passionate about it to start to put their money where their mouth is. I’ve spoken a lot … Continue reading “Co-Working 2008”

Pat Phelan writes about Co-Working in Cork:

so if you could get 20 people to invest €25 per week, co working should be incredibly simple plus €50 from each to start-up ??

It really requires people who are passionate about it to start to put their money where their mouth is.

I’ve spoken a lot about co-working in the past in conjunction with ‘Bedouin‘ working. Though it’s not something I could really take advantage of right now (due to the day job requirements and my partner working nights), it remains something I would support with my money as well as my mouth.

Looking at the costs though – and assuming £20 a week for Belfast:

20 people at £20 a week is £19200 a year if you assume 48-week occupancy. I did a quick search on Propertynews Commercial this morning targetting the City Centre, Botanic, Stranmillis and the University Area.

For £7000 pa (plus same again in Rates), you can get 1000 sq ft in a second floor suite on Shaftesbury Square. For £9000 pa (and again about the same in Rates), you can get the ground floor of a house on University Street (with 711 sq ft). For £13500 a year (plus a massive cost in rates), you can get about 1800 sq ft in Rosemary Street (just off Royal Avenue). These start to make the costs a lot higher but consider the crush in trying to fit 20 people into even 1800 sq ft when you consider that you are going to want desks, maybe even some sofas, breakout space, maybe even a conference room/meeting room or two. This is meant to be a relaxed place to work – not a sweatshop.

One of the most promising premises in terms of size is one on North Street which has 2300 sq ft already subdivided into offices and meeting rooms. The list price, £30 000 annually is high and the rates add another £10 000 onto the total. But the shape is wrong (with it divided into a host of one-man offices) and with the cost now hitting £40 000 (though a good negotiator could get that rent cut down to half), you’d have to charge people a lot more just to get in the door and that then doesn’t count operational or capital expenditure – desks, chairs, carpets, projectors, internet, telephones.

Nor does anything here take into account the necessity for 5-15 year leases.

I am convinced that running a Co-Working site needs to be a full time job for someone and, as a result, they’d need to get paid for it. Someone to keep the place clean, someone to make sure the bills get paid, to make sure the milk is fresh, to restock the coffee and to scrub the toilet bowl. Sure, this can be done by the co-workers themselves but I remain unconvinced that people will do it unless it is their job. It will always be someone else’s job.

And I also think there needs to be a retail element of it. You need to increase revenue by bringing in people off the street. No sense in buying decent coffee if it’s just going to be drunk by the people who turn up to the co-working space.

[UPDATE: from the comments, Co-working spaces need some definition. This graphic is taken from my 2006 business plan.

The NewWorkSpace aimed to fill in the gap. Coffee shop on the ground floor with normal coffee tables in the middle and ‘work booths’ around the edges. Stairway leading to reception and entry to the co-working floor – large tables, room for 2-5 people at each, sofas, kitchen. Office manager pay-for facilities here too like fax, printer. Door leading to offices on next floor and secure storage for members. There was a lot more visual detail which I’ll lead someone though if they ask.]

Related posts:

  1. Co-Working Office Design considerations.
  2. Workplaces
  3. Co-Working guidelines.
  4. Co-Working

Virtual Notes

Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld gives software developers the chills worldwide as he describes ‘virtual sticky notes’: Researchers at a variety of labs, at both universities and private companies, are working on technology that enables people to create messages and associate them with a specific location. Those pursuing leadership in this technology include Microsoft, Siemens, Cornell … Continue reading “Virtual Notes”

Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld gives software developers the chills worldwide as he describes ‘virtual sticky notes’:

Researchers at a variety of labs, at both universities and private companies, are working on technology that enables people to create messages and associate them with a specific location. Those pursuing leadership in this technology include Microsoft, Siemens, Cornell University, the University of Edinburgh and now in the news this week: Duke University.
…
“Virtual sticky notes” are messages and other content that people can’t read unless they’re standing in the right spot. The idea is that a phone’s GPS determines the location for both poster and readers. The concept turns the physical world into a kind of 3-D Internet.

It’s not just the big companies, there are half a dozen lone developers and micro-ISVs who are working on something similar.

The moment I heard about the Core Location possibilities in the iPhone, the moment I realised how big this was going to be. Location-Services are going to be the hit technology of the next eighteen months. And if you don’t believe me, well…you’re an idiot. Geeks have been lusting after a reliable match-up between virtual space (cyberspace, whatever) and meatspace (the real world) for decades (I first read about it in 1993 in a roleplaying game so you can appreciate how long geeks have been wanting this). Now we have devices with GPS and internet capabilities that will allow that to happen.

