It’s with great pleasure and nostalgia that I announce the winding down of TL01, Dublin’s first co-working space. I set up TL01 last June to provide a space for like minded individuals to work together under the coworking philosophy that I discovered first hand in San Francisco.

The last nine months have been some of the most productive, inspiring months of my life. Eamon Leonard and Eoghan McCabe took on the coworking philosophy and wore it proudly. Last February, Eoghan and I decided to go into business together. We share similar ambition, goals and ideals in business and in what we do and our skills complemented that wonderfully. Last week, we announced and formally launched Contrast, the two of us partnered with Belfast coworking champion David Rice and skilled usability expert Des Traynor.

Both Dave and Des were frequent guests in TL01 over the past few months. And during our time there, we hosted some big names from the international technology community. A bunch of friends joined us for our Christmas party. Earlier this year, we had drinks with LA blogger Sean Bonner. OS X developer and CouchDB contributor Jan Lehnardt joined us during his stint here for XTech Dublin.

For the Irish Open Source Technology Conference, Geoffrey Grosenbach of the Ruby on Rails podcast joined us, as did PHP Pear president David Coallier.

But perhaps what’s more impressive about TL01 was not what went on there, but what’s come out of it. Eamon has set up his own business Echo Libre, and is doing impressive client work with some exciting products in development.

Eoghan and I have moved to new offices in Merrion Street, where we hope to keep the spirit of coworking alive once we’ve settled in and got the place looking spick and span (the paint has only just dried!)

To TL01, I say goodbye, I’ve had a wonderful year and from the experience great things have come to my life, not to mention two good friends in Eamon and Eoghan.

To Eamon, I say thanks, you’ve been an inspiration and a mentor, as well as a true friend and a great guy to share a pint with.

To everyone else I say this:

If you’re a freelancer, home worker or teleworker and working from home is leading to the kind of drag where you’re just not getting out enough, or you feel that your creativity could do with some company, I urge you, I plea with you: set up or join a coworking space. Do it for yourself, do it for Dublin, do it for the community. And one more thing: just do it. Dive right in… at the very worst you can go back to where you were if things don’t work out.

Indeed, there are three spare desks as of right now in TL01 and there are a couple of spare offices in the building. Emmett Harten, our landlord, is one of the nicest men alive and he totally gets the whole movement. If you’re interested in setting up a space or joining an existing office, you could do worse to give him a call. His number is 085 718 3595 or you can email him at space28@mac.com.

Small Edit! to the Title!

Dublin co-working is now officially go.

Whatever about the buzz of getting this place off the ground, I’ve been heart broken these past few months, paying a visit every week or so to check if Eircom hadn’t already set up the broadband in this little co-working space in Dublin.

Well, I popped my head in at lunch time today and the DSL link light indicated that there was an active connection on the line.

The momentum has been snail’s pace, but we’re now set to go and hopefully I’ll be spending many a happy hour coding, jibing or perhaps just hanging out over the next nine or ten months.

All the desks in this room are taken, but if anyone’s looking for a space, there’s another room for co-working being set up down stairs, and there are bigger plans afoot. Now’s the time!

I’m back three and a half weeks from San Francisco and I’m now in a position to put out a call to anyone interested in joining a co-working space right in the heart of Dublin City Centre.

In a nutshell, If you’re an internet-y creative type / freelancer and interested in joining a co-working space just off O’Connell street at an introductory price of €200 plus vat per month, get in touch.

From the BarCamp discussion, I met Mary Rose Lyons from Brightspark Consulting who put me on to Emmet, the landlord in Space 28. I know the place well as I used to rehearse in, and actually made a demo in Loop Studios in the basement.

The vibe in the place is sweet – we’re talking suits out, creativity in. It’s gritty, to be sure – the lane way behind SuperMacs often smells of pee and the Lott itself is a back lane behind restaurants and shops. The interior of the building is all bare floors and walls. It’s not your corporate suite, nor your serviced office arrangement for business types.

Emmet is all about opportunity, fairness and grass roots. The place was initially set up with a word-of-mouth trust system. Price points are arranged so as not to be exclusive. It’s all about helping people get off the ground. Oh, and the whole building is supplied by green energy.

We’re looking to get the place up and running as soon as possible on a trial basis. Emmet suggested to begin with five residents at €200 plus VAT per month. I couldn’t be happier with the price.

I’m thinking we’ll go with the CitizenSpace model, but perhaps without the lite option initially anyway. A few permanent residents with the added bonus that drop-ins will be more than welcome to come in for a few hours and get some work done in a creative atmosphere, or make connections and build networks.

So what’s included?

Well, most fundamentally it’s a permanent office space, with co-workers … somewhere to work alongside like minded people. I guess we’re looking for internet-y types, freelancers, designers, software engineers, bloggers, small teams, lonely hearts etc.

Practically, it’s a desk, an internet connection and a key with 24 hour access 365 days a year at an affordable rate.

It’s all in the about-to-happen stage right now, but the space is there. I took some photos – it’s just been left by a band who were using it as a rehearsal space, so needs a bit of tidying up, but they give a good sense of the size of the place. I’ve also a Google MyMap to the location.

Interested?

