Independents Hall Philadelphia

corporate “sponsored” coworking, OUR way

Filed under: From the Business Side, Independents Hall

Over at CenterNetworks, my friend Allen Stern has made a post about his take on next steps for sponsored coworking, after seeing our recent support from Belkin.

I’m not against the idea, but I do agree with Chris that at this stage of the game, its not the place for direction of our energy. It’s hard to keep individuals focused when there are big business intentions steering them. Instead, I’d like to cite a couple of variants of coworking with corporate involvement that we have already experienced that involved individuals on an individual basis, representing a larger company that they work for:

A month and change ago, at our last National Mechanics Cream Cheese Session a couple of developers from Comcast Interactive Media came down to work for the day. Not only did they seem to have a really great, productive day but we (the usual suspects of the indyhall events) got to kick it with some incredibly talented people that are really stepping up the game for a company that has a pretty bad wrap in the Philadelphia creative community (and from my own personal experiences before going out on my own, it’s pretty clear that they know it). I think that this kind of game-changing activity, and the fact that Comcast let these developers work remote is awesome, and the fact that they worked from our event (prior to the opening of our office) instead of home or a cafe, was awesome. I look forward to being involved with them (and possibly more of the CIM team) in the future. This could be a great opportunity to break down some really longstanding barriers between the media behemoth that is Comcast, and the independent creative community.

This past Friday, 2 of my friends who work for another very large, local company spent the day at IndyHall’s new office. Adam Saslow, a software architect and Michael Bryman, a systems test engineer spent the day working remote for their employer, Motorola, based less than an hour outside of Center City Philadelphia. Again, this was a great opportunity for them to break the monotony of “corporate office life”, get some new scenery, new interaction, and possibly (hopefully) some inspiration that they can bring back to their office.

Adam and Michael started their day by joining a conference call in our conference room, and then continued their days working on the usual tasks that they would except they occasionally had a chance to break off into some social, but productive conversation.

One of our members, Jon Bettcher, interacted with them pretty heavily. Jon works for Reel FX based in Dallas, TX but works remote from home. He’s been working at IndyHall a few days a week since we installed desks and this to say:

Last Friday was a perfect example of why I’m so excited about Indyhall. I learned several new things just from the conversations back and forth, like the open platform initiative by the Motorola guys. I was even able to broadcast a few Ruby specific questions to the group, and received answers back quicker than I could have found them myself searching on Google. All of the conversations go a long way to making me feel more comfortable with the new development I’m doing for my company back in Dallas. Just the “buzz” surrounding Rails and the web development scene has greatly bolstered my confidence.

At the same time, on the other side of the city, there’s an office at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business that is under construction, with noise that is rendering the office an unproductive environment. Some workers are being allowed to work remote for a while, and rumor has it that some of them will be transplanting to IndyHall during the week leading up to our opening reception, representing another use case of the remote worker taking advantage of an environment like IndyHall.

These are just a couple of examples of how I’d like to see big(ger) businesses involved in coworking. Just like our organization has been built from the bottom up, putting the focus on the people first, I’d like to see the approach to corporate coworking done the same way: focusing on the people, first. Additional mutual benefits can be worked out along the way, once the basic human relationships have been established.

Mind you, that is not to say that we aren’t endlessly appreciative of every single individual and business who has chipped on on any level to support the opening of our space. I know I sound like a broken record but what else is new, the support has been overwhelming and we can’t thank you enough. Every penny, sofa, end table, mini fridge, and power strip, and printer is appreciated and helps us keep our user costs low, ultimately furthering the ability for people to get the best use out of our resources.