Jelly Desk

NYC & Coworking Partnership

Some awesome news today out of New York City!  Mayor Bloomberg is announcing a partnership with coworking spaces and others to bring investment and publicity to startups here in NYC.  Tony’s currently mum on details, but he’s posted this.

Before the official announcement, it’s being reported by The NYTimes and several others:

From CNET:

According to a source in the city’s venture capital community, the agreement means that participating workspaces will provide discounted services and event space access to the city in exchange for promotion and publicity.

The source said that initial partners in the agreement include Sunshine Suites, Nutopia, and New Work City, among others.

From the NYTimes:

Under a program Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled on Wednesday, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

For Tight Times, Office Space on Flexible Terms

Green Desk “really simplified the process of opening an office,” Mr. Humphrey said. “Sizing is flexible — if I grow, I can move into a larger space. And they handle office stuff, like receiving packages and making sure the Internet and phone work.”

‘Starbucks without noise’ MORE INFO

“If you’re a Web developer and you have an idea you can put your idea up on the whiteboard and then allow other people to make comments. It’s collaboration. It’s a sense of community, and that’s hopefully what we’re trying to build here,” Delagrange said.

Via The Free Lance-Star

The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work

The Wall Street Journal how young people (“millennials”, a word that I still think refers to a flower) are changing our relationship to work:

If employers fail to provide the opportunities and rewards millennials seek, he says, they’re likely to drop out of the corporate world as he did and become entrepreneurs. “We get stifled when we’re offered single-dimensional jobs,” he says. “We are multi-dimensional people living and working in a multi-dimensional world.”

Community-Driven News

The NYT describes a movement of community news, driven by groups of independent journalists who are dissatisfied by the shrinking newspaper industry:

Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.

Article here.

A place to lay your laptop

The Globe and Mail

Brown and WorkSpace co-founder Bill MacEwen were inspired by Queen Street Commons, a site founded in Charlottetown in 2004 by artists and community activists. Using it as a template, they decided to create a for-profit co-working space in Vancouver to serve the tech community and other freelancers.

‘Jelly’ sweet opportunity

Denton RC

“It’s refreshing. You get an opportunity to see what other people are working on,” said Stephen Boudreau, the chief creative officer and co-owner of Asendio, a creative and technology consulting company.

Alternative Workspaces

Business Week

Why is a shared workspace better than a coffee shop? Well, for one, you don’t have to buy coffee by the cup. And the collegial atmosphere can spark big ideas and plenty of networking opportunities. Here’s a look inside some of the co-working facilities springing up worldwide to provide entrepreneurs and other members of the mobile workforce with desk space and a WiFi connection for less than $500 per person per month.

Tacoma catches on early to co-working trend

The News Tribune (via Suite133)

“It was like a miracle from heaven. It gave me the opportunity to have a place that I could land,” Giguere said. “It fits how I like to do business. I want to be casual. And clients think it’s kind of cool.”