Jelly

Tim McNamara and the team at boost new media have generously decided to open up some spare desks in their office as a free co-working space each Friday. The concept (and silly name) come from an original event in New York, USA, and has already spread to over 100 cities around the world.

I was going to be in town at lunchtime for the Summer of Tech lightning talks (which were well worth the trip in) so decided to sign up and spend the afternoon co-working. Usually I work alone at home, which has fewer human distractions than a shared office, but plenty of replacement distractions, and I sometimes miss being able to easily bounce ideas off other people without waiting for them to check email.

I've not worked in a real office for nearly 9 years, but I seemed to cope OK, and the coffee machine is much fancier than the plunger and piston milk frother I have at home. I don't usually have coffee after noon, but couldn't resist making an exception for once.

I actually got quite a bit done, despite (or probably because of) not being able to get the wifi on my new laptop to connect (not the fault of boost's wifi - the chipset is rather new, and the driver from the manufacturer doesn't seem to have seen much testing on a 64 bit machine - at least it's GPL and I've since got it working more happily after fixing all the warnings about type size mismatches).

I also got a chance to chat to most of the other people there. Many seemed at least vaguely familiar from previous geek events in Wellington, and one I'd even spent a few days with at the Aorangi ski club lodge in Ohakune last winter, but it was nice to get more of a chance to chat.

It's intended to be a weekly event, and I'll definitely be back. We don't live in a particularly good place for commuting to Wellington, so it'll probably only be weeks when I'm going to be in Wellington on a Friday anyway, or when cabin fever has set in.

I would definitely recommend Jelly at Boost, and if you're not in Wellington take a look and see if there's one near you (or start your own). Jelly's a great idea, though I must admit the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing it is still Rod Hull.