Geek Dinners, BarCamps and Coworking
I attended my first UK Geek Dinner last night after FoWA. Guests of honour were Tara Hunt and Chris Messina. I only chatted to Chris for a short while towards the end of the night and the bulk of the conversation was about BarCamp. I told him how important I thought BarCamps have been for the creation of a vibrant tech community in Ireland. I also wanted to thank him and Tantek and the others for starting something that I think is a true revolution. Who would have thought last summer that we would have two under our belts with three future ones decided. Chris was very happy to hear about EduCamp too.
I also finally got to say hello to Jeremy Keith, a Cobh man, now based in Brighton. I got all the way to dConstruct and back last year without managing to even shake his hand.
Later in the tube station, Chris brought up something I had only heard about for the first time earlier that day; CoWorking. To quote the wiki:
Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents. Or, it’s like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes.
I really liked the sound of this but pointed out to Chris that many start-ups in Ireland are run out of people’s houses (or sheds). He didn’t see a problem. Why not go to different houses on different days? Not just for basic human interaction but also to have people to bounce ideas off or have them suggest ideas to you. Helping each other basically.
I’ve been thinking about it since last night and there is great scope to do something really special here. Sure we have the government funded incubation centres and some of the commercial hot-desk providers around the country but to my mind, it is the social aspect that is so important. Look at the FoWA conference – sure I could have read transcripts or listened to podcasts but I don’t think I would have been as enthused as I am now about some of the areas covered. Ditto the BarCamps and the Geek Dinners – they have great importance but can only be intermittent.
There could be wonderful opportunities for people to help each other in a Coworking environment. I wonder are there any tech companies in Ireland who would be willing to put aside an area for Coworking? I doubt someone like Google would but there must be others who might be more open.
Maybe when the Rubicon Centre in Cork is moving out the next set of companies who have made it they could use some of that space as a co-working facility. I know I’d be happy to go in once or twice a week. I’m guessing they won’t go with the healing therapists they have in San Fran 
Alternatively, considering how empty Webworks is in Cork City, there is an ideal opportunity for a forward thinking property developer to open up part of that wonderful building for Coworking. I think it could have a strong halo effect and help attract the paying tenants they are seeking for the rest of the building.
At the other end of the scale, are there any home-based entrepreneurs who would be willing to try a day here and there in each others houses? Surely a chair, part of a table, wifi, a kettle and some biccies are the only requirements?
I’m going to drill into this more. If anyone else local (Bandon or Cork or Ireland) has any thoughts, post them here. Or if anyone who is already successfully doing it has any advice, I’d love to hear it.
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Sounds great alright Conor. Being home-based, I’d certainly be up for it.
Hi Conor, I was at the Barcamp in the Webworks building. I agree there is a need for more of these. I am home based (very close to the Webworks building if thats any use) and I’d certainly be up for it too.
Great to hear lads!
I’m going to do more posting on this when I get a chance to read more about the existing ones. Some are commercial e.g $10 per day and some are free but they do ask that you collaborate.
It is the collaboration possibilities that excite me. They don’t have to be all free either. Having an ever changing mix of people meeting up means that commercial opportunities will present themselves too. It literally enables the idea of “right place at the right time”.
Great idea Conor. I’m based in a new incubator centre in Limerick and am the only start up so far so I’d jump on any opportunities to go out and mix with others!!
btw the Irish incubators managers meet 4 times a year and are brainstorming ideas, they may be open to something like this, let me talk to our manager here.
Do you know if the existing collaborative spaces are open all the time to anyone or is there a rotation system between locations? Also do they have a blog up saying who’s where and when?
The wiki has a separate page for each geo and some of those have their own blogs. I’ve just started checking them out to get a feel for the different approaches in different cities.
It’d be great if you talked to the incubator manager in Limerick.
Conor,
As the manager of the WIT incubator (BarCamp location) I’d be very happy create a co-working space here and I think any my colleagues around the country who have space available would feel the same. If it was successful, I would be prepared to set up a permanent space for this. I can also see the benefit of a network of co-working spaces which “members” could use if, for example, they needed to work in another location for a period of time.
