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25 Responses to “Knoxified Friday Question: Work-at-Home People”

1. Doug McCaughan 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:08 am

   

   Dig­i­tal Cross­ing down­town and Tech2020 in Oak Ridge were sup­posed to be help­ing to fill those voids. Nei­ther did well at their respec­tive promises/duties in my opinion.

   Boston on the other hand took an old rot­ting wharf, ware­house dis­trict and turned it into a boom­ing dig­i­tal incu­ba­tor. Sorry no link­age, pulling from mem­ory. That was 10 years ago so it could be dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent (or failed) today. But look to Boston as an exam­ple of how to do it.

   For your ques­tions, I’ve been locked in a base­ment dun­geon for 10 years (some would say that is work­ing from home). I meet with my clients on Skype, SMS, and email. Rarely do I see them in per­son and some I have never even seen a pic­ture so if you put them in a police line up I may not even be able to iden­tify my clients (I really hope you don’t need to put my clients in a police lineup).

2. RockyTopMBA 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:10 am

   

   Great post, CP.

   We have office space at the Tech2020 build­ing in Oak Ridge, right next to the Fairview and Tech2020 incu­ba­tors. It is pretty great being in this envi­ron­ment, but I part of me does wish we were at least in West Knoxville if not downtown.

   Of course, we cur­rently stay close to the lab­o­ra­tory due to the spin-outs from licensed tech­nol­ogy. Maybe that will change as the UT Research Foun­da­tion gets more momentum?

   Also, I think home offices, garages, and tool sheds are great places to grow early stage start-ups and base a single-man con­sult­ing business.

   Twit­ter me @cmm1869

3. Victor Agreda Jr 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:15 am

   

   I fully sup­port this idea! So far Knoxville has 1 weekly cowork­ing meetup at Pan­era on Kingston Pike, Wed. from 12-4pm.

   I’m hop­ing to orga­nize another in Foun­tain City, at the Pan­era on Broadway.

   But I think some­thing down­town would be ideal, if we can fig­ure out park­ing :/
   For the folks who live down­town, and as devel­op­ment con­tin­ues, I really think some­thing there would thrive (and plenty of places to eat/meet when nec­es­sary, all within walk­ing dis­tance). As long as it isn’t in Turkey Creek.

   I meet folks at the cof­fee shop, but I’ve been to res­i­den­tial offices as well. 90% of the time I just work out of my house, how­ever, because no one I work with lives here.

4. RockyTopMBA 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:15 am

   

   To respond to Doug…

   I don’t think Dig­i­tal Cross­ing in down­town is sup­posed to house busi­nesses. It is a data stor­age and man­age­ment com­pany, from what I understand.

   As for Tech2020, it has a pretty nar­row scope around sup­port­ing spin-outs from the lab­o­ra­tory. I know that excludes cer­tain folks, but it is kind of the evo­lu­tion­ary prod­uct of hav­ing a mis­sion that focuses on uti­liz­ing the advanced tech­nolo­gies of the lab and its denizens (for lack of a bet­ter term).

   We are miss­ing a more gen­eral incu­ba­tor envi­ron­ment, which I’d love to see. There is a new incu­ba­tor open­ing at UT next to the ag campus/river, which I think will be very cool.

5. Chad 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:21 am

   

   Is this some­thing peo­ple would be will­ing to pay for? Maybe some type of mem­ber fee + usage?

   @Victor — URL? Is it on meetup or upcoming?

6. sadcox 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:27 am

   

   I work at home mostly, but when I have to meet up with peo­ple it is usu­ally Pan­era or some other place with free wi-fi. I also tend to head there on days when I really have to buckle down and not be dis­tracted by the home environment.

   I’d like to see some sort of web/tech-based group started here, even if it’s just a “nerd break­fast” once a week or month. I’ll gladly help get it orga­nized if oth­ers are interested.

   I have to believe there are other peo­ple in the area who would be inter­ested. I imag­ine it as a loose-knit group that’s mainly inter­ested in brain­storm­ing and help­ing each other find resources. I’m a lit­tle turned off by the tra­di­tional busi­ness net­work­ing groups that are geared more towards sell­ing, sell­ing, selling.

   We (those of us who would do some­thing like this) are deal­ing with a world­wide mar­ket, not an ET mar­ket. There’s huge incen­tive to help one another and col­lab­o­rate since the com­pe­ti­tion for mar­ket share isn’t an issue.

7. Doug McCaughan 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:34 am

   

   “I don’t think Dig­i­tal Cross­ing in down­town is sup­posed to house busi­nesses. It is a data stor­age and man­age­ment com­pany, from what I understand.”

   No, it was started as an incu­ba­tor for Inter­net star­tups. It got con­sumed by Scripps Net­works (who took the top floor) and some shady deals cut by Bell­south and some other names. I worked with a com­pany that had a small office there and saw the way it should have worked (which was the small busi­ness I was with got to work directly with Bob Benz and his group on some projects. That was cool!). It was a good idea but had chal­lenges (like park­ing). I prob­a­bly have some of the orig­i­nal mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als from when the Dig­i­tal Cross­ing was get­ting started. I was in some of the orig­i­nal meet­ings at Tech2020 and quoted in the News Sen­tinel at least once from one of those meetings.

   It may have evolved into noth­ing more than a data cen­ter, but that is not its orig­i­nal pur­pose. I’ll have to look it up but 10 years ago a guy named David some­thing (I think it was David), and not Akins or Snider, was run­ning the show and he can give you the real his­tory (not the mar­ket­ing his­tory on the tech2020 website).

