devArboretum Blog

Coworking as part of the new infrastructure

People keep asking why we’re pushing for a coworking space is needed in Grand Rapids. Currently there’s plenty of cheap office space and a fair amount of people enjoy working out of their homes and coffee shops. So why spend the effort and time setting up a new space with furniture and an internet connection.

The reason for a space isn’t just a place to work it or be, it’s a place that helps build a community or a movement. Grand Rapids now more than ever has a great level of entrepreneurial energy that’s starting to bubble up to the main stream surface. Granted all of these ventures are not “high tech” “green” or “manufacturing” based ventures, but they are all still vitally crucial to the region.

A coworking space is that first easy step for someone starting a new venture. A place for them to move out of their home office and into professional place to work and collaborate. A place that provides the resources and people that have been through the adventure before. A place where cheap space comes with good insight and guidance on the startup process.

Places like techarb or the Tech Brewery, both in Ann Arbor, are great examples of the type of places that are helping startups get off the ground with resources, insight and a common goal of building new sutstainable businesses. These spaces are helping the community by creating new jobs, retain crucial talent and opening their doors for community focused events like GiveCamp, BarCamp and Startup Weekends.

Coworking is the first step in the support infrastructure for businesses and individuals within the knowledge economy.

reblogged from workthefactory

Playing with Microsoft Tag

So Im on a 4 day vacation and I woke up at 6a to an advertisement for Microsoft Tag. After my ADD kicked in, I immediately generated my first two tags and got my hands on an api key too. I approach everything that has to do with a computing technology in general with the mantra that its a “solution waiting for a problem” and Microsoft Tag is definitely one of those things.

Anyway, if you want to see an excellent short article outlining a grip of use cases for Microsoft Tag, check out this article and get those wheels spinning. The custom tags are sweet too, love the High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) technology, love it. Cant wait to have an HTTParty with it.

In the meantime, check out my DA Microsoft Tags:

This tag is my vCard, grab it!

This tag is my Phone Number, call me!

Balloon Fight! (our glimpse of fame)

@qtsweeney (Sweeney reloaded) and I went to the balloon fight on the Fourth of July, unfortunately we exhausted our fame on the experience, but had a blast nonetheless.

mongodb on rails via mongo_record in 4 steps

This is not an amazing task for most, but it im sharing it anyway because thats how I roll.

It is easy to get mongodb on rails using mongo_record in four tasks:

create/generate a schema.rb file.
install the mongo_record plugin
edit the database.yml file.
edit each model to connect to the mongodb.

Random coworking Thoughts

The Sense of Belonging

On a high end plan for coworking space, I want a nameplate. Something that glues the coworking company to myself and is visible while im working. This may seem corporate, but what about a twist to it like the below:

Note my Twitter handle, this is how you know im not in a corporate environment. Im also hanging out with Fluff from ElevatorUp, which ties me to the coworking space. This can be littered with Dole Banana stickers too, or any other social network handle I choose.

Ergonomics

Ample power.
Back Facing desks. As much as I like to people watch, sometimes I like to face a wall while working, and do cool chair spins before interacting with the environment. This may be a comfort thing from my corporate conditioning or many days of detention, Id just like to see it as an option.

Revenue Streams

I have told my wife (@bobecca) many times that coworking is kind of like a mental health spa where some of the toxicity of work washes off, while I continue to work. So, take this to a new level and sell “coupon books” to local employers in the area. Bosses can give coupons to workers to work in the environment for a day, either to unwind, get stuff done, or professionally mingle while still working. Damn, this is a great idea.

Lunch

I build in the cost of lunch to the coworking experience. If it could be arranged to get a buy in from some caterers or restaurants to cut a mass $5 dollar pitch in deal for lunch. $5 is the new $10 for lunch now a days.

Sponsorship Opportunities

I once sponsored an Airport express at a coffee shop. The name of the device was my company name, and it had a tag hanging off it that I sponsored it. People could stream to it at will, at the cost of a little spam. This also gave music control to the people, instead of MUZAK. It excluded those without Itunes, but that was just sad. I would like sponsorship opportunities like this to exist in the co working space. Even Tech Embassy’s approach to a table of flyers, giveaways, etc.

