Today, February 2, 2009 Beehive Baltimore officially went live with active members present all day, from 9AM on. As I write this it’s 5:15pm and four of us are here working hard and listening to some quiet music.
Earlier, Baltimore Sun reporter Gus Sentementes (@GusSent) came by to do a story; Doug Schmidt from Chessiecap Securities came by to talk about some new business ideas. Bill Mill from Looking Glass came by to say hi. Colin Drane from SpotCrime came by to talk about a project.
Beehive represents a real evolution in Baltimore’s creative, tech, and startup culture; from now on, there’s no longer a bright-line divide between “working at a company” or “working from home.” The idea that incubation is done with small firms (firms who themselves are often still just finding their way) has been supplemented by the notion of incubating people and relationships; and those relationships are between people and with other companies here in our local business ecosystem.
Coworking in Baltimore has a great future ahead of it; as long as there is creativity, imagination, and a desire to connect with others and make beautiful new things, Beehive will have a supply of talent and a place in the community! Bravo, Baltimore! Well done!
Thanks again to everyone who helped bring Beehive to fruition, including all of our charter members, Newt Fowler (our attorney, and a cofounder) and Stephen Muirhead. We couldn’t have done it without everyone’s belief and dedication to bringing coworking to Baltimore!
Here’s an (updated) brief listing of activities that will be underway for our move-in this weekend:
Friday Jan 30
2:30pm carpet cleaning
Trip to local office furniture liquidators Re/Form and Mark Downs
Sat Jan 31
2:00pm trip to IKEA
Sun Feb 1 - 11:00a-5:00p
Beehive Setup Party! Plan to stop by and help build any IKEA furniture, etc, that needs setup
We will provide some pizza and beverages…
We would especially love to have a large turnout for the Feb 1 activities; we will take some photos and let this be our sort of ”grand opening” meetup and party, so if you have to choose just one thing to attend, make it that day!
If you have any questions please say so; we are super excited to see our community taking another huge step forward!
We will post updates here (and/or on Twitter) to fine tune the schedule as things progress, but this is generally what’s going on.
Things are moving ahead quickly at the hive. We are on track to open our doors on Monday, February 2, 2009!
Special thanks go to the entire Beehive community, who have helped make this possible by proving the interest.
Also, Newt Fowler has been instrumental since day one of the Beehive effort. Newt has served as our attorney and advisor, traveling with me to Philadelphia to visit our friends at Indy Hall — whose ideas we’ve ripped off liberally — and has also handled all of the legal work (gratis) required to get Beehive off the ground, and along with me and my business partner Stephen Muirhead has supplied a modest amount of startup capital. Newt’s been a visionary in the community for years, and though he looks a little different from us tech entrepreneurs and designers, he certainly stands one with us and our community.
I’d be remiss in not also thanking Neil Davis, Fulya Gursel, and Val Ellis at the ETC for their unwavering belief in the coworking concept and their help in getting a deal worked out in record time. If not for the holidays we would have been able to get in a bit more quickly, but certainly the entire ETC staff has been nothing but supportive in getting this off the ground.
While the team is busy pimping our website, here’s some basic FAQ-type info that people have been asking about.
We’ll be hosting a setup party at the ETC in Canton on Sunday, Feb 1 from 11-5 if you want to come by. We’ll be based at Bluehouse (Fleet Street) just two more days: Tuesday and Thursday this week. Thank you to Bluehouse for being our home for the last three months! We are going to miss you, but we are sure to be back for the soup!
Yesterday, several of us visited the Emerging Technology Center in Canton to take a look at the prospective first space for Beehive Baltimore.
It’s about 1100 square feet, gets a decent amount of natural light, and gives us full access to all the ETC amenities, including a large conference room and a communal kitchen and fridge.
Voting closed for the new logo design at 5pm last night, and it’s
official, the winning logo for Beehive Baltimore is the “power cord”
design by Pixels + Points, with 30 votes! Congratulations!
It was a really close call, as Lokesh Dhakar’s “beehive bulb” design
came in with 28 votes. And Lauren Herda’s beehive hairdo design came
in with a very respectable 13 votes also!
Well done, folks! We’ll go ahead and start getting the Pixels +
Points logo out on the various Beehive Baltimore online presences and
will get our new website underway.
Coworking is happening again on Tuesday at Bluehouse, and we’re
planning on taking a tour of our proposed “first hive” on Tuesday,
December 16. If you would like to go on this tour, please be at
Bluehouse on the 16th, and we’ll go to ETC from there around 1pm.
Once again, thanks to everyone who contributed designs. Have a great
weekend!
Thanks to everyone who submitted logos for Beehive Baltimore! We really had a wonderful set of submissions — well over 20 in all — and they all exhibited talent, creativity, and “buzz!”
Our logo selection committee has narrowed it down to three concepts, and now we’re asking for the community’s feedback for the final selection.
Here’s what we came up with — please go ahead and vote your choice:
Beehive Baltimore is a coworking space in which a community of freelancers, entrepreneurs, and other creative professionals come together to share a common workspace. Learn more.
Twitter
There are going to be several *really* good reasons to be at the Hive next week. One, our Show + Tell at 12p on Tuesday 2/9! 2010-02-05
We had our Town Hall discussion and we resolved to look into getting a water cooler. No paralysis here! What's on your wish list? 2010-01-27
Just a reminder we're going to have a quick Town Hall mtg today at 4p to talk about new ideas for the new year! Stop by! 2010-01-27
