I had a problem.
It is fun to start side projects, but not always the easiest to stay committed and finish. Coffee has powered more projects than one can count. What also helps to stay focused and motivated is the company of like-minded individuals. Coffee and friends results in more and better products.
What can one do to reach more of those people?
Coworking spaces are hot in this economy. WeWork have recently stepped into the $10 billion club. In Austin, Capital Factory, Chicon collective, General Assembly and Link are just some of the spaces ranging from Accelerator/Incubator to just rentable office spaces. However, they are much more fitted for startups working out of a coworking space. Moreover, one spot can get boring pretty quickly.
What if you are a remote worker or work on side projects and wish there was a community you could cowork/share with?
In Austin, there are a few options for that as well. There is a great group called Cafe Bedouins who meet Tuesdays at 7pm in Houndstooth cafe to work on projects. I had a great time there, but thought why would this need to happen only on a particular weekday on a particular time? Weekends are often the times when side projects gets the attention anyway. By a stroke of luck, I ran into Adam Coulon at Cafe Bedouins, who is also really enthusiastic about coworking, and shared the same problem.
We considered platforms where people could spontaneously decide to meet and cowork on projects. Slack was the clear winner. It is really easy to set up, and it has spread like wildfire so people tend to be familiar with the product. Without futher ado we present Coffeehouse Coworkers, made with rauchg’s excellent slackin pluigin. It’s a slack channel for people to find others and decide on places to cowork!
At the highest level, we love products and want their to be more finished products out there. It could be a blogpost, design concept, open source software or your consulting business. We think that better products happen in collaboration with like minded people. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee rather), but our hope is to enable some people to optimize their workflow in a low commitment way.
If any of this interests you, join us at Coffeehouse Coworkers. Right now, the members are mostly Austin based and in tech since that is our current demographic, but it does not really have to be limited to that. Austin is a great place to start since it has a lot of independent workers and great coffeeshops.
Happy coworking!