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Crowdsourcing a Name August 25, 2010

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been involved with a project to create a community center in the Thornton Park neighborhood of downtown Orlando. The space will be run by a non-profit, the Urban Think! Foundation, whose current project, Page15, is a beacon of great service and creative inspiration to the city’s youth. Now, the focus turns to the working creatives of the city and their needs – Organization, Validation and Integration (if you ask my buddy Darren McDaniel, who wrote a PhD paper on this subject).

The most visible way the Foundation will be providing for the community is by opening a space to work, learn, share and network in the heart of the city, in the former Urban Think! Bookstore. A few months ago we put out a survey trying to understand who is in our community, what they’re working on, what they need, and how they may be interested in working together to provide for our community.

To that end, we are asking for the community’s input on one of the very most visible parts of our project, the name. You can go to our site and vote on these names. I have copied the text here for convenience and posterity’s sake.

We came up with (way more than) 5 names, and one person was assigned to write a sentence or two to give the name some weight, backstory, what-have-you. Here they are:

Sharehaus
(or sharehouse)

Inspiration statement:
The single word that best reflects the spirit, activities, diversity, and potential of the space is share. Beyond sharing ideas, workspace, talents, and experiences, share speaks to the collaborative mission ahead. While also German for house, our haus is homage to the kindred spirit of the Bauhaus movement and its hallmark of uniting art, craft, and technology to improve society. Sharehaus. Organic, distinctive, and inviting. A new term for a new horizon.

Urban Rethink!

Inspiration statement:
A profound and transformative look at the role of a space, once a bookstore, in the fabric of a neighborhood, a metro area, a community of patrons, and the lives of creative individuals. Always reinventing ourselves, rebuilding the community, redoubling our efforts, and rewarding our patrons. The name has been used for the last 6 months to collect support for the as-yet-unnamed space.

Urban Think!
(or Urban Think! _____ (third environment defining word to be determined))

Inspiration statement:
If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it! The Urban Think name has long been synonymous with creativity in an urban neighborhood and although books won’t be the focus of the new space, creativity will always have a home here. The name pays homage to the original bookstore as well as the Urban Think! Foundation, which will continue to operate the space.

lively+hood
(or livelihood)

Inspiration statement:
This concept defines a place where creative professionals, enthusiasts, and beyond do more than exist or congregate – they thrive. Lively expresses the energy, vibrancy, vitality, and diversity intrinsic to creativity. Hood stems from our location inside one of Orlando’s most recognizable urban neighborhoods: Thornton Park. Lively+hood provides sustenance and a means by which creatives can grow, evolve, expand, and thrive.

Think! Collective

Inspiration statement:
The first word Think! pays homage to the former tenant of the space, the Urban Think! Bookstore, and the positive impact it made on the community of Thornton Park. The word Collective expresses the new chapter of this community staple and also defines the space as a place where creative individuals, as well as individuals who support creativity, can gather and exchange the same belief that community inspires creativity and vice versa.

We’re asking people to rate these names, 5 being best. Please visit our site and give each a rating. I really can’t wait to show you what is planned, and to get you involved in what we’re building, not just on a local scale. Keep believing!

Happy Coworking Day August 9, 2010

#coworkingday – On the global Coworking mailing list, someone pointed out that today, August 9, 2010 is the 5th anniversary of the start of the Coworking movement. Brad Neuberg repurposed the word from a man who was trying to create a system for telecommuters, at a space called the Spiral Muse. Shortly thereafter, the Hat Factory became known as the Garden of Eden for Coworking. Citizen Space started to spread the idea, among others, and I would say Independents Hall and New Work City might be the most “visible” spaces – at least from where I’m sitting.

I heard about Coworking from a friend of mine, Alex Rudloff, about 4 years ago – we met online because he had an avatar (user picture) showing my college’s logo – he was working for AOL/Netscape Propellor at the time. Alex and myself started an event which we called “Coworking Fridays”, essentially a Jelly, in order to build support for a possible coworking space in downtown Orlando. Now that group meets for Coworking Tuesdays at Stardust. A few years later, a commercial real estate landlord named John Hussey created CoLab Orlando, and we had our first space.

I have written several posts in other venues, and on this blog, about why I decided to get involved in the movement (I was interested in creating an “open computer lab” as early as 2003), and why working together is better than working alone (inspiration, collaboration, validation, community, integration). Tara Hunt asked everyone to write a blog post or tweet about these following subjects:

1. how you first heard about the movement
2. why you decided to get involved
3. when your space opened up or you started working out of a coworking space
4. why coworking is better than working alone (or in another situation, like a coffee shop)
5. Tag your tweets #coworkingday at the end of posts about coworking

What gets you excited about Coworking? In Orlando, or elsewhere?

