I'm glad to note that there's been a lot of movement over the last few weeks for the Montreal Coworking space. Patrick Tanguay, who's been organizing the project, let me know recently that we're closing in on a space. Which is just fantastic.
Coworking is a loose term for a number of different ways of working together. The term is most commonly used for a kind of shared office where participants pay for either a fixed space (their own desk) by the month, or they pay for the use of a pool of free spaces (shared desks) on a daily or part-time basis.
There are the kind of office resources, like WiFi, conference rooms, printers, copiers, etc. that you expect from an office, but unlike most shared-office situations, there's also an emphasis on community and communications. It's a great kind of work environment for people who would otherwise work at home or in cafés, such as freelancers, contractors, and startuppers -- or for people visiting from out-of-town.
I've been to a couple of the Bay Area (California) coworking spaces -- the one at Citizen Space in San Francisco and the one at SocialText in Palo Alto. Both were convenient, fun, and social -- a good place to get some work done.
Patrick's been working on a Montreal coworking space for a while -- talking to the City and neighbourhood development organizations -- and he's settled on a space in Mile End. It looks pretty fantastic. You can see the pictures and a map at the Montreal Coworking Web site.
I've been working out of the house for about 5 years, and I really like the freedom and convenience it affords. That said, I'm really looking forward to having a more formal environment to work in than my home office. It's great here, and I feel very comfortable, but it would be nice to be out of the house. I also tend to meet with contractors and partners at local cafés, which can be distracting -- I'm looking forward to having meeting rooms.
There's a 5 à 7 ("sank ah set" -- it's what we call a cocktail party here in Montreal) planned for people who'll be involved in the site planned for this Wednesday, November 21, at Bar Inc. (250 Mont-Royal Est). I won't be there -- we'll be in New Jersey by then -- but I hope others interested in the coworking take the chance to go.
tags: coworking montreal patricktanguay
JS-Kit and data portability
I've been a big fan of JS-Kit since I heard about it. I featured it in my list of 10 Web APIs for LinuxWorld, and I use it on my own personal site for comments.
But one thing that concerns me, and that I've asked for clarification from JS-Kit about, is data portability. If they went out of business (heaven forfend), or if I figured out another cool way to do comments on my site, I'd like to be able to migrate old comments to the new system I'd build/use/buy. But as far as I can tell, there's no interface to download all comments on a site (either in HTML or some other structured format).
I think this is going to be a key issue for people building Web sites with UI widgets in the future. It's a really, really useful way to make sites, but I don't think many developers are going to be willing to invest in a platform with no "insurance" that they can be flexible in the future. Sure, it's free of charge, and it seems kind of mean to use the poor JS-Kit folks and then move on to someone else -- but realistically it's an option you need for development.
tags: widgets js-kit dataportability webapis
One-liners
Some other stuff I'm thinking about today:
- On the "upcoming events" front, we've got some plans to make BarCampCanada1 happen here in Montreal in May 2008. I'm not sure how that's going to shake out, but I'm excited about the possibility of a nationwide BarCamp.
- I'm interested in Heather Ford's and Jimmy Wales's 50 parties idea - having fifty parties in one year to bring together local Free Culture people. I think we should have a party here in Montreal. Maybe in the Spring...? Maybe to coincide with BarCampCanada1?