My thoughts on Coworking

I’m not a big fan of being alone. I crave the comfort of being around other people. Having someone there that you can bounce ideas off of, or collaborate with – it’s awesome. That’s what I love about coworking.  It allows for collective collaboration of creative individuals in a friendly and open environment.

I’ve had an interest in coworking for some time now. Early last year, I was involved in trying to get a coworking space setup in Little Rock. Even though it didn’t work out, I learned a lot of what’s needed to get a coworking space started.  Mainly what’s needed is a willingness to work hard to see it through.

Fast forward to today.

When I attended this year’s LessConf, I had a great conversation with one of the presenters, Alex Hillman, the founder of a coworking space in Philadelphia called IndyHall.  That conversation sparked a newfound interest in me to get a coworking space started in my community.  So as soon as I got back from the conference I spoke with a few of my friends and they had a similar interest in seeing something like this started in Conway; thus Conway Coworking was born.

We have our first meeting planned for June 9th at 6pm at Starbucks on Oak St. in Conway. We’re going to use the meeting to gauge interest in the community and find out what creative professionals in Conway are looking for in a coworking space. We want to make sure that we provide them a proper space for their creative output.

If you’re a creative individual, you should join us. It’s gonna rock.

Healthcare & Social Networking.

It’s amazing how specialized social networks can be. With social networking platforms like Ning, SocialEngine, and Elgg that allow developers (and novices) to build whatever kind of social network their little hearts desire, it opens up the floodgates for all sorts of specialized clubs and organizations.

I’ve been racking my brain for the last six months trying to devise a way to leverage one of these open source social networking platforms for use in the healthcare field. It’s not gone too well. The problems not the idea, it’s the plethora of choices healthcare professionals have in the way of social networking.  There are tons of SNSs out there that cater to individuals in the healthcare field — especially for nurses. Go to Google and type in “nurse social network” — it’s amazing how many sites pull up.  Honestly, most of those sites are horrible – badly designed, terrible UI, and the developers obviously had the wrong motivations behind creating the sites.

This brings me to where I’m at right now. Last week I contacted an old professor of mine to ask him a few questions and get his advice on some issues I was having with another project I was working on.  While I was on the phone with him I mentioned my plans to create a SNS for nurses.  He basically told me I was a dumbass.  He reminded me about how many choices nurses had out there – as far as SNSs go – and that if I wanted to reach that audience I would be better off investing the time and money in leveraging the existing social networks to reach individuals in the healthcare community.  This is especially is true for Facebook.

Why would I want to recreate the wheel when the nurses I’m going after are already familiar with the Facebook interface?  The conversation I had with my old professor made a lot of sense to me and it really opened my eyes about where I need to be focusing my attention.

The moral of the story kids — listen to what other people have to say.  Ask questions.  Get peoples opinions.  And especially don’t rely on your judgment alone.  In most cases its probably wrong.