Mike describes some scenarios such as writing a restaurant review after stepping out of a restaurant and posting it to the the ‘Virtual Note’ server which can be retrieved by the next person who stands there and opens the ‘Virtual Note’ application.

Whether this is used for private messaging or public messaging, it’s also open to abuse. Rather than phone booths containing cards for illicit services (admittedly I’ve not seen these in Belfast), you might end up with virtual notes which only really occupy virtual space and not meatspace. What’s to stop and unscrupuluous business owner or advertiser from swamping a competitor’s physical location with bad reviews? What’s to stop criminals from leaving an enticing breadcrumb trail that brings our curious geeks into a mugging incident because the criminals know they have some saleable technology with them.

Worse still, we’re talking about virtual overlays of the real world here so places that are heavily visited will become swamped with messages; both personal and commercial, public and private.

This is why exclusivity might be needed. We need to be able to segregate this traffic so that we only see the traffic from the people we subscribe to. This would be, a good goal for Twitter 2.0 (or maybe Google is going mash up Jaiku and Google Maps to give us exactly this for Android?)

There are other avenues of fun – leaving a breadcrumb trail for someone to follow armed with a GPS and your ‘sticky notes’ software. And what if the ‘location’ isn’t enough data. What if you required the GPS location as well as a necessity to point your camera in a certain direction in order to do a fuzzy pattern match from a photo you just received. Sounds like fun.

Now, imagine if the overlay technology was built into glasses.

Mike says this will all be due to three things:

  1. GPS Electronics in phones
  2. Social Networking
  3. Google’s Android

I can believe the first two but there’s no way that Android is currently a major contributor to this – there’s only an unfinished SDK and no shipping phones. We’re going to see compelling applications in this space long before this (considering it takes 6 months to build an application and Android is probably 6 months away from initial release) probably shipping for iPhone and Windows Mobile. Mark my words.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something like this already. Socialight already has channels which can accept location-based notes, Loopt already allows you to look through the history of friends locations (though it relies on SMS messages) and this will be something that we see added to other existing social network services.

Related posts:

  1. Google: I don’t trust them.
  2. GeoFencing vs Check-In
  3. iPhone vs Android: software lock-in and halo effect
  4. But what about Virtual Virtual Offices?

Recession coming, solution = Entrepreneurship

John F. Kennedy writes about the recession of the Irish economy Enterprise and entrepreneurship are the antidote for unemployment and recession. Encourage people to use computers and broadband to beat the recession, they can work for anyone from anywhere. They can create businesses based on anything from selling stuff on eBay to using their intelligence … Continue reading “Recession coming, solution = Entrepreneurship”

John F. Kennedy writes about the recession of the Irish economy

Enterprise and entrepreneurship are the antidote for unemployment and recession. Encourage people to use computers and broadband to beat the recession, they can work for anyone from anywhere. They can create businesses based on anything from selling stuff on eBay to using their intelligence to write, provide consultancy services or develop technology. This is the way out. Failure to provide them with the tools is economic sabotage. Let’s hope intelligence prevails.

Yes!

This sort of thinking is what Momentum and the Digital Circle[1] should be working on. It’s not necessarily about supporting the existing economy but by providing grass roots access to technology to take advantage of nascent knowledge workers.

I just don’t see us taking advantage of it. And we’d have to work hard to create value in this ‘credit crunch restricted’ world. That said, while the property market is in the doldrums, there are investors with cash in their portfolios looking for technologies to invest in.

To this end we need strategies like Co-Working Belfast or my as-yet-stillborn New Workspace to provide the most basic substrate for people to find places to work and collaborate. Just getting the space organised would make a big step – the rest is then up to the individuals with experienced mentors providing the introductions. How about a system of half a dozen mini-Ycombinators?

Anyway. You’re a taxpayer. Think about it.

[1] For a laugh, see digitalcircle.org without the www. Anyone see a problem?