Drop me an e-mail ( paul at rslw.com ) or leave a comment here. I’m going to arrange a viewing for sometime next week.

So I stopped into Citzen Space in San Francisco yesterday and I’m coming to the end of my second official day co-working, right where it all began. Chris Messina and Tara Hunt are the remaining occupiers of the office, but the place has been teeming the past two days.

I arrived in and after about 2 minutes of awkwardness I was at a desk, plugged in and good to go. I was more awkward that nobody actually acknowledged my presence – as though they were used to people walking in – and they are!

And so it’s pretty much exactly as you would expect. A couple of regulars, a couple of bedouins and an atmosphere that encourages collaboration and playtime, as well as serious business.

Antoin raised a few issues recently about the viability of co-working, and I got a chance to quiz Chris on some of them. From talking to him I got the impression that it’s important that there’s a ‘home team’ – Citizen Agency are such for Citizen Space and they handle the lease and deal with the landlord. Indeed, it’s important to have the landlord on your side – I feel, however, that co-working is actually an attractive proposition for a landlord – the ‘home team’ will generally be subsidised by the regular deskers and there’s generally a really good atmosphere.

Antoin also raised the point of office conflicts and deskers being protective of their business dealings and projects. Chris’s response to this is: deal with it, or go somewhere else. While I was there, several of the regular deskers were on calls, winning deals on large contracts for their businesses. There was a spirit of comradery and good will, rather than secrecy and remorse.

Regarding actually getting work done, there were often long periods in the office where banter would be high – I noticed Chris had a set of Shure e2c headphones – headphones were donned by anyone who wanted to get some serious work done, including myself.

All in all, the experience and advice that I received was extremely rewarding. Citizen Space is right in there between the coffee shop and the conventional office, with all the good will and social activity of BarCamp to boot. I’m really pepped and looking forward to some good meetings next week to try and get a space off the ground in Dublin.

Paul, pooped after a week in California, is flying home to bring a piece of Silicon Valley back to Dublin.

Olivier put out the suggestion on Saturday as we left BarCamp Dublin that next year everyone should get together and build a web app. For the next ten minutes, I thought of a million and one ideas, stemming from things like a Hack-a-thon style coding competition, to a single application where everyone contributes ten lines of code (or contributes a tiny app in whatever language they choose…) … then all the way through the reasons why such a venture might fall to pieces. But it sure was an exciting ten minutes inside my head.

The big question I’m left with is: why should this be limited to BarCamp? Imagine a place where this kind of energy, this kind of collaboration potential is at your fingertips every day. The realist in me says: Imagine a place where no work ever gets done. I guess that’s a natural danger of the open source world, but time and again we see open source thriving, despite the odds. Hell, I’m blogging on open source right now.

Anyway, I’ve been following this co-working movement this past month or so and seeing all the action distributed among the south and south-west. I want a piece of the pie up here in Dublin. I called a discussion about it at BarCamp and there were 16 of us, despite taking up the last slot at 5pm when everyone was tired and everyone else had already left.

The jist of the discussion went something thus: There’re lots of us working at home, or in small office spaces alone. Money’s coming in, but we’re not minted. Jobs come and go – sometimes we’re too busy to handle everything that’s thrown at us, sometimes there’s a dry spell.

We’d like a space, somewhere between an internet cafe and an office. It’s like an internet cafe, because anyone can walk in and use it, but like an office, because once you walk in, you become a resource – by using the facility, you’re saying that anyone can approach you about their project or for advice/eyes/idea exchange etc.. On the flip side, you’re getting a space and an on-demand team with immediate access to their skills. Of course, participation isn’t mandatory. “Sorry, I’m really busy, I can’t really help you right now” — nobody’s going to mind that. It’s not cheap, but not prohibitively expensive and the buzz generates a work environment of competition and innovation, so productivity is boosted.

There’re a million and one contingencies, but I want to get the discussion going. I do a bit of work for an estate agent and the guy in there seemed to think that we could get at least talking with space owners and VCs. Hell, Digital Depot already pretty much do what I’m talking about … but they cater to companies and startups, not Bedouins nor freelancers.

Antoin pointed out that the idea is effectively like joining a club. Besides the word “club” sending shiver down my spine, he does make a good point – I suspect there would need to be some sort of semi-exclusivity, but I think the BarCamp model is good – the barriers to entry are virtually nil, but the nature of the idea should make it essentially self-moderating – as has been said before, this kind of thing is not for everyone.

The analogy I like best is that of an Agora – an open space where regular merchants are joined by the travelling salesmen, whilst wise men and philosophers wander about imparting advice and generating discussions about the very essence of what it is to be. It’s all about the little guy (or is it??).

So there you have it – freelancers of Dublin, unite! I’ve set up a Google Group for now to get the discussion rolling. There’s a lot to be arranged, and lots of different approaches to be considered. The fact that there’s interest and that this site exists, though, is tantamount to the potential of achieving something worthwhile.

Then again, as Conor Halpin says, if we’re serious about this tech industry, we should really uproot like good Irish emigrants and get our asses over to San Jose.

Paul Campbell is new to this whole “Irish Internet Community” after years living in a metaphysical hole in the ground. He’s raring to get going with Patchwork and currently freelancing in and around the Dirty ‘Aul Town