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Beehive Baltimore celebrates nine months of coworking

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

What if there was a place where freelancers, creatives, entrepreneurs and financiers could meet up to collaborate on up-and-coming startup ideas? That place exists today, and it’s called Beehive Baltimore.

On October 1st, Beehive Baltimore will celebrate its first nine months of operation as a coworking facility, located in the Emerging Technology Center in Canton.

If you’re not familiar with coworking, it’s a shared workspace for creative professionals who might otherwise work at home or in a coffee shop. These days, anyone who works primarily via laptop and the internet is a great candidate for coworking!

Beehive Baltimore opened Feb. 1, 2009, specifically to cater to these kinds of professionals, and the Beehive community now has over 40 members including people in Web design, programming, marketing, public relations, finance and other information-based industries.

Last Thursday, we held an open house at the Hive for prospective members and others in the community to stop by, meet some of our members, and find out more about what coworking is all about.

Beehive is designed to be a community of peers, and does not aim to make a profit. Working in partnership with the Emerging Technology Center in Canton, Beehive aims to connect freelancers, seasoned entrepreneurs, and other professionals via long-term relationships that lead to mutual benefit – and possibly to new startups!

The Hive (as we call it) has also already given birth to multiple events and meet-ups that might not otherwise have a place to meet. Some of the groups that we either have hosted or have helped create include:

• Baltimore Angels (an angel investment group)
• Baltimore Hackers (a computer language study group)
• Baltimore/Washington Javascript meetup
• Baltimore Flash/Flex User Group (a group for users of Adobe’s Flex platform)
• Refresh Baltimore (a web professionals group)
• Barcamp Baltimore (a user-generated tech conference)
• TEDxMidAtlantic (coming on Nov. 5)

On Oct. 1st at 12pm, Beehive Baltimore will host its first “Show and Tell” event, where participants are invited to share their projects, startups, or prototypes and get feedback from the group.

And on Oct. 15th, Beehive Baltimore will be recognized by the Maryland Daily Record as an “Innovator of the Year.”

Several Beehive members and affiliates will be providing some guest posts for BaltTech over the next two weeks while Gus Sentementes is on vacation. So stay tuned for some voices from the Hive over the coming days!

Beehive Baltimore is part of a large coworking movement. Hundreds of cities all around the world from Los Angeles to Charlotte to Paris to Shanghai have implemented coworking facilities, and we see ourselves as connected to these communities.

And so coworking looks to be an integral part of the tech startup ecosystem – where entrepreneurs, creative talent, and angel investors can all come together to talk about the Next Big Idea.

To find out more about Beehive Baltimore, visit http://beehivebaltimore.org.

Tags: baltimore, beehive, coworking
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Update from the Hive!

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Hey folks, a quick update on some goings on at the Hive and in Baltimore!

We’ve had another busy month at Beehive Baltimore, with the usual buzzing of our members, and also punctuated by a visit by former Baltimorean Amy Hoy and her husband Thomas Fuchs (@amyhoy, @madrobby).

Amy and Thomas are the creators of Twistori, and Thomas is the author of Scriptaculous and a co-author of the Prototype javascript library, and it was great to have them here at the Hive. Coincidentally, Amy worked as an intern at my company back in 1999, so it was great to see an old friend back in Baltimore!

Paul Barry has spearheaded a language study group, Baltimore Hackers (@bmorehackers on Twitter) that meets on Mondays from 6:30-8:30pm. The first language is Scala, a functional language designed for concurrent programming based on the Java Virtual Machine. In English, it’s a really fast, solid language ideal for designing cool web backend technologies, and it’s being used at big sites like Twitter. The group will be covering new languages every few weeks, so follow along on Twitter for updates!

We also hosted Open Coffee at the Hive on Monday April 6th. We look forward to hosting future Open Coffee events here as well. Contact @bhalliburton for more details.

Hosted at the Hive:

Baltimore Hackers (@bmorehackers)
Baltimore Flash User Group (@bmoreswf)
Baltimore Angels (@baltimoreangels)
Open Coffee (@bhalliburton)

Hive members are welcome to host meeting and meetups here, space permitting. If you have something you’d like to bring together, let us know!

Also coming up on May 16 at University of Baltimore is WordCamp Mid-Atlantic. If you use WordPress and would like to learn more about customizing and tuning it, check it out: http://wordcampmidatlantic.com.

