My new home
I spent most of the day today at Independents Hall, the co-working place in Philly. I had been meaning to get there for a while, but always found excuses why it wasn’t the right time. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake. While I was there for about 8 hours, I only spent about four working (a pretty productive four hours actually). The rest of the time I was talking to other members, and I had a blast. I got some real practical information on how to deal with a specific issue I’m struggling with (selecting and working with designers) and then got into a conversation that went from new web2.0′ish business models to the importance of community to the failure of industry to really capitalize on the incredible capabilities of modern hardware.
The folks I met were super supportive and enthusiastic and the atmosphere there is amazing. And I don’t use the word amazing very often. There’s some really cool stuff going on there, and it’s not just technical – there’s some innovative business models being experimented with, and I think they’ll have a lot of success.
Now I have to get used to driving to Philly a few days a week..
I’ve been participating in our local Jelly group for almost a year now and loving it. Jelly is a more informal co-working group than Independents Hall (we meet at various locations around Atlanta) but we haven’t been able to figure out the economics behind a permanent location. Most of us are FT employees who work from home occasionally versus independent contractors so that’s a big difference.