DemocampCalgary and barcmapCalgary have been informing and entertaining the tech community for close to two years now. We were fortunate enough to be able to present at DCC15 on October 27th, just a few days prior to our opening.
The DCC team put together a wonderful video highlighting the great lineup of apps, plugins, etc. We start in at 2:42. The original post can be found here: DCC15 video
If you haven’t already, come by to check out the space.
We got some more really nice exposure in the media…this time from a national publication, Unlimited Magazine. As always, the anticipation is nice, but hopefully we have some concrete news to share with you soon.
The article is a profile of four Canadian coworking spaces and provides yet another succinct summary of the challenge met by coworking.
In spite of the freedom of setting your own hours, avoiding office politics and working in your slippers, a home office has its downsides. Where to meet customers for those appointments that you can’t schedule at the corner café? How to combat the isolation of being alone all day?
Co-working offices – places that try to answer these questions by providing independent workers and entrepreneurs with the space and utilities of a conventional office (think meeting rooms and copy machines, for starters) while letting them keep their autonomy.
read the rest of the article here: Unlimited Magazine
OFFICELAND: SHARE-SIES FOR FREELANCERS
Four co-working spaces that reinvent the cubicle farm
By Flavie Halais
…courtesy of Blankspaces. Can we have some of these too?
Blankspaces is a pretty swish coworking space in Los Angeles and these commercials are testament to that. Here is our favourite:
Fired up! from BLANKSPACES on Vimeo.
And check out the rest of their commercials here.
We had our first public profile piece run on techvibes a few weeks ago. It created some serious buzz and just emboldened us to get coworkYYC off the ground even sooner.
Here is the link: techvibes.com and an excerpt:
Coworking is the practice of multiple independent creative professionals (you can call ‘em freelancers) working in and sharing the same space.
The group has a couple of main goals.
Our focal points are finding an ideal space that perfectly combines open, shared workspace with breakout areas for socialization and meetings; we want to develop a strong community and allow the group to establish an identity outside the walls; and most of all we want to provide a fun yet productive workspace for Calgary’s freelancers.
They’re looking at a soft launch (kind of like an out of town preview) in September and hopefully a full-on launch by October 1st. The biggest challenge facing the group is finding a location.
It was a bit early in our process and did not have much for content, but did get the word out a bit further. Up to this point, we have been using twitter and email to canvas for support and feedback…oh, and now facebook: coworkYYC on Facebook
These few links served as our basis of knowledge and understanding of coworking.
At first, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t even have a word for it. After searching “office rental” or “shared office calgary” or “desk for rent” and every permutation therof, we cam across this made up word: coworking.
This article might be the first mention of coworking in this context:
Coworking – Community for Developers Who Work From Home Tuesday, August 09, 2005
“Traditionally, society forces us to choose between working at home for ourselves or working at an office for a company. If we work at a traditional 9 to 5 company job, we get community and structure, but lose freedom and the ability to control our own lives. If we work for ourselves at home, we gain independence but suffer loneliness and bad habits from not being surrounded by a work community.
Coworking is a solution to this problem. In coworking, independent writers, programmers, and creators come together in community a few days a week. Coworking provides the office of a traditional corporate job, but in a very unique way.”
It is from Brad Neuberg’s personal blog, one of the originators of the coworking movement, and one of the founders of the San Francisco coworking space, the Hat Factory. The concept has evolved into myriad forms, from cooperatives to profitable businesses, all built with community in mind.
The Coworking Community Blog and the Coworking Wiki are the essential starting points to see what’s out there and what resources you have in your city.