People want to work alongside people they like. That held true at both the recent Jelly Austin and Jelly Atlanta. This is a problem if you telecommute (you work alone) or if you work alongside people who just don't turn you on. Brendan Crain (Coexisting and Coworking) asks why, given the pervasiveness of the Internet and the connectivity it affords, we haven't all "retreated to the mountaintops"? His response, "Blech. Boring."
While Jelly provides a constraint free mix of people (anyone can show up and work). Coworking spaces, especially those focused on specific types of workers (Paragraph, for example, is a workspace for writers) offer a more focused environment among a group of similarly wired workers. Carl Alviani (Your Dream Office is Just Over There: Co-Working and the Instant Creative Community) states, "A temporary on-site cubicle, a cobbled-together home office, and a jovial but ultimately isolating coffee shop are the three most common options, and all of them lack the most important quality of the ideal creative workspace: other creative workers with whom to interact".
- Bandit
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