It’s been a while since I’ve talked about coworking here. If you’re not sure what coworking is, Dusty has a great post on redefining it here:

“Coworking is two or more individuals working independently or collaboratively who are socially interacting while they work.”

For various reasons I’m back considering the demand for a coworking space here in Guelph. The space I’m considering is the current Brainpark offices at 349 Woolwich St. We have a core tenant in Brainpark and already have a few friends sharing the space with us. What I’m curious about is if Guelph needs a coworking/incubation space? A place for independents and small startups collaborating to help each other be more successful.

What I’m not interested in is just offering cheap office space. This would be participatory where we’re working with each other at some level. The goal being that our various projects and companies are better because of this space. My personal goal will be to have our members some day saying that they were successful in part because they worked in our space with us. Kumbaya!

What would the space include?

• 10 to 15 dedicated desks with 24/7 access
• Power, desks, heat and all that along with wireless and access to our Atria fibre
• Shared use of our boardroom
• I would actively build an advisory board, if our members felt this was needed.
• Events and lot’s of them based on what our members need.
• A shared communal work area for part timers, friends, and drop ins.
• We have great coffee and a beer tap!

What I need to move forward on something like this?
This would be a private venture and no one’s offered to lower my risk by bank rolling a couple of years of operation so I need to know there’s demand. If I knew there were 30+ people in Guelph who would commit tomorrow, ie we’d have a waiting list, then it’d be a no brainer. So, are you interested, or know of someone who may be? If so, please contact me asap or just comment on this post. As well, what’s this worth to you? What would you pay monthly for the above offering here in Guelph?

It’s been moved once, we’ve had to swap out speakers last minute, the fifteenth installment of DemoCampGuelph has faced adversity like no other DCG before it. Yet it triumphs, it perseveres, it is alive!

Ok, here’s hoping I clean up my act before someone puts a mic in my hand tonight. We’re on tonight, remind people, spread the words and the loves and we’ll see you all tonight! I’m excited to have Ilya Grigorik joining us as our invited speaker this evening. Make sure to arrive on time as we open with our speaker and then get into the demos. We’ll make sure there are pints around early so show up and meet some other folks in town you may not know.

If you haven’t already, sign up so we have a feel for numbers tonight.

Earlier this fall I asked if anyone wanted to share our offices here at Brainpark. We’re very lucky to have had some great folks take us up on the offer. We’ve managed to grow our tribe here with little added expense. I’m not sure they know but we’re not paying them a cent.

Andrew wrote today about a similar effort at Jet Cooper. I encourage you to think of ways you can grow your tribe and our community. While we certainly need bigger scale, longer term plans with projects like the hub and accelerator centre, there are loads of smaller simple things we can do today.

It doesn’t have to be formal, it need not be complicated, you don’t need a formal program. If you have a business, office, or just a project, open your doors. Invite people in to work in your space, share your fancy boardroom, host a happy hour. Really, most of us don’t bite and who knows, maybe we can help?

We recently started the process of shooting yet another Brainpark video. This time around, we’re working with our friend Mark Rabo. In working with Mark I started dreaming of a video about Guelph and what’s happening in our Technology scene here. If you spend your days in Guelph tech, it’s easy to become deluded in thinking that we have a tech scene. The reality is that until outsiders think that, we’re still just cows, vets, and music.

There’s a simple battle of the minds that needs to happen. It requires an external focus, ie focusing on what people outside of Guelph answer when you ask “What do you think of when you think of Guelph?” Until technology is mentioned in a large portion of those answers, we all still have work to do. While no one’s asked me to, I’d love to build a simple Guelph tech ambassador program to attack this. In every talk I’m able to give outside of Guelph, I make sure to promote and mention Guelph.

If you ever catch guys like David Cohen speak, you’ll find yourself thinking “hang on, is he pitching Boulder Colorado to me?” The answer’s yes! David and his crew are focused externally on marketing to the world that Boulder is the tech city to be in. That’s what it takes, it won’t happen by focusing internally.

Back to Mark Rabo, check out the Hillside video he shot this summer. I’ve been collaborating with Mark on how we could produce a similar video to promote Guelph tech. We would use a DemoCampGuelph event as a medium for the video but the message would be about Guelph tech. I noticed today that Vancouver produced a similar video. With respect, ours will be better!

Our video will be web length, two to three minutes covering three topics. If I’m a business owner considering Guelph for my company, I’m probably thinking about these three:

1. How big is the knowledge pool (will I find talent to fuel my business in Guelph? Is there a support structure of other tech businesses to work with?)
2. What is the growth trend of the tech industry in Guelph?
3. What are the afterwork activities (nightlife, culture, family-friendly)?