8. Doug McCaughan 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:53 am

   

   Chad, there is no argu­ing that by putting cre­ative minds together in a phys­i­cal space that great things hap­pen. There are times I am dying to bounce some­thing off another per­son but I have online out­lets for that.

   Per­son­ally, I’d pay a usage fee to have access to a con­fer­ence room with a com­puter and pro­jec­tor where I could have pre­sen­ta­tions for sales and teach­ing. Oh, and group insurance!

9. Gavin Baker 
   April 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am

   

   I’ve spo­ken about this point with a few peo­ple as well and think it could eas­ily become a real­ity. The prob­lem as I see it, is if it’s not at a “pub­lic” e.g. Pan­era, there is sig­nif­i­cant risk for some­one to lease/outfit a build­ing or floor for this ven­ture — unless a ven­tur­ing downtown/west com­pany was will­ing to open up it’s doors. I’ve thought about it doing it here at Abunga, but we don’t have the extra space or the type of office most peo­ple would want to co-work in. I think the space next to Jason’s Deli looks prime for a HUGE cowork­ing space. (The old OCI West)

10. CP 
    April 11th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    

    This is really good dia­logue between peo­ple that could make this hap­pen. Maybe our next Tweet-up can focus dis­cus­sion on this topic.

11. Chad 
    April 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am

    

    @Doug — I def­i­nitely agree. Even work­ing a “cor­po­rate” job I still work from home 1 or 2 days a week just to get out­side of the office walls. The insur­ance angle is really interesting.

    @Gavin — I think it would have to be a new ven­ture leas­ing a space. The OCI idea intrigues me. Down­town would be cool, but park­ing is always an issue.

12. CP 
    April 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    

    @Chad — I’m sure we could find a loca­tion that would sat­isfy the West Knox’ers and the Downtown’ers.

13. Doug McCaughan 
    April 11th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    

    Really? Obvi­ously you’ve never tried to orga­nize a Blogfest

14. Bob Benz 
    April 11th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    

    After more than 20 years in corporate/office envi­ron­ments I quit a few months ago and joined a startup called Maroon Ven­tures. Very strange to be work­ing from a loft at my house. So far, meet­ings have been in cof­fee shops and much of my con­tact comes via tedious con­fer­ence calls. My part­ners are scat­tered from Louisville to Crested Butte so it’s impor­tant for me to be pretty wired. But I also would like more oppor­tu­nity to rub shoul­ders with local star­tups. Lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties develop there, as Doug pointed out in ref­er­ence to Dig­i­tal Cross­ing in his ear­lier com­ment. While DC didn’t ulti­mately suc­ceed, I think it was hunt­ing in the right field. The idea of cre­at­ing a venue where star­tups, estab­lished com­pa­nies and cap­i­tal can mix it up has major appeal.

    I won­der if a cool model would be the air­port fre­quent flier lounges. What if you had a cof­fee shop/bar where peo­ple could meet, have lunch in pri­vate rooms or in a com­mon area and rent space by the day, week or month? To me, it would need to have a cool fac­tor and a do-business fac­tor bun­dled in one. There could be a rea­son­able annual mem­ber­ship fee that allows you to take advan­tage of the gen­eral facil­i­ties with a guest or two and hourly fees for use of meet­ing space, etc.

    (And while I’m toss­ing it out there, would be even cooler if this meet­ing spot was staffed by exec­u­tive assis­tants who, for a rea­son­able rate, could book travel, set appoint­ments, etc. The main thing I miss about my cor­po­rate life is my assis­tant. Of course, I had the best assis­tant on the planet. But hav­ing some­one who could han­dle tasks like that would be an added rea­son to fre­quent this type of place.)

15. Victor Agreda Jr 
    April 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    

    Here’s the upcom­ing page for Cowork­ing­Knoxville:
    http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/471341/

    And face­book:
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27747648848

    I’d love to pur­sue this dis­cus­sion fur­ther in per­son with any­one will­ing to lis­ten

    Oh, and I think the idea of the air­port lounge is a great one– sounds like we could all use a meet­ing room at times.

16. Doug McCaughan 
    April 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    

    “The main thing I miss about my cor­po­rate life is my assis­tant.“
    Hear hear!

    “I had the best assis­tant on the planet.“
    She must have been moon­light­ing on me!

17. CP 
    April 13th, 2008 at 11:05 am

    

    Has any­one seen this? http://coworking.pbwiki.com/CoworkingKnoxville

18. CP 
    April 14th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    

    @victor, sorry for the delay. Your com­ment got caught up in our spam filter.

19. Victor Agreda Jr 
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    

    CNN has a story on cowork­ing today:
    http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/04/07/coworking/index.html

20. CP 
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    

    @Victor — I got this via e-mail ear­lier today. Good cov­er­age that fur­thers the need for this in Knoxville.

21. Bob Benz 
    April 20th, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    

    If you guys get together to dis­cuss this, give a shout. If my travel sched­ule per­mits I’d love to be involved.

22. CP 
    April 20th, 2008 at 10:16 pm

    

    Glad to have you aboard Bob.

23. Alex Lavidge 
    April 21st, 2008 at 11:09 pm

    

    Thanks Chad for get­ting this out there! I’m vis­it­ing fam­ily here in Knoxville from San Fran­cisco where cowork­ing now seems to be expand­ing every­where — but so far I haven’t found any­thing here. So my friend Page and I are try­ing to put a Cowork­ing­Knoxville inter­est group together to see as such if maybe down the road some­thing could develop? Thanks for help­ing get the word out!

24. Andrew 
    August 23rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    

    Keep up the hard work! Like what you wrote

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