Feb
28
Jelly! Casual Co-Working : Thinking about joining or creating one.
February 28, 2008 | Comments Off
I came across this novel idea of Jelly on Nevile’s Blog. It is about casually co-working. It is a concept oriented towards entrepreneurs and freelancers that do most of their work from a mobile workstation (a.k.a. Laptop). Very well suited for IT professionals, graphic artists, writers, and other people who can work from almost anywhere but miss the social and intellectual interchange from an office environment.
Jelly’s are appearing in mayor cities around the world. It seems there was one in the Boston area for a while (although it doesn’t seem to be active anymore). It is a concept I might want to try out at some point.
It could be an opportunity to:
- Bounce ideas against other intelligent and independent minds.
- Find out what is new in my field, or in others fields.
- Understand what challenges other entrepreneurs and freelancers may be facing, so that I am better prepared to face them in the future.
- Find potential partners.
- Career and business networking.
- Change scenery.
- Organize my work day in an 8 hourish way (as a free-lancer, some days the work day doesn’t seem to start or end).
This is what other people say about Jelly:
Jelly started in NYC in February of 2006 when roommates Amit and Luke realized that they loved working from home, but they missed the creative brainstorming, sharing, and camaraderie of a traditional office. (Office politics, not so much.)
So they started inviting friends to come work from their home one day a week. They soon found that working in close proximity to new and interesting people every couple weeks resulted in new ideas and interesting conversations.
Emboldened by their early success, they made it a more regular thing. Jelly was born. — Amit, Jelly Founder
I like this concept a lot because I do almost all my work from a computer. All I need is a power cord, wireless internet and I’m in business. Since I work at home much of the day, it’s nice to work around a bunch of people every once in a while.
I sometimes spend time socializing when I should be working, but that’s what this Jelly thing is all about! You never know who you could meet there. — Neville
Jelly meetings are a way for folks who usually work at home to get out of the house, find kindred workers to collaborate with, or simply to socialize — without having to commit to the gym-like membership setup of most of the country’s coworking arrangements, where rented office spaces feel much like a traditional workplace and require a regular financial commitment beyond the means of most freelancers. Indeed, the term “office” can happily be avoided all together with Jelly. Unlike most co-working setups, Jelly exists for only one day every other week, and it’s free. — Wired Magazine
What do you think about the concept? Have you gone to any Jelly sessions? Have you gained anything from them? Was it fun at least?
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