The video will consist mainly of interviews with people at DemoCampGuelph, ideally 5-7 people from different companies ranging from established household names (wow, they’re in Guelph!) to brand new start-ups (they’re small like us). We will likely mix interviews with DemoCampGuelph footage and shots from around town.

In order to do this, I need to raise the money required to produce this video. We will likely need in the $3000 to $4000 range. If you are interested in sponsoring this project, or help raise the funds, please let me know. Or if you know who I should be talking to, City of Guelph, let me know? Or if you think I’m wasting my time, let me know that as well.

I’m very excited to be speaking at the upcoming Ignite Waterloo event. You can get tickets now! I’d hurry as the tickets just showed up today and they’ve already sold over 50, which is insane.

If you haven’t attended an Ignite before, you should. The tagline for these events is “enlighten us, but make it quick”. Have a peek here for videos from previous Waterloo events for a taste.

I’m asked occasionally what the City of Guelph needs to do to better support Guelph technology. I’ve even tried to answer that the odd time. An idea I’ve considered often is how the city can help our companies both recruit new people to relocate to our city and help people already here stop commuting elsewhere to work. Over the years I’ve hired a fair number of people who have moved to Guelph. In that process, I’m forced to compete against larger companies in Toronto and Kitchener/Waterloo with significantly deeper pockets. Their job offers typically include significant reimbursements related to relocation costs. This can cover anything from the cost of movers to lawyer and real estate fees.

Smaller companies are rarely in the position to offer this as part of a job offer. How can the city help me with that? I’m helping to sell Guelph. I’m creating jobs in the city and then recruiting people to move to our city. Why can’t the city help me with some of this? Find a way to empower our smaller tech companies to recruit people to move to our city.

What if the city, or some other organization, offered a relocation package? If a person has a job offer in Guelph that requires them to move then they can apply for this package. That would be a powerful tool I could use today to attract talented people to our city. I’m sure the city could partner with local businesses to make this happen as it could represent a significant amount of work for a moving company or lawyer. I’m sure people in real estate or home builders would be interested in sponsoring a program like this and seeing it thrive.

Insane? Likely but you asked what you could do to help…

Due to a number of conflicts, the biggest being that it’s election night here in Guelph, the date for DemoCampGuelph 15 has been moved to Nov 17th. If you signed up to the previous date, you will have to sign up again. Apologies for being flighty…

As always, you can sign up at next.DemoCampGuelph.com

We currently have a bit more space here at Brainpark Guelph offices than we need. That may change at any point. We also really like hanging out with like minded folks and being ex coworking folks, we want to share space.

So, if you’re interested in having a desk or two on a semi-permanent basis with us here, let me know. We have a boardroom, great coffee, an awesome crew, and a keg of beer. Anyone who’s interested will have to come meet the team here, a first date?, and make sure we can ‘live’ together.

I spoke with a friend the other night about my original posting about whether we need a site for shared services for the local Guelph tech scene. In speaking with, it became clear that it wouldn’t hurt to clarify what I was suggesting.

I’m not talking about combining events and entities like DemoCampGuelph, Coffee and Code, diyode etc together. In fact it’s the opposite in that we need those efforts to have their own ‘brands’. Do they, however, need a way to be loosely coupled through some shared services?

What I’m suggesting is building shared services that we all need. I was using the analogy of the music scene. Every band has it’s own name, website, practice space etc. Where does someone go to find out what shows are playing or buy tickets and learn about new bands etc. Having to go to each individual band site for those tasks clearly doesn’t work. Those common services don’t need to be built by each and every band yet they all require them at some level.

This is simply to create shared services for our community events and entities. The only reason to do this is to strengthen our community by making it easier for individuals to participate. As well, running community efforts is work. If this would make the job of running current, and future, community efforts simpler then it’s worth considering.

I need help from you. We need a selection committee for our next DemoCampGuelph. The requirements are to meet with me next week, likely Thursday evening. At that meeting, this group will select who, of the applicants, gets a demo spot. Then on the night of DemoCampGuelph this group will select the demo of the night and recipient of The Crowie.

So I need three volunteers who meet the following qualifications:

• Attended at least one, preferably more, DemoCampGuelph events so you know what we’re doing.
• You haven’t applied to demo at this event.
• You’re not a sponsor (I’m not 100% sure this matters but we’ll start here…).
• You will attend next event.
• You aren’t currently contributing to DemoCampGuelph in some other fashion.

If you’re interested in contributing to our event by taking this on, please contact me directly. We need three of you please.