{"id":732,"date":"2007-12-02T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-02T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gnodal.protension.com\/journal\/?p=512"},"modified":"2007-12-02T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-02T21:15:00","slug":"whats-old-is-new-again-bedouin-co-working-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gnodal.protension.com\/journal\/archives\/732","title":{"rendered":"What's old is new again? Bedouin co-working"},"content":{"rendered":"

*X-posted from ”Gnodal” at LiveJournal<\/a>*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thinking about OpenSource and crowd-sourcing and all of that I found myself coming back again and again to the idea of “going Bedouin<\/a>“. (Now I happen to really admire Bedouin culture and traditions, but that’s another essay.) I’m talking about foundational co-working<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just now I realized with some shock that the concepts that are central to Bedouin-style co-working are exactly the same as what I envisioned with my first startup. (Alas, it succumbed to infant mortality.)<\/p>\n

Back-story: in the late 80s Texas Instrument’s new generation of video chips gave rise to an awesome breakthrough in capabilities, the best example being the Amiga 2500 and the VideoToaster<\/a>. Combined, video production costs were 1\/10th what they had been previously. I saw that as a massive (if only transient) business opportunity.<\/p>\n

My idea was this: provide people who were already working in video with turn-key video studios using those systems … they would rapidbly find themselves independent. But key to the franchise concept was networking: small shops off-loading cumbersome tasks or repetitive chores to one another … a sort of load-leveling. Bonus would be that projects would become networked, so contracts that might be far too large and complex for any one studio could be shared.<\/p>\n

That was 1988.<\/p>\n

In 2007? That, basically, is co-working … and “going Bedouin” fits perfectly with that business model.
Feeling manic? Pumped for consecutive 14 hour days? Just fine.
Distracted by some aspect of personal life? NP … 2 or 4 hours of maintenance (email and such) keeps things ticking over for a little while.<\/p>\n

\n

Addendum, from MozDawg comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Interesting that you brought up InnoCentive<\/a> here … it continues the thread I’ve been working today i.e. alternative business models.
\nContext: looking through material on Alfresco<\/a> I find that, while it promotes itself as seriously OpenSource, it is far more closed than the dev communities in, say, SalesForce or FaceBook or NetVibes. I felt like I needed a battering ram to access documentation. (Registering as a developer will do the trick, but still … odd to see their reticence.)
\nOn the other hand, by way of contrast, I came across Automatt<\/b><\/i>ic<\/a>, who specializes in WordPress … it seems that they’re entirely distributed i.e. no bricks&mortar head office, but everybody draws against revenue.
\nThen reading about a new Drupal support startup, Acquia<\/a>, I can’t help thinking that a lot of hours are spent doing what others are doing, and wondering if there isn’t a way of producing better results while reducing over-work.
\nSo many people were so very busy, and pondered why collaboration wasn’t lightening the load or leading to economies of scale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really have come full circle, back to 1989!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*X-posted from ”Gnodal” at LiveJournal* Thinking about OpenSource and crowd-sourcing and all of that I found myself coming back againRead the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n

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