December 2008
1 post
Moving Blog Platforms
Hi everybody!
We’ve moved our blog over to WordPress for a variety of reasons. Check it out here:
http://nwcny.com/blog
We’ll post one more time in a couple of days for folks who might miss this on their RSS feeds.
Again, update your RSS links! We won’t be blogging from here anymore. Head to the link above for fresh updates!
Best,
Mayor Tony
November 2008
4 posts
Day 6 Recap
- I’m enjoying being the first person here, working on catching up, when two guys I don’t recognize walk in. “I’m told we can work here?”
- Sebastian and Phillip from TripWolf.com, our first drop-ins out of the blue.
- I introduce Mike, who came in next, to them.
“We should talk,” he says. “What startup are you in?” “Tripwolf”...
LTLprints at New Work City
After signing the letter of intent for New Work City’s space, the first purchase I made was, at first, perhaps an unnecessary one. I got a giant sticker of our logo.
Kendall Schoenrock, founder of LTLprints, has been a friend of the community for a long time— he was one our first (and only) paying customers at CooperBricolage, and introduced us to Richard at Gramstand, a fantastic...
Recap of Day 3
This is the first in a series of posts that will recap what we did, learned, and shared throughout the day. So far, every single day has provided us with great new ideas, knowledge, and good times!
- Charlie Oliver brought us cupcakes and signed up her assistant for membership!
- We discussed hours and the membership model, and came up with a really interesting idea for expanding NWC’s...
New Work City open for business, 9:00am Monday,...
Join us Monday, November 3rd and check out our new digs!
We’re still working out a few kinks, including absorbing noise, upgrading our connection, and building out a phone booth room— but in the meantime, New Work City will be ready for people to come work!
We just might spring for some breakfast and coffee to celebrate our first day. See you there!
October 2008
15 posts
Charlie Nails It
One of New Work City’s goals is to help foster entrepreneurial activity in New York. Charlie O’Donnell, founder of Path101 and NYC tech’s best and most active online community, NextNY, recently testified to the NYC City Council about how to improve the city’s technology/small business sector.
He offered some fantastic advice. One excerpt:
Innovation comes not from technology,...
First round of construction complete!
Ikea shipment arrived, friends came to help, and before you knew it, we had tables and chairs!
Thanks to Fredrick, Nidhi, Dave, Steve, and JP for coming by to chip in and help out!
New Work City Kickoff Party, This Saturday at 8pm!
We’ve got a special evening lined up for you this Saturday! Join fellow New Workers along with some of the leaders of the global coworking movement as we celebrate the opening of New Work City!
Itinerary
Here’s a breakdown of what we’ll be doing:
8:00pm - Pre-party warmup discussions: Coworking coaching session with Raines Cohen, Coworking Coach!
9:00pm - Toast and party...
Build This City!
The Ikea order is in! The furniture is on the way!
Join us this Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 to help us assemble the desks and chairs and help make New Work City a whole lot cozier.
Comment below to let us know if you’re coming! We’ll update with an exact time once we hear back from Ikea.
Cheers! It’s time to build a coworking space!
Open houses throughout the week!
We’re working on getting furniture into the space this weekend— more on that soon— but for now, we wanted to let you know that all next week you will be welcome to come check out the space and talk to us.
Contact us if you’d like to come check out the space!
Tony
Tweetup: Ikea Trip + Swedish Meatballs!
I have a hunger. A hunger for lots and lots of furniture and also for delicious Swedish meatballs.
And the only cure is IKEA!
Join us tonight.
6:10pm. Pier 11.
Free water taxi takes us to Ikea in Red Hook.
We shop.
I put in the order for New Work City’s furniture.
Then we feast on delicious Swedish meatballs!
Are you in? Tweet it up!
Email or DM or @ or comment us to join up!
New Work City Kickoff Party, Saturday November...
Want to find out how many people we can fit into this space?
Me too!
Next Saturday, November 1st, we officially take on this space and New Work City will officially have a home!
The event starts around 8:00, we’ll give a talk and a toast around 9:00, and later on we’ll move to a nearby bar.
The address is 200 Varick St, Room 507B (Element N). Come check out the space and rub...