P.S. Don’t hyphenate that word.

What makes a Coworking space great? June 16, 2010

Today I saw a very happy post by CoLab Orlando for getting mentioned on a blog for entrepreneurs. The blog had named Orlando a top city to start a company, and this was a follow-up list of Coworking movements in those top cities. Orlando squeaked by with a grand total of one space describing their offering as coworking.

From 53 Coworking Centers in the Top Cities for Entrepreneurs:

Of course while bootstrapping a business every entrepreneur is looking for ways to keep what little money they do have but build an empire at the same time. Coworking is a relatively new option for business owners when it comes to getting office space.

If you don’t already know coworking centers are places that allow you to rent a desk, office, or simply come to hangout in an open room with other business owners doing the same thing. The centers will offer wifi, coffee, comfortable furniture, printing and of course an innovative setting. You have to signup for one of their packages that could range from $10 for a day pass to a few hundred dollars to rent your own desk for the month and a variety of options in between.

Whatever you do it becomes a cheaper and often more comfortable and innovative setting then renting your own private office space.

Very nice, I can save some money. I was glad to see the list of spaces so long – 53 spaces in 10 cities – but I was not very happy at their coworking sales pitch.

Edit: Plus there is a picture of a bunch of folks at a Jelly working in someone’s living room (I assume JellyNYC). That’s fine. There was even a token female in the picture. I was not too sure this screamed “entrepreneurship”.

My reply:

Your description of Coworking is abysmal. It does not lend any help to differentiating Coworking from a shared desk, pay-as-you-go office environment.

One of the most important things about a great coworking space is the safe atmosphere it creates for collaboration and mentoring.

At a coffee shop, I can’t turn to the person next to me and ask their opinion on something, or brainstorm an idea for my project – they would look at me funny.

At many shared desk environments, it’s dog-eat-dog, and if two people are in the same business, they’d be in direct competition, and likely stealing clients from each other.

Since the coworking space is more collegial, you can share that project with your potential competition, or hand it to him when you get to busy, and he might be inclined to hand the next one to you.

Also, the vibe of a great coworking space is hard to match, even at most places that use the term “Co-Working” somewhere in their sales pitch. The collected energy, passion, and raw talent is often dripping from the walls. There are many spaces where people are not just getting started, they’re putting down roots.

Since I’m involved in creating a space with Coworking elements right now, I feel like I am a bit more touchy about this subject than otherwise.

P.S. If you haven’t taken the Urban Re-Think Survey yet, I’d love it if you did. It would really help us out.

Re-Thinking Urban Think, Fill out this Survey June 8, 2010

In the past few months, Downtown Orlando and Thornton Park lost a great gem – the one independent bookstore within miles of town. The Urban Think! Bookstore was a community-minded, education-focused, welcoming, original, and fun place to be. The many iterations of the store over the years, including the kids bookstore, the cafe, and even local vendors selling baked goods, handmade items, and other local goodies made it an exemplary space for other local businesses to emulate.

In March, Urban Think! closed its doors after 8 years. A few years ago, their education and children’s programs spawned the Urban Think! Foundation and Page 15, their first project. Now a new project is beginning, dubbed Urban Re-Think for now. I have been involved with several preliminary meetings with Julia young, the executive director of Page 15, and Darren McDaniel, the former Programming Director for the Downtown Media Arts Center. There are many other people involved, such as the Urban Think! Foundation’s Board of Directors, and Katie Ball, local pot-stirrer, and star of public radio. I’m sure the list will grow beyond blog-post length before long.

Right now, we have reached a point where we want to reach out to you, the Orlando community, and find out what you’d like to get out of a community center in the heart of Downtown. There are lots of benefits to the location and the involvement of the people who have been brought in so far, and it can only get better.

For myself, I’m looking to gain a place to work, hold meetings, events, provide training, meet my creative peers and role-models, and continue to support the community in any way I can. If we had a clubhouse, a place where we could feel safe, and where we had control, I think we could build something really amazing.

I’ve got all kinds of fun ideas, but before this becomes Ryan’s own personal Urban Think!, I’d like to point you to our survey. Please check it out, and take a few minutes to tell us about you, your creative pursuits, and how this community center might help you reach your goals, and take away a few of the road blocks we all face.

Take the Survey

BarCampOrlando 2010 April 4, 2010

I promised some folks from BarCamp I would link to my blog post where I talked about saving local bookstores. I will post some slides soon, but I want to include the bullet points (i.e. actually finish the slides) before they get posted to SlideShare.

Also, if anyone out there is looking for the mailing list for New Media Orlando, jump on there and join the discussion.

