[GRLUG] Coworking in GR

[Ben Rousch]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Philip J. Robar <philip.robar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> After a warehouse social this summer I (1) talked with a young man who was
> looking for a better job. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name and
> can’t find the piece of paper with your contact information on it.
> Fortunately I finally tracked down the place I said I’d send you information
> about and since it may be of general interest to the group I’ll post it here
> and hope that you see it.

I suggest that anyone who is looking for a job attend as many of the
local user group meetings as possible.
http://conga-wm.org/group-list/
http://conga-wm.org/calendar/

Of course it's not enough to just sit and listen, you have to actually
talk to people, volunteer to present, and maybe even help organize. If
the group goes out for dinner or drinks after a meeting, you should
definitely go along. Most networking happens at the after-parties or
social events, not at the formal presentations. After you've engaged
the community for a while, you will meet people who can offer you jobs
or point you in the right direction. Depending on your skills or a
demonstrated ability to learn quickly, there are a few places that are
very busy and are always hiring "the right people."

> The place I was thinking of is a “coworking" location called “The Factory.”
> It’s a shared open office space where you work on your business or project
> in a professional environment among other hopefully interesting people with
> the possibility that something might come from the chance mingling with
> others:
> http://workthefactory.com/

The Factory is a coworking facility. Its focus is on giving
telecommuters an office away from home. It doesn't seem like a good
place to actually find a job, though there are a few well-connected
people who work from there regularly.

> Also unfortunately, I don’t know of anything like Mountain View, Ca's Hacker
> Dojo (3) or SuperHappyDevHouse Meetings (4) in the Grand Rapids area, but
> perhaps an enterprising young person might start something similar under the
> Geek Group’s umbrella.

It would be very cool to have a sort of hackerspace/tech guild
downtown. The Geek Group is currently the closest thing we have (that
I know of). They're working hard to put their facility together. For
some reason I don't see as much interaction between the existing GR
tech community and TGG as I expected, although I think that's slowly
changing very recently.

-- 
 Ben Rousch
   brousch at gmail.com
   http://clusterbleep.net/

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