Stuff We Need
We’ll be updating this along the way, but while we get ready to fill up the space with desks and chairs and love and awesomeness, we thought we’d share a few things that we either need or would benefit greatly from.
If you can help us find any of the below either by donation or cheap sale, we’d be eternally grateful (seriously, we’ll post our thanks to you somewhere...
TechDrinks VIII - Come celebrate and meet fellow...
Our community’s been running a happy hour for almost a year now, and TechDrinks VIII promises to be a special one— come join us as we celebrate the birth of New Work City!
TechDrinks is a casual happy hour for our community. There are no presentations, no networking, just good people and good times. We do TechDrinks at Lunasa Bar on First Avenue and St. Mark’s Place, which...
Tony's Ten
Danny Ocean needed eleven people to rob three casinos. To make an incredible coworking team, we only need ten!
New Work City will have space for ten full-time members and a yet-to-be-determined number of part time members.
If we can get 7-8 full-time members and 3-4 part-time members, we’ll be able to break even. Now is the time!
Below, we’ve listed times to meet up, discuss...
Join us Wednesday for the NWC Member Sign-up!
We’ve updated our membership agreement; download it here!
If you’re interested in membership, please join us at 5:30 on Wednesday, October 15th, at 200 Varick St (Room 507B, Element^N). We’ll discuss the agreement, and any questions you might have.
If you’re ready to commit to a membership, bring your checkbook and/or a PayPal account - this will be your first chance to...
4 tags
New Work City has a home!
That’s right! After a long year of figuring out the business model, building interest, and looking at space after space, we’ve finally arrived at 200 Varick Street!
We’ll be sharing the space with element^n, who have graciously given us a very flexible deal and a chance to get on our feet.
The building has lots of other young, creative companies in it, and will be a great...
Helping Laid-off New Yorkers
Okay, I know we don’t actually have a space yet, but I’d love to see if there’s a way we can help the talented, hard-working folks who’ve been left out in the cold by the recent financial crash.
One of New Work City’s objectives is to help foster entrepreneurial activity in NYC, and the recent job loss may be an opportunity to help people who don’t want to go...
Delays, delays
We were hoping we’d be signing papers to close the deal this week, but some back-and-forths on communication seems to have pushed it to Monday.
Once it’s confirmed, we’ll be ready to start accepting memebership applications and hope to open in just a couple of weeks beyond that.
Stay tuned!
Membership Agreement
At our event last week, we handed out initial copies of our Membership Agreement and Terms of Use. The agreement is modeled after those of some other coworking spaces, including Indy Hall and Station C, and should cover everything that needs to be covered.
That said, the Terms of Use could certainly benefit from a trimming. There’s a discussion in the global Coworking Google Group about...
September 2008
6 posts
WatchIntroductions & Tony talk
WatchI still have to get the hang of taking video.
Let's Do This!
We’re almost there.
Tonight, Thursday September 25th at 6pm, we’ll gather in the above space and discuss the remaining steps toward opening New Work City!
Come join us and show your support!
RSVP at Meetup
RSVP on Facebook
RSVP at Gary’s Guide
We’ll be grabbing dinner afterward, if you’re up for joining.
Spread the word! Good things are coming!
Desks and Chairs
We’re doing some research on desks and chairs. We want to strike the right balance of price, comfort, size, simplicity, and style.
Naturally, we’re looking at Ikea :-)
I think we know what we want for desks, but check out some notes below on chairs:
Chairs
Janne basic black swivel chair, no arms ($35): http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00122902
Snille plastic swivel...
1 tag
Router-Based Membership/Login System
We’ve been thinking about how best to set up the membership system so that it’s a simple and lightweight as possible.
If you’ve gotten online in Bryant Park, Madison Square Park, or Gramstand, for example, you’ve used NYCWireless’s system, which is based on Wifidog.
This works nicely, because anyone can connect and then either login or set up an account. If we...
August 2008
5 posts
151 W 25th Street - Awesome.
Feast your eyes upon this beauty! 3,650 square feet of recently renovated space for us to fill, and at a great price at that!
