NASA and Coworking: Kickoff May 02 @ Citizenspace in San Francisco

So, NASA is co-working. Come find out all about it in San Francisco on May 2nd. Details and RSVP here.

How this happened: I’m a space geek (degrees as a planetary scientist) and also a grassroots communities geek (years working for CivicSpace Labs), and also I really care about our government being, well…. of, by and for US as citizens, and being efficient, transparent, benevolent, and effective. It annoys me when it’s not.

Here’s the thesis:

  1. Our bureaucratic government agencies have a lot to learn from the creativity, efficiency, and authenticity of entrepreneurial and grassroots communities in the Bay Area and beyond.
  2. Entrepreneurs and grassroots organizations can benefit a lot from easier access to the massive human resources, facilities, and funding, and other resources that are resident in our government agencies.
  3. By bringing entrepreneurial and grassroots communities together with a government agency through co-working, mutually beneficial bi-lateral exchange of knowledge, resources, and culture can occur.
  4. For this to succeed, a low-hanging-fruit place to start is with technology-driven organizations on both sides, because there is are pre-existing shared cultural and affinities and memes.

I found some like minded souls in my community of space friends and also at senior levels within NASA, and also in the techno-entrepreneurial world in the Bay Area. We created a new program called “CoLab” which is bringing these seemingly disparate worlds together through online community building, virtual co-working in Second Life, and now, physical co-working in San Francisco… we hope, to their…our… great mutual benefit.  Wait– is it “ours” or “theirs?”  Wait– that’s the point!

Come find out all about it on Wednesday– we need your help! 🙂

making coworking scheduling software a reality

Friends, Romans, Coworkers…

We have reached that point were we are seriously talking about scheduling software. John McGann, 116 West Houston, has hired a developer to update his old software. John doesn’t have any particular construct, php, ruby on rails, drupal or some other open-souce CMS. John just wants the software built with enough ambiguity to manage a generic set of coworking spaces.

My personal interest is to make this dream a reality, and within the next few days we will set up a call to review any/all documents to kick start this bad boy. In the meantime, if you are interested we need you to do three things…

  1. join the coworking google group.
  2. think up what are the best features and post them to the wiki.
  3. add your name if your want to be part of the development team

This article has been cross posted on noneck.org.

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