Ben Benner’s Blog

Say that three times fast.

I had been wanting to check out the new “Coworking” space, Cospace,  here in North Austin (Eryn, Kevin and I have decided that they are in North Austin, which I am sure many of people will agree, vs saying they are in Central Austin, or for those few ‘folks up der in Leander’, who might feel like this area is in Downtown Austin, to which, well they are WRONG.)

Anyway, due to a series of odd events, Eryn, Kevin and I ended up here at Cospace. Coworking is a new concept to most, I was introduced to it by the good folks that run Conjunctured, another Coworking space here in Austin.

Basically, the thing is there are plenty of places for freelancers to work, not many of them are very conducive to working and most lack the feel of working with people, because even the most anti-social of us are still, well social creatures, we just hate being social, but eventually miss people.

So the idea is to get folks out of coffee shops and out of their home offices and into a shared environment, where they will be able to have sort of ‘normal’ work environment and be with people, yet without ‘working for da man’.

I know quite a few freelancers that are always looking for a coffee shop that is conducive to work on projects, unfortunately I would say the majority of them are not remotely conducive. I most definitely recommend a Coworking facility, and given that it is closer to my own home I would say that Cospace is a great place.

I neglected to take any photos of Eryn and Kevin (and I ) working here, ummm, too busy working I guess. But I think the general feel was that the space was good, Kevin recommended that they maybe have some mouse-pads to loan out, or even add them to the vending machine that was joked about when we first arrived.

Speaking of arrival, the reason we ended up here was that our real office (Jaduka/NetworkIP) was experiencing bad smells, not the kind that one would expect after say egg salad sandwiches or burritos for lunch, but more of the kind of bad smell that makes you wonder if you are living in New Jersey, eg chemicals. Apparently some contractors had done some work in the building over the weekend and apparently they didn’t handle their fumes properly.

The fumes were stronger in some parts of the office than other, but regardless I was getting light headed and decided to come on over to Cospace.

I talked with Kirtus Dixon, one of the owners of Cospace on Saturday. Jeremy had mentioned me during one of their conversations last week, as Jeremy (who currently is a freelancer of sorts) has been hanging here at Cospace.

My conversation with Kirtus revolved around what they want to accomplish and what I could possibly contribute to some of their ideas for building a community. I have to say that I am very interested in some of the items we discussed, particularly the hackathon.

Well, I need to wrap up this post as they are putting up the balloons and I hear something about bringing out the food.

I’ll make another post later, with pics from the party.

laterz

bdbenner cospace, eryn, kevin cospace, coworking, freelancing

(figured I would follow-up the Time Lord post with a similar sounding title)

So let me first start off by saying, I managed to get myself over to the soccer field for Camp Gladiator #7 about 10 minutes later than I had wanted. Honestly though, from the looks of it the folks in charge there I think must have started a little bit before 6:10, because everyone was already doing some serious exercises. That our I mistook the warm-ups for part of the serious workout.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I think it was on Wednesday, one of my coworkers, Eryn Chandler, was mentioning that she went to high school with a friend who’s cousin won the last American Gladiator contest, or something like that. Regardless, of the six-degrees of gladiator separation, I have signed up for Cam Gladiator (#7).

Eryn was talking about how she was thinking about signing up. I heard her asking Kevin if he would do it and he sounded interested at the time. The next day there was much chatter in the office about Camp Gladiator. There was chatter about referrals and how much money you can get for referring someone, I remember hearing Daniel mention that he was going. That is when right about the same time they asked me if I would do it. I had looked the site over the previous day and thought to myself that I didn’t think I was physically fit enough to get $160 worth of exercise (4 weeks of sessions, as many sessions as I want to attend).

Then came the Camp Gladiator Groupon, this is a new thing to me, but Groupon is this sort of weird group coupon system (Group + Coupon = Groupon). I like to think of it as Woot! + Local Business. There is one special a day and they eventually run out of Groupons. The Groupon lowered the price to $70. So that combined with the fact that Kevin said that Jeremy was thinking about doing it, I succumbed to the peer pressure of exercise.

I stated that I would do the camp if Jeremy would. However, Kevin managed to finish talking me into it, not that he was hard selling me on it, but at this point Eryn, Kevin, and Daniel were all signed up. So I figured, heck I will sign-up. I am not saying that Jeremy signed up because I did, but I did sign-up before he did.

The first session (for us) was last night, 6:10p - 7:10p, out at a soccer field near the intersection of Braker and Mopac.

It was chilly when we started and proceeded to get COLD. I will definitely need to wear a sweatshirt next time around.

We did sprints, push-ups, jumping jacks, ’sexy spiders’, ‘crab walks’, ‘crab shuffles’ (think that was the name), ’super-mans’, ‘bananas’, and some sort of weird V-shaped sit-up thing. It was very intense.

As previously posted, I am trying to get into better shape. I can honestly say that if I had not been doing a bit of the Wii Fit every night, then I would most likely have not been able to do as many of the exercises that everyone was doing at Camp Gladiator last night. I mean don’t get me wrong, I got winded very early-on and had to slow down my pace, but every time I felt that I was recovered, I ‘kicked the intensity back up’ as to try and get the most out of my $70.

I am not sure if I will do another Camp Gladiator or not. I think I will need to see how I am feeling by the end of these four weeks. One personal goal that I have for week three and week four, is to do three sessions a week. These first two weeks I think are going to really kick my ass.

I am going to try and alternate the Wii Fit with the Camp Gladiator nights. I have the Camp Gladiator session in my Google Calendar, thus allowing them show-up on my iPhone. Mondays and Wednesday nights. I think I am going to try and hit up a Friday session on weeks three and four.

Anyway, I need to finish my lunch and get back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner cam gladiator, daniel, eryn, exercise, friends, jeremy, kevin, wii fit bootcamp, camp gladiator, eryn wii fit, excercise, jeremy, kevin