151 W 25th St is between 6th and 7th Avenues. It’s a stone’s throw from Whole Foods (!) and a straight shot into Madison Square Park and Shake Shack only a couple of blocks away!
2 blocks from 23rd St 1, 2, F,V, and PATH trains 3 blocks from 23rd St...
200 Varick, Revisited
Since we last visited, the space has been built out a little more— new lights, seen here, a new, bluer paint job, printer, fax, new windows and door for the conference room.
The space would have room for about 15 desks, which would be cozy but on the small side.
Check out more photos of the 200 Varick space here.
200 Varick Street
I can’t seem to find my photos of this space, so another trip down there might be in order.
The space has room for about 15 desks that we’d be able to use, and already has a paint job that’s complimentary to NWC’s current color scheme.
Upsides:
- Flexible arrangement: would be able to partner with Squarespace
- Quick move-in: Space is largely set up and would require...
594 Broadway: beautiful, but expensive
This space is wonderful:
By my measurements, it could fit approximately 30 desks, and would make for a fantastic coworking space. The problem? Too rich for our blood.
In order to break even, NWC would need to be nearly full all the time— with only a little wiggle room. We’ll keep an eye out for a possible deal.
In the meantime, check out the photos and dream with us!
Coworking in a Salon?
Laptops and a haircut?
This space is in an extremely accessible area (just steps away from the many subway lines of 42nd st), the right size, and the right price. We’d either work out a deal with the landlord to have them take down a bunch of the walls, or we’d pick up some sledgehammers and do some smashing ourselves! (I’m inclined toward the latter of the two).
...
July 2008
10 posts
150 is greater than 1
Stupidly simple math, right?
When you’re engaged in an effort such as this one, it’s critical to understand the power of the people. The resources and connections of one person could never compare to the resources and connections of many.
That’s why it’s so important that we, in our effort to find a space for New Work City, do everything possible to band together to find...
Going to the source
Many of the existing coworking spaces were able to get their space in part because they found landlords who were excited by the coworking movement and its prospects for the future.
To this point, we haven’t been focusing much on talking directly to space owners. We’ll be doing more of that now.
I just did a search for real estate-related Meetups in NYC, and there are 62 hits!
Most...
No Deal at 81 Franklin
It looks like we won’t be able to come up with a workable deal at 81 Franklin St, so we’re moving right along in our search!
On a side note, we’ll be spending more time coworking at Gramstand while we’re working on the project. Come work with us! More info
A Sample of Existing Resources at 81 Franklin St.
- Redundant T1 and ADSL - Vonage supported - Existing Asterix VoIP service at low rates - Networked black & white printers (included) - Metered color printing at $0.33/page - Filing cabinets - 24x7 keycard access for full timers - For part timers, someone is usually there until 8-9:00. - The new Whole Foods is 10 blocks away :-)
Nutopia tour: Wednesday, 7/15
We’ll be touring Nutopia tomorrow morning at 11am. Come check out what might very possibly be our first home!
81 Franklin St, Fifth Floor. Ask for John or Tony when you arrive.
Email tony (at) nwcny (dot) com to RSVP!
Meeting today at Gramstand
We’ll be hanging out this afternoon at Gramstand, 214 Avenue A. Come bring your laptop and cowork with us!
-Tony
Manhattan coworking space: The search is on!
We’ve been working hard to find the awesomest possible space for New Work City for the last several months. We’ve fallen in love with four spaces now, only to see circumstances make each one an impossibility.
Most painful was our most recent loss, a duplex space on 28th Street. With that space behind us, we’re heading back to the books— but we want you to help us out.
...
No dice on the Duplex space
We’ve been focusing almost exclusively on a space on 28th Street & Madison which we’ve nicknamed the “Duplex” space, because, well, it’s a duplex space.
The price, size, and location, were all pretty much spot on. We had a big meeting last week and put together a great pitch that we were going to bring to the landlord the following day, but wouldn’t you...
Welcome
We’ll likely move blogs at some point down the road, but for now we want an easy way to share our search for a space for New Work City.
New Work City is for you, the independent and tech communities in NYC. While there are a handful of us handling some of the business side of things, you will be helping shape what and where New Work City ends up being.
Join us here in helping find the...