Archive for the 'Company' tag

Some more thoughts on coworking in Hebden Bridge

Posted on May 31, 2009

Spent this weekend at Bar Camp Leeds 2009, it was great. There were some good presentations and talks and I really enjoyed getting out and talking to other people in the digital and creative industries.

I’ve been working from home now for a couple of years and it’s sometimes easy to get caught up in a routine and to forget that part of things. It’s easy, despite all the blogs and twitter messages we – or at least I, constantly read- to forget that there are people nearby doing very similar things. In the case of Hebden Bridge, quite a few.

Getting out there and meeting people has really hit home the idea that I would find a coworking space in Hebden Bridge  immensely useful. I’ve been in touch with some of the people involved with the Town Hall project and the whole idea for the creative quarter they’ve got planned looks great. It’s probably a couple of years off though and what interests me most isn’t the building; it’s the community, collaboration and sharing of ideas.That’s something that can start without any funding, so I’ve been wondering what can be accomplished in the meantime.  Starting now also gives the Town Hall project the best social proof and traction for the concept possible.

So what’s next? I’m going to try and organise an open coffee, try to guage interest in making it regular, coworking and maybe even somewhere down the line try to start our own Hebden Bridge BarCamp or unconference, with it’s diverse make up I bet it would be something unique.

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Coworking in Heben Bridge or my office is soon going to be a bedroom!

Posted on May 17, 2009

My partner is mid way through her pregnancy, we’re expecting number two, so within the next year I’m going to need to find somewhere else to work. Even if we end up with two girls and they can share a room, I’m just not not sure it’s going to be practical to work from home with two young children. Even with just one I’ve been finding myself in the library more and more for the piece and quiet. Which got me to thinking about coworking and reaching out to see if there is anything in town or any interest in setting something up.

For a town of it’s size Hebden Bridge has a great artistic and creative community and more than it’s fair share of creative professionals; creatives, technologists, artists, designers, writer, journalists and programmers like me. It’s a great family town but a lot of the houses are fairly small. Perfect it would seem for a co-working setup.

I’ve sent some emails and posted on the HebWeb forums and so far there has been enough positive feedback that I’ll pursue it some more.

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almost profitable

Posted on December 3, 2008

I had an interesting chat with a friend today about what it means to be almost profitable and businesses that are perpetually stuck, with profitability just out of reach. It seems to be a problem that some companies never manage to get away from.

The problem is I’ve seen a lot of companies where almost profitable is the status quo, sometimes for years. I’ve seen these companies increase staff, sales and turn over but still profitability is just out of reach because costs also go up. For them the only way out is to change something fundamental.

In times like these the first reaction is to restructure the business and let staff go, but this can backfire – lower the number of sales staff and you’ll likely cut your turnover, cut support staff and your customers might suffer directly, cut technical staff and can you keep up with the risk takers?

Unfortunately some of the businesses, and the ones I’m talking about need a more radical change. And something that fundamental can be difficult to swallow because it often involves someone admitting they were wrong. A very difficult conversation when you’ve been selling everyone jam tomorrow.

Hopefully some of the people in this position realise that, as other commenters are pointing out, now is possibly one of the best times to take risks. if you could change anything about your company, what would it be?

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a crossroads

Posted on December 1, 2008

In case you haven’t heard, didn’t know or are just joining me –

I used to work 2 1/2 days a week as an employee writing code for another company and the rest working for goroam. The problem was always that I had to put my job first and goroam second- obviously, since one paid and the other didn’t. That was up until this weekend, when I got a letter telling me I had don’t have a job anymore.

So I’ve got a stark choice the wrong side of this close to Christmas, work hard to turn out the product we’ve been building for the last couple of months, get investment and make something truly great of it. Or get a job.

You hear plenty of confident statements about downturns being the right time to start great companies, all the successful ones that began when it was logically wrong. To actually have to make the choice is a difficult position.

I wonder how it will work out, anyone with a comment either way – leave a comment!

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