I’m very interested in following this through.
Tom
That’s wonderful news Tom. You have one hell of a location in that WIT building. Give me a few days to do more reading on the practicalities and I’ll check with EI here to see if either Rubicon or Webworks would be up for it too.
COnor it’s not only a gret idea but it draws attention to how isolated a lot of start ups are. I was involved in the enterprise programme about five years ago and though if instead of funding 12 starts ups they funded 12 people to form two teams wow, you’d have had great businesses. What they have in San Francisco is the capacity to form teams very quicly knowing it’s not the end of the world if things don’t work out. Anyway I know that’s not what you’re sugggesting but to sure I hope to be in anew office soon, above a pub. Everybody’s welcome.
I’ll see if we have spare desks in Sandyford. We’ve just taken on 3 students so I’m not sure if there’s much room left.
Great idea
I’m based at home (in the UK) where I have a consultant at any given time for training (everyone else is client or home based). I’ve love to share office space over here because working from home is now becoming a pain.
Haydn, as you say, the great power of big cities is the pool of people from which teams can form. It is far more difficult when we are geographically dispersed but there is generally enough people within a reasonable driving distance that coworking should be feasible.
I can think of at least 6 or 7 near enough to me that could make use of such a facility. Thanks for the offer and the pub bit is sure to be an added sweetener
Paul, it’s great that you are looking into this. I worked in Sandyford for many years and I always found it a strange place in that you had thousands of people working in small, big and huge tech companies and none of them knew each other!
If you had some freelancers, independents or proto-entrepreneurs making use of a few coworking facilities in greater Sandyford, they could be the glue that starts creating communities of people with similar interests.
Well I move in sometime soon, ready by mid-March, and the desk will be there with at least a laptop on it for anyone to use. How will we sort that out though Conor – I mean do you expect people to drop in any time or phone or what?
That’s the bit I need to study i.e. the basic mechanics/practicalities. I want to see what others are doing.
Maybe for the small office/house scenarios, we dictate a different day per location and then have a simple “book in advance mechanism” (Google Calendar?). So you could be Thursdays and can only take one person, I could Mondays but can really only do 9-1 etc.
I’d expect that a lot of times the slots wouldn’t be used but when you need to bounce a few ideas off someone, then you know the option is open and you know who is most appropriate.
I guess the danger is that it is treated like a day-off or just an extension of going for coffee but I’d hope that the “working” part of “coworking” is not forgotten.
I do think the larger multi-desk formal scenario would work better e.g. in a place like Webworks. And of course, it’ll only really start to hum when the pool of people grows and becomes more diverse.
Great discussion lads. Together with BarCamps and OpenCoffee Clubs we’re really going places now.
But to be devils advocate for a moment… what are the insurance implications of having guests *working* in your home?
Did I read somewhere recently that the public liability bit is fine for home offices as long as you are not “open to the public”? And since they are not employees, their is no employer liability. But I guess if they electrocute themselves there may be issues!
Webworks in Cork City currently has the facility to rent a desk for a week or month or whatever term you require. A unit with desks available has been allocated for this purpose. Further details available from Webworks. 021-4320000
That’s great to hear Damien. Short-term desk availability is definitely a required first step.
I’ll give them a shout to see if the overall approach is amenable to a coworking type environment. My feeling is that it should be since the layout of Webworks is very conducive to socialising (I know that was one of the design aims).
Rubicon
We are adding to our existing service, hot desks for entrepreneurs on a monthly basis
For more info ring 021-4928901
That’s great news Paul. I’ll call during the week to talk more.
I am doing some work with a London-based client in the coolest coworking location I’ve ever come across – three impressive buildings pulled together with a lovely cafe/bar area in the basement and a really nice restaurant. For less sociable work, there is a library, meeting rooms of various sizes which you can rent by the hour etc. A great, creative and laid back atmosphere for a fraction of the office rentals in the area.
That sounds awesome!
I’d love a forward thinking developer to do that in Cork with some old building. Too much money to be made using it in other ways at the minute I guess. Hopefully with property taking a dive here, we’ll finally see some interesting projects like that.
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