Asethics

Again, Tech Embassy had some good ideas last year at the Tulip Festival… Some type of coworking space twitter feed that updated against the wall, in the window, etc, this was a great touch. Showcasing the local area somehow in the
decor is awesome too, ElevatorUp does a good job of this.

Revenue Streams

Meetup hosting.
Corporate meeting space.
Classroom hosting, like that of ideafoundry but maybe on a different level and just hosted.

And Finally

Ample parking for my Unicorn, being the social media expert that I am.

Instant Proxy w/ SSH

Need a one-liner to surf through your slice ?

Now adjust your SOCKS.

Grand Rapids coworking in the works

inetmac:

A lot of talk is going on around town about opening a coworking space in downtown Grand Rapids. I’ve been having great conversations with a bunch of people, pulling together some numbers and things are looking good. People really seem to be excited about the potential of having a space that’s driven to help independnt workers and provide a unique creative enviroment.

In the next couple of weeks I want to meetup with people that are intrested in the community around a coworking space. We need to start thinking about what a coworking space in Grand Rapids should offer, where it should be and how big it really needs to be.

I’m thinking just an informal night, maybe at HopCat or another great local eatery to discuss some of these points and see where it all leads.

Let me know if you’re intrested by contacting me on twitter or leaving a comment here on my blog.

reblogged from inetmac

HL7 Sniffer Revisited

I actually had to use this so I took it out and cleaned it up a little bit… also checking out the gist embed functionality.

HABTM LOL ping -f

Though this doesnt jump right out and amuse anybody, it does me. Has Ruby on Rails completely spoiled me? I spent 2 hours bitching about a limitation about associations of only have conventions of ONE to MANY in Intersystems Cache(tm) and realized that a pair of ONE to MANY’s associated to another persisted class is actually a MANY TO MANY or a HABTM. Thank you docbook, ihax0red j00.

DocBook

isolator + screenboard

If you go download isolator and then go get the awesome Air app screenboard, you can do cool stuff like this too. Throw in a shift+command+4 and you got yourself a whiteboard that prints.

cool eh? not really, but now ya know.

cool

My first month co-working

Last year I set out to take my personal hack time a little more seriously and wrap a business around it. I held an office in Grand Rapids and labeled it a “man cave”, and used it all of about 6 times with a total of about $400/mo. Despite the solitude in my own office, I failed to get to the mental kick start I was looking for out of the environment.

So I’ll cycle back to what I really wanted out of it:

A place to escape the (somewhat toxic) workflow of the day job and adopt new methodologies for getting my work done.
A place for the academic practice of my profession to get back to the drive that got me here in the first place.
A place to dedicate the entire day to tomorrow and be progressive with my future.
A place to “hang out” with potential clients and collaborate with folks in the similar industries.

Did I get that?

Not really, for one I was surrounded by least interesting person to bounce ideas off of, which was myself. Secondly, I found myself still scattered and attending meetups and tech groups looking for the same things I stated on the list previous. Which does not work as most of these meetings are limited in time, and sometimes more structured than I wanted (but interesting all the same).

So we closed up the office and moved the operations to U.S. Signal, leaving me at Panera bread wearing out my welcome and with github issues, or worse yet at home where the life balance gets all convaluted.

In April I decided to give co-working out at elevatorup for a spin. Things were ramping up with development sprints for Dev Arboretum and my need to break out for aggressive Spectrum Health development was growing. I have some relatively small windows to produce and nowhere to do it.

Here is what I ended up with:

Surrounding myself with people with an incredible drive to do stuff. Some I understand, some I dont, but that kind of energy is catchy.
Ability to concentrate in a SILO, but mingle in a tech soup.
Overhearing an occassional “F-BOMB” which reminds you that you are truly free (at least for a day) from a corporate environment.
Well kept surroundings, no more carpet stains or in office servers spinning.
No more Tori Amos looping continually.
Being a developer of sorts that has been in a target industry for years, its so nice to be surrounded by other industries.
Somebody (@zmoazeni ) actually asked what the hell I was doing. You underestimate how awesome this is until nobody does it for a year.

The experience is positive, economically makes sense, and is achieving what I wanted over a year ago.

If you haven’t at least tried co-working, here is my best shot at explaining it to you:

Have ever worked in an office, and felt that you were on a perpetual conference call, all day, everyday? Well, co-working is kind of like that, except it doesn’t suck, and is kind of like being at a perpetual conference for something you enjoy, while working all the same.