Drupal Community Helpdesk at CoLab Orlando, First Fridays June 4, 2009

12:00 – 1:30 PM, June 5th, July 3rd, August 7th, September 4th at CoLab Orlando

It might look something like this

A few months ago, I attended my first DrupalCon, and what an explosion of open source community awesomeness it was. As Mike and I are running a fledging Drupal shop, I was subconsciously looking for a shop I could use as a signpost, a group whose values and practices were in line with where I would like to be in a few years. I met the fine guys and gal from Advantage Labs in Minneapolis/St Paul, and was introduced to some of the awesome stuff they do.

One really great thing they offer in addition to web hosting, consulting and training is what they call Lab Hours. Twice a week, anyone experiencing a hang-up in their site, or just folks who are interested in helping, come by their offices for some roundtable support time. A goal is set to accomplish a certain task at the end of 2 hours, everyone pairs off and work commences.

There is no “expert” in the room doing all of the work. It’s roundtable style, and that’s how it should be.

This is pretty much a direct physical manifestation of the kind of help you get in #drupal-support in IRC. I have helped out there a bunch, and then having heard about this concept, I decided Orlando could use some community helpdesk time as well.

Starting with the first Friday of the month, I’ll start hosting Lab Hours of my own here in Orlando. If you’ve attended DrupalCamp Florida or a Drupal Meetup, if you’ve attended one of our DrupalEasy training days or webinars, or if you’re just curious about learning how to use this open source content management system, you’re welcome to come by and share.

If nobody shows up, I’m going to open up IRC and help people in other parts of the world. I also intend to show everyone where they can go and get more help outside of helpdesk time.

CoLab is Orlando’s first and only coworking space, on the 6th floor of the Angebuilt building, 37 N. Orange Ave. It’s right at the corner of Wall St and Orange Ave, above Subway. It’s the perfect place to host an event of this kind.

Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008

That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.

Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.

My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle – long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.

So now what?

I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:

• Drupal Easy – this is the home for some (free) Drupal advice, and hopefully some (paid) screencasts, eBooks and tutorials. I will be doing a Drupal conference circuit in the next few months to connect with folks who are looking for training more than straight-up work. I hope I am a good provider.
• Orlando Scene TV – I still have yet to see a project emerge that achieves the goals of this videoblog. The more I think about it, the more it needs to be a one-on-one account of some fun stuff. We were trying to bring more of a TV correspondent feel to the show, but that takes work, and this is supposed to be about fun! Maintaining this channel gives a place for the Blogging Fringe videos and Orlando Puppet Festival content to go, and video is so engaging, measurable and portable — I really love doing this.
• Florida Creatives Podcast – I have been meeting some great people who need to get pulled in to this community, and one of the best ways to get them to care about you is by doing the completely selfless thing and asking them about themselves for half an hour, and sharing the conversation with the world on a well-trafficked web site. The happy hours will certainly continue.
• Florida Creative Summit – the idea here is to do something like BarCamp, but that covers more than just geekery – I am talking to some folks about how to pull this off right now, most of that goes down at Florida Creatives Happy Hour. This is the whole point of Florida Creatives coming to be in the first place.
• Coworking Orlando and our first coworking space in Orlando, CoLab – Coworking Teusdays are still going strong after some 8 months — also, I have already paid my $49 for use of a desk at CoLab in November — I’m not sure whether I will be full-time or part-time there in the future, but I know I want to be present for the birth of the formal coworking movement in Orlando. This is something I’ve been talking about for years, and now it’s downtown and affordable. Couple that with all the communities looking for useful consistent space, and the need for something like this is even greater. This probably deserves a separate blog post…
• Oh so many more things… like getting other Florida Creatives chapters going in other cities, like Brevard, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, South Florida — helping Petentials get to a happy place — doing a joint event with Doterati — creating a DIY community, a graphics hackers community, a podcasting community, a blogging community, an independent microblogging site, and lots of things I can’t think of just now.

To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?

To everyone else, it’s good to be back!

Tons of Notes, BlogOrlando Aftermath 3 October 1, 2008

Party, originally uploaded by funkeemunkeeland.

Folks, I’ve got things to tell you, and things I want your input on. First of all, huge thanks to Tim Welch for his excellent BlogOrlando3 “Best of” post.

Next, I want you to stop reading this post. STOP! Go to the Florida Creatives forum and contribute to this discussion, or start a new discussion about something for which you are passionate.

If you’re still reading, I’ll remind you we have TWO BarCamps coming up. Count them.

BarCamp Tampa Bay is going down in less than two weeks. If you were at the Orlando BarCamp in April, this will seem familiar to you – Tech Day, Media Day. Held at USF’s Business school, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th. I believe there is a party-bus or a caravan of some kind headed down that way. Check the Twittersphere (92 followers, natch!) or Doterati? for more details.