Related posts:

  1. Digital Circle going independent and my thoughts on the Future
  2. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  3. Workplaces
  4. Entrepreneurship

Workplaces

I’ve never made secret my love of the concepts of ‘Going Bedouin’ or ‘Co-Working’. The difference between them is simple. Going Bedouin The principle of having your entire business on your back. Today you work in a coffee shop on Royal Avenue, tomorrow a coffee shop in Bradbury Place. And with 3G USB doohickeys being … Continue reading “Workplaces”

I’ve never made secret my love of the concepts of ‘Going Bedouin’ or ‘Co-Working’.

The difference between them is simple.

Going Bedouin

The principle of having your entire business on your back. Today you work in a coffee shop on Royal Avenue, tomorrow a coffee shop in Bradbury Place. And with 3G USB doohickeys being so cheap these days it seems that you don’t even need to find a WiFi-enabled cafe. Going Bedouin is going to be best for someone who has a relatively paper-free business due to the lack of printing facilities and they’d also be likely to stock up on extra batteries just in case their workplace of the day doesn’t have any convenient power points. Your expenses are going to be the amount of food and beverages that the coffee shop owner will expect you to buy in order to retain your seat. Some Bedouin workers have scorned the idea of ‘paying your way’ but it is an important part of the economy. If you don’t like it, shack up in a corner of the bus station or in another public space.

Co-Working

For the most part, this is about hiring a desk in a shared space. This is different to hiring a serviced office and sitting hidden in there knowing that the guy in the next office is working on something different. Shared spaces are all about getting the benefits of being in a busy office with less of the negatives. Candidates for co-working tend to be social people, people not irritated by the presence of others and people who might have worked for a big company before and missed the interaction at the water cooler or the photocopier when they went independent. Most co-workers will only use the shared space part-time due to other pressures in their lives. The Co-Work space should therefore be something of a refuge and it’s not conducive to have stressed-out, under-pressure individuals in your space (unless watching someone slowly implode really relaxes you). Co-Working is about relationships more than anything.

Excellence in workspace

An important point in changing your workstyle to add in Bedouin working or Co-Working is to make sure it provides an improvement.

The space you choose should fit in with the pattern of how you want to work. If you like working early in the morning or late at night, you’ll need to consider this (most half decent cafes in Belfast seem to close at 6). Consider your transport routes and, more importantly, your footwear. Consider that you may need to bring a coat of some sort even when the weather seems fine (and a warm sweater if you’re in Ireland).

For a Co-Working space, look at the other co-workers and make an attempt to be friends with them. Is the space tidy or well-kept? Do they have insurance? Or Alarm systems? What’s to stop someone walking in off the street? Do you feel comfortable leaving your equipment and content unattended? Do they have a lockup for your stuff when you’re out of the office? What ‘virtual office’ facilities do they have? Fax? Telephone? Receptionist? Do they have a kitchen? What about a breakout area for chat? Do the other co-workers have any odious habits? Does it smell fresh? Are the windows open? Is the carpet clean?

And when it’s restroom time – do you pack up your mobile office into your bag and disappear into the restroom to emerge later smelling faintly of cheap liquid soap? Do you leave it all out and hope that someone will look after your stuff?

Co-Working is all about relationships – do you trust these people?

Prerequisites

The first and most important element in considering Bedouin or CoWorking plans is whether or not you can make money – some businesses lend themselves naturally, while some do not. Services like Twitter give you a skewed perspective of work because there’s little visibility of time zones, business models and segregation. While you’re making your decisions, you can see that some people are re-installing their gaming machines or going for a walk, sitting in a coffee house drinking Americanos, giving talks or drumming in the park. You don’t see the work that they do because you’re always being updated by someone.

Another element that people don’t consider is outsourcing work that doesn’t bring direct value. Hire an accountant. Make sure your mail host and file server host are reliable. Make sure you have a reliable communications network with others in your team (if you are part of a team) because your team will need that interaction with you.

Ask yourself why you want to change your workstyle. Coffee is cheaper at home. Peace and quiet probably more achievable (unless there are kids involved). Talk through it with your partner at home as they may resent you changing from being a teleworker-at-home to a teleworker-in-cafe.

If you’re doing it, embrace it. Make the most of it and don’t be a wallflower.

Next Steps

I plan to talk more about possibilities in Co-Working over the next few days. I don’t know how much of my vision concurs with the vision of the individuals who make up the Co-Working Belfast group because I have some very specific ideas of what I want to see. I still have this business plan for ‘the new workspace’ which I wrote in 2006 and I think it deserves another crack of the whip.

Related posts:

  1. Co-Working 2008
  2. Taking Bedouin to the illogical extreme
  3. Bedou-working…
  4. Co-Working Office Design considerations.

