Coworking in New York City: cooperBricolage

So...someone asked me - what is it like to work in New York as a freelancer? And I said, tough.

Using wifi from the home, hanging about in Starbucks with kids and noise and all that stuff, not a very conducive atmosphere for making work happen. And then I learned about "coworking".

I found out about it through Tara Hunt and Chris Messina on their coworking blog and then learned more about what was happening here in New York City through Noneck Hidalgo and Amit Gupta, I saw what could be. But, I wanted something a little more stable - sort of what I was used to in London when I worked with Ian Jindal and my cofounders from Rawlings (Ameet Mehta and Rana Sarkar). We shared an office space in Ian's company and worked on various projects from there and often found serendipity occurring.

I found the same with A&N Design here on Wall Street, but it was not the same. And then I began teaching at Cooper Union and discovered the energy that came with "coworking". Which made me think, how could we replicate this in a space that others could us.

One evening, I was having dinner at my favorite restaurant on St. Marks (Cafe Fuego) and remembered they were closed during the day on the weekdays. With a space like Fuego's couldn't we have our own semi-permanent "coworking" space - coupled with the principles that Nate discussed about in his concept of Cafe Bricolage?

After a short set of questions with the manager and owner - cooperBricolage was formed a month later.

cooperBricolage - Coworking has a Bistro in New York City

First day at CooBric

Yes, it sounds funny - and the kudos goes to Tony B for his insight, but cooperBricolage is humming along nicely. We are having a steady stream of people coming in - and looking to expand our services beyond food, wifi and power. We are setting up a temporary conference space - so people can have semi-private meetings in the back and we are setting up our own iTunes server for community choice of music.

Interested in stopping by? We are soft-launched and will have a Grand Opening soon. The challenge will be - do you want to become a part of something here in New York City.

Check us out on the web at cooperBricolage and read our blog at CooBric. Come and join the fun - we welcome fellow travellers and creatives.