BarCampChaos held on Monday October 13th, the first night of CreateChaos08 at the Mariott down by Disney World. It’s 10 conferences in one, and one unconference, and bunches of parties, like a certain Internet Marketing and Tech association I know of, and an Advertising and Design Alliance I know of, and a Create Awards, and a Job Fair, and an Expo, and lots more, including $200 off registration if you register for BarCampChaos.

The Florida Creatives website now has 4 feeds for you to pay attention to:

1. Podcast Feed (original)
2. Site-Wide Feed (includes groups, events, blogs, forums)
3. Event Feed (mashed up from all over town)
4. Comments Feed (in case you don’t prefer emails)

Those of you already subscribed in iTunes will continue to receive podcasts.

Those of you who used feedburner email subscription should keep getting your emails (of the site-wide feed).

The events feed is pulled from the Florida Creatives group on Upcoming.Y!, the Calendar feeds of The Daily City blog, Doterati and the newly-formed Advertising and Design Alliance (I don’t even know where to link for it yet).

The old Florida Creatives Google Groups is going away. I have already closed out new people from joining. With a forum, email subscriptions for feeds and all the other stuff, it should be easy to stay informed.

If you haven’t checked out the Florida Drupal Group yet, please do. Classes are third Saturdays at 1PM in Maitland, and completely worth it. We are talking about putting together a DrupalCamp early next year, so get involved now.

Did you realize that Café Scientifique was today? I sure didn’t, but I’ve been an extremely busy man of late. Chad is organizing some awesome talks down at Stardust, these are not to be missed.

The 2nd Annual ELLA Music Fest is this weekend. Crazy that a year has gone by already. Orlando Scene TV has some vids from last year if you want to know what you’re missing out on.

BarCampOrlando Downtown April 5th and 6th, 10AM – 6PM April 1, 2008

BarCamp Orlando is a weekend for all types of creative folks to come together and share with each other. The event is dubbed an “unconference”, a format which derives power from the people instead of the event organizers or the presenters. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on stage and speak, teach or lead a discussion, playing off of the idea that at any given conference, the people in the audience have more knowledge collectively than the presenter(s) on stage.

This second installment of BarCamp will be held over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, April 5th and 6th, in downtown Orlando at the Wall Street complex, from 10AM – 6PM each day. Registration is free, and a registration promises a shirt and lunch on the sponsors of BarCamp, businesses who are passionate about the technology and media communities of Central Florida.

Saturday is the designated “Dev Day”, playing host to everything from web programming to robot building and video game development and everything in between. iPhone hackers, guys with soldering irons, the latest technologies, and plenty that haven’t been realized yet. Every 30 minutes, both venues will have a different talk going on, so if you’re feeling lost in the jargon, apply the “rule of 2 feet” and check out what’s happening in the other room!

Sunday is dubbed “Media Day”, and is the place for storytellers, journalists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, 2D and 3D artists, podcasters, bloggers and social networkers to show off their work, share their tricks or talk about the state of the industry. From 12 to 1 we will be talking about the “Past, Present and Future of Media in Central Florida”, hoping to give our community a sense of our story, and where we’re headed.

Registration is free, and the event runs from 10AM – 6PM both days with a lunch break at 1PM. The event will be housed in Slingapour’s and One-Eyed-Jack’s, with Wall St Cantina acting as our “hallway”. There will be projectors and microphones, chairs and a space to speak. All you have to do is write your name on the whiteboard and you get 20-25 minutes to share your passions with a group of energetic, engaged geeks and creatives. I would not use the words “captive audience” to describe the BarCamp crowd, because they all want to get involved.

Visit www.barcamporlando.org today and register for Dev Day, Media Day or both days. Wall Street Plaza is at 18 Wall Street Plaza, Orlando, FL 32801 – barcamporlando.org/where has a map to the venue and information about parking.

Coworking Tuesdays Photoset March 19, 2008

I went on my lunch break today, and those 30 minutes were actually quite fantastic.

Not only Coworking Tuesdays at Stardust, but also Cup-O-Code, the Orlando Coworking article from the Sentinel (about), and Alex on Cow-orking at BarCamp Orlando 2007. End very short slideshow.

There is a reason the slideshow is so short. Outside of Likemind (which has tons of coworking connotations in this town), there haven’t really been many documented coworking sessions here. That’s what Coworking Tuesdays are all about – adding folks to the mailing list, taking pictures, recording podcasts, making videos, setting up a web site and keeping the wiki up-to-date… and more.

There’s lots of almost-happening coworking stuff in downtown Orlando, check out the mailing list for updates about that. This is going to happen before Memorial Day at the current rate, and I’m likely jinxing it by saying anything, but we want interested parties!

Would you pay for some space at a table if someone had their name(s) on the lease and other folks were paying for some desk space too?

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