#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.