We are looking to get some simple business cards and flyers designed and printed (by Friday) to help promote working to a wider audience. We don’t really require anything too fancy or time consuming, just something simple and to the point.

If you are interested in helping us out, please drop me an email. I will make sure that you get the full credit that you deserve.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The concept itself is nothing new. Freelancers and small business have always teamed up for office shares. What makes coworking any different? In my mind the definition of an office share would be simple “A closed group of people spreading the cost of an officeâ€?. Whereas coworking is the next evolution of this model.

Think of it this way, what if you could not only spread the cost of your business, but quickly and easily pool resources with a larger community of likeminded individuals? Your office share is limited to a stagnant pool of talent that will rarely change. What if your community was more fluidic? How would that affect your business model?

This is the next revolution of business. Coworking allows seamless collaboration between companies and individuals who may never have met under other more static environments. Our new economy will be built on ideas and ideas need the right environment to grow. When creative minds are provided with an ideal environment and are supported by peer’s ideas with turn from good to ingenious.
Read the rest of this entry »

Coworking is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents.

The goal of Coworking.ie is to promote coworking in ireland, to provide a community space for coworkers to team up and to serve as a guide to people who are looking to go out on their own.

The project is community driven and completely non profit. Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the project in whatever way they can.

Technorati Tags: coworking, freelance

James has a post on SoHo Solo and co-working today. There’s been a bit of chatter about co-working of late around the Irish blogs. The idea of co-working is sharing a friendly work space with other creative tech types who might not be part of your company/group. One definition is:

Coworking is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents.

In the States with lots of the San Fran crowd spending their days in coffee boutiques/shops, loading up on caffeine and cakes and taking advantage of the free power and WiFi, there is already that idea. Now with the cafes starting to shoo these people out to make way for more customers, these nomads need somewhere to go. There’s a blog about Co-working here and a Wiki too.

Here in Ireland people are coming from the other side. One person operations, working from home mostly who probably can’t afford a whole office in some centre but would like to work alongside other tech types and have a sense of community. It’s a very good idea in my view. Good way to get inspiration, help and encouragement from people and to do more networking. Going back to James’ post though, he talks about going on holiday-like trips to work in co-working spaces in other countries as a way of getting away from the usual workspace and getting inspiration in a new one and enjoying a holiday after the workday ends. Why not start twinning with the various co-working places worldwide?

We have cities that are twinned with each other. Cork does it with a different city every few years I think, so why not do the same with these co-working facilities? I wonder could a FON model work for something like this? Or something like the Couch Surfing model?

Technorati Tags: blogs co working ireland irishblogs twinning

Posted with the permission of Damien Mulley. Damien’s original post can be found here.