Independents Hall Philadelphia

Coworking meets Media Production Studio

Filed under: Community Support, coworking, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall, Kudos, Library

It’s been a while since I waxed philosophic or daydreamed out loud on the IndyHall blog, and as I’m looking back on 2008 and into 2009, I thought it was a good opportunity to empty my brain a bit.

Growth
IndyHall has seen exceptional growth and stability over the last year. While we were operationally break even quickly (before the end of 2007, in fact), we didn’t have a lot of working capital and we did have a little bit of debt. And while we also had a really robust and active community all along, our desk usage and membership has seen tremendous growth as well, with all 12 of our full time desks occupied since August 2008, a paying membership roster in excess of 50 members at various levels, and very exciting activity from our non-permanent memberships.

Specificity and Specialization
One of the things that I’ve prided IndyHall on has always been zero exclusion. Unlike incubators, we don’t require you to have a “business model”. Unlike associations, we don’t require a you to be a member of a specific industry. If you can work from anywhere, we believe you SHOULD be working from a place like IndyHall.

That diversity is important to the ethos of our coworking space. I wouldn’t change that for the world.

But I remain curious what happens when a specific set of under served needs get specific attention, and how diversity can be approached in a new way.

The plot thickens
One of the smaller, but still certainly present, demographics at IndyHall (and many other coworking spaces) is media production. Audio/video editors, producers, photographers, videographers, podcasters, so on and so forth. I admittedly know very little about this industry from a production standpoint, what the roles are and how they inter operate. However the limited knowledge I do have suggests something that is really intriguing to me: could a coworking space designed for independent media producers thrive? I think the answer is yes.

One of the biggest reasons I find that media folks tend to not be the best fit for IndyHall is the difficulty in being mobile. Even with field equipment becoming smaller and more accessible, that’s only one piece of the equipment equation. As great as a Macbook Pro can be, it doesnt come close to a Mac Pro for video work, and a number of potential IndyHall coworkers have expressed that if it wasn’t for the thought of lugging their rig across the city, they’d be all over coworking. We’d either need to provide some machines as part of membership, or be a bit more geared towards full time members and less for migrant workers. Most likely some combination of the two approaches would be ideal.

The other side of the equipment fence that could be approached, though it comes with its own set of complications, is equipment rental. As we’ve done with IndyHall, making an office in Old City with a conference room available for $275/month or less is only possible when a bunch of people are sharing the resources. High end, otherwise unapproachably expensive equipment could be shared in a similar fashion. Again, this comes with a whole set of liability questions to be answered (the cost of replacing and maintaining office equipment is much less than high end A/V equipment). But that’s a technical problem with a solution, I’m sure.

Diversity within Specialization
Thinking further about the types of people who might use this space: even though they are a more focused group than the “types” of workers who hang at IndyHall, there’s still a good deal of  diversity in workers, process, etc. The way I think about it is there are writers who don’t like to direct. Directors who don’t like to edit. Editors who aren’t as good at digital effects and prefer working directly with footage (and of course the other way around). Basically, at every step of the production process there’s the opportunity for a handoff if someone more specialized is available. A similar “stick to what you’re good at and find complimentary partners” strategy as is employed often in software and web at IndyHall can apply to media production, making everyone’s end product supremely higher quality. At the risk of sounding trite, it’s like a production company without the company. The powerful “small pieces loosely joined” model strikes again.

I’ve admittedly thought about and talked through a lot of this model already, but have my mind open to how it will best serve this community. My ultimate goal is to enable the independent media creators in Philadelphia to up their game and produce even better content for themselves and their clients. I need you, those independent media creators, to tell me what’s missing.

So, whaddya say?
Are you an independent or remote media producer who’s looking for comradery, business development opportunities, opportunities to learn new skills from peers, and above all, put on some pants and get out of your house? In Philly, and interested? I’m going to follow my own roadmap and host a meetup to talk about this idea, and I’d like to do it before 2009 is here.

ACTION ACTION!

Let’s meet at National Mechanics Next Monday, December 22nd. 6:30pm. RSVP on Upcoming, or heck, just show up. Tell your friends. Invite anyone who might be interested. It will be an open forum discussion with the goal of having actionable next steps to walk away with. Maybe identify some new leaders in this community. Let’s rock and roll into 2009.