BarCamp Belfast 08 mini review

Things that interested me most… Emma Persky’s Feature Recognition. Although challenged by being opposite Brian O’Neill’s freelancer talk (and let’s face it, what geek doesn’t dream of sticking it to the man and going ronin!). Best idea – move it to another time slot and that really worked I think. I thoroughly enjoyed it and … Continue reading “BarCamp Belfast 08 mini review”

Things that interested me most…

Emma Persky’s Feature Recognition. Although challenged by being opposite Brian O’Neill’s freelancer talk (and let’s face it, what geek doesn’t dream of sticking it to the man and going ronin!). Best idea – move it to another time slot and that really worked I think. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it gave me ideas for five, six, seven more applications that I don’t have the skill (yet) or the resources to build (again, yet). The possibilities with pattern recognition are fascinating and though this technology has been studied for a while, it takes a good demo to move it from ‘yeah, sure’ to ‘oh, that’s cool’. Good job Emma!

Tracy Dempseys Life Wheel/Spokes demo – I’d not really thought about my priorities that way. I have therefore resolved to work on the areas most deficient (quality time with my kids, general day to day job satisfaction) and not worry about the areas I’m happy with (how current I am with technology etc, money). The interesting thing is not thinking about how much effort you put into these things but how happy you are with the results. For those areas where I want more – I’m going to work on them with the theory that you get out what you put in. It’s funny, I’ve been results oriented (and passionate and loudmouthed about achieving them) for years in my ‘professional’ life.

Gerard McBreen’s Digital Circle. I wasn’t interested in the Adobe FLEX/AIR stuff anywhere near as much but Digital Circle is like a taster-for-10 of some ideas I’ve had for years (and the reason I tried to start Infurious). I’d still like Infurious to be a ‘publisher’ for a small group of developers but don’t know how to approach it just yet. I need to think on that but would encourage anyone creating any sort of digital content (software, eBook, movies, animations) to join Digital Circle.

And the rest?
All of the others were good though not especially relevant to me (Ruby scales? Whoodathunkit?) and next time round I’d like to hear Richard’s presentation on webcasting. Nick’s talk on the New Music Economy was an alternative path to my promotion of ‘1000 fans’ but as he said on the day – there isn’t just ‘one way’. As an homage to the existing model of music economy, I bought ‘Feel Good Lost’, by Broken Social Scene last night from iTunes after a short listen to a track during BarCamp. I’ve not bought much new music recently so that was nice.

Best Bits– conversations in the corridors and between talks – finding out how people got into their line of work, why they made their choices and also discovering some pleasant feedback on things I’ve done (or could be about to release). I do need to talk to Will King about his OpenGeo data but that can wait for a little bit. Mix that in with a little WiMax and you’ve got a spicy meatball!

Worst Bits – the WiFi disaster. Something was definitely rotten in Kislev. I’m blogging about this concurrently but it flummoxed me and Paul Dundas and in the end to supply two rooms with intermittent WiFi, we ended up having to use three infrastructure access points and one ad-hoc access point. The latter was my laptop which effectively kept me from vegging out and using it which was probably a good thing.

Next steps?

OCC BBQ is on the 16th July down in Terryglass, County Tipperary (about 200 miles away from where I’m sitting as I type this). I’m driving down and will be sorting out some accommodation in the next day or so. Current thinking is to trip down on Tuesday afternoon (arriving before closing time at the pub), enjoy the BBQ throughout the Wednesday and then trip back on the Friday. That would mean two nights accommodation though.

I also want to continue that chat with Andy McMillan, Andrew Gribben and Matt Keenan about Co-working that we started right at the end when I was packing up. David Rice should also be involved but only if he can find a ‘first name twin’ like the rest of us. I’m joking, David. Mostly.

There was also some talk of doing another ‘event’ in six months? Maybe a TechLudd? (Go on, call it TechNorn or something). I’m up for helping get this going – I’d wanted to start an ‘Expo’ for tech companies for years!

Fabulous stuff today. My only regret was that I didn’t talk! I’m going to remedy that at OCC BBQ by the way as well as talking to some interesting people I’ve wanted to chat with for ages.

Related posts:

  1. Digital Circle going independent and my thoughts on the Future
  2. The Broadband Blueprint (re DETI Telecoms Consultation)
  3. More on Digital Circle.
  4. Fucking walk the walk rather than just talking the talk