This month's Wilmington IT Infusion networking meeting was held at 27 N. Front Street in downtown Wilmington, NC. The meeting was at Buenaspace, a new collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs, telecommuters, freelancers, and anyone else who can use a low commitment, environmentally minimal footprint shared wordspace with a high tech flavor. Check it out at www.BuenaSpace.com.
We met several new people, caught up with friends, and learned a lot about buenaspace and the workspace concept. There are two companies with private offices in buenaspace: digieffects, a video after effects company; and Wide Open Technologies, a business technologies service firm. In addition to the private offices (the walls are glass so they're not exactly hidden), there are 15 divided desktop spaces, a conference room, video editing room, break out/lounge/kitchen area, locker room, and two rest rooms.
The guy below is Robert Sharp, President of difieffects. Robert's also one of the partners in buenaspace.
Looking back toward the conference room.
Black and white copying and printing services are part of the deal for people who use buenaspace.
Workspaces.
Lounge/break out, kitchen area.
Workspaces.
Lockers. (San Dimas High rules!)
Video editing room (the PC setup is on it's way).
A view of the two front offices. One thing to note is how light and bright the space was. Those windows face east and the event didn't start until 5:30PM. There was certainly plenty of light - to the point that it was hard for me not to overexpose a lot of my photos with my limited speed digital camera. All that light may not be great for digital images, I suppose, but it's great for a workspace.
We met Art Thingulstad, a systems engineer who attended the WITI event.
Marge liked the zebra graphics on the wall so she asked me to pose in front of one.
There I am trying to be clever pointing out the conference room.
Rebecca Powell of BecAndCall and Marge Brown of Fat City Cards.
Robert Sharp and Bruce Brown, up to no good and posing to no purpose but silliness - which I suppose is as good a purpose as many.
Designer Kelly Cain Smith, Andrew Gray of TayloeGray (they're the ones who designed, created, and try to help Marge and I color between the lines at QuantumResultsCoaching.com), and Sarah Barbee of FussBudgetPromotions.
David Merrill of Hertz Local, and the creator of WilmingtonNetworkingEvents.com networking event calendar arrived at the same time as Lauren Formalarie of Carolina Coastal Concepts, a social media training, consulting, and maintenance firm.
(Moderate) crowd scene.
More folks arrived and dug in to conversations.
And then I noticed this screw in the middle of the space between the floor and a pretty hefty steel beam at the ceiling. My first thought was it was decorative.
But on closer inspection and with more thought I realized it's likely functional. I suppose if some engineer, designer, or coder gets extremely frustrated, she or he could come out to the middle of the space and literally raise the roof. I do suspect you'd need a strong bar and a stronger back to turn it, however.
Century 21 Sweyer REALTOR Kha Nguyen with Shelly DeAntonio, C21's Operations Manager, and Brooke Foreman, owner of RightLeftStudio design firm.
The guy on the left is Matt Magne, a senior IT guy with IBM and founder of Wilmington IT Infusion. The guy on the right is me and I have no clue what I was looking at.
PPD IT Manager Paul Mazzola.
More folks in the breakout area.
Matt Magne with Staci Dubenko, a video after effects specialist and videographer.
So we had a good time, met some new folks, and got to check out a new type of workspace in the heart of Wilmington's historic district. Thanks to all involved for hosting the event.
If you'd like more info about buenaspace, of course the best source is www.buenaspace.com. Here's what the floorplan looks like (click on the image to see it better):
www.buenaspace.com