Coming up on Saturday June 13, we are tentatively set for the very first Barcamp Baltimore at University of Baltimore! Barcamp is a great event, and has nothing to do with the beverage arts. Rather, it’s an inclusive unconference for exploring cool ideas of all kinds: digital arts, programming, electricity, film, the future, green tech, science, and general whateverness. This will be the very first Barcamp in Baltimore (they have been legion elsewhere for the last few years) and we have a great opportunity to showcase to our region all the cool stuff going on in our fair burg. Put it on your calendar now! Follow @barcampbmore for updates!

Also planned at University of Baltimore is SocialDevCamp East 3, set for November 7, 2009. We will extend the magic of last year’s two great events in Baltimore and tackle the new challenges facing up-and-coming internet technology product companies! Today, all development for the internet is social, so SocialDevCamp is more relevant than ever!

Following on the out-of-the-park success of Ignite Baltimore is Ignite DC, which has been expertly brought to life by Jared Goralnick (@technotheory) and Steve Lickteig (@slickteig), with great advice from Baltimore organizers Mike Subelsky (@subelsky) and Patti Chan (@pattichan). Ignite DC is scheduled for May 14 at this year’s Artomatic venue in Southeast DC. Check out http://ignite-dc.com for details. It’s a very full, sold-out event, but life rewards showing up, which you can likely do if you are serious about attending. And there is still time to submit a talk to Ignite DC!

I’m super excited about Ignite DC because it will mean a bit of friendly co-opetition between Baltimore and DC. (What regional rivalry?) The next Ignite Baltimore is scheduled for June 25 at The Windup Space on North Avenue, and it should be better than ever! If you’re a woman, a minority, or deeply interesting, please especially consider submitting a talk: http://ignitebaltimore.com/proposals/new Looking forward to seeing you at both Ignite events! Ignite is just one way that the “culture of ideas” is starting to take root in Baltimore (and DC)!

Also upcoming on May 1 is Bootstrap Maryland (@bootstrapmd) designed to give an overview of the world of tech entrepreneurship to university students and graduates. Bootstrap Maryland showcases several entrepreneurs under 40 and lets them share their success stories! Follow on Twitter for more details!

Baltimore Angels’ (@baltimoreangels) next deadline for funding applications is April 14. If you would like to submit a business plan for consideration, check out http://submit.baltimoreangels.org !

Lastly, things are continuing to evolve at the Hive. We have lots of cool ideas for growing what we do. Stay tuned for more developments. And if you’d like to be a part of shaping the Hive’s long term mission, you know what to do. Step up. Be a part. Join in the conversation.

And thanks for everything YOU have done to support the creative community in Baltimore. We are all in this together.

Sincerely,

Dave Troy (@davetroy)
Beehive Baltimore (@bhivebmore)
Community Coworking in Baltimore

Tags: baltimore, baltimoreangels, barcamp, beehive, bmorehackers, bmoreswf, coworking, events, ignite, socialdevcamp, twistori, wordcamp
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Beehive In The Baltimore Sun

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

Baltimore Sun reporter Gus Sentementes wrote a great article covering Beehive Baltimore in the Sunday, February 15 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

You can read the article here. Thanks to Gus for helping to raise awareness of coworking here in Maryland.

A few comments — not criticisms — on the article: the consensus is that it’s coworking, not co-working. This has been the subject of some debate in the community and I was informed that I got it wrong when I first started working with the concept. Arbitrary? Probably so. I think the reason the founders chose and have stuck with the coworking form is that it conveys more of a wholeness of concept than “co-working,” which might imply “working, separate but together,” while the former seems to imply more “working together.”

There has also been some debate as to whether “coworking” might be interpreted by some as “cow orking,” and if so, what “orking” might be, and whether the cow would like it. Regardless, coworking stands as the official name.

Newt Fowler and I in fact traveled to Philadelphia to talk with Alex and Geoff at Indyhall prior to SocialDevCampEast 2 (in November); we then held an exploratory session at SDCE2 to see if there was interest in coworking in Baltimore. In fact, I ended up spending a weekend in Vienna, Austria in September with Alex, which was one of the things that got me started on the idea.

I should also mention Beehive’s third (silent?) partner, Stephen Muirhead, who is also my business partner in Roundhouse Technologies. Stephen has believed in the coworking concept since day one and has been keeping our banking and books straight since the beginning. And of course, we should also thank all of our members who have shown such wonderful support and faith in coworking in Baltimore, and our operations committee who has helped insure a regular schedule of keeping the lights on.

Anyway, Gus certainly got all the basic facts right and we certainly appreciate the Sun’s interest in covering the emergence of coworking in Baltimore. Thanks again Gus!

UPDATE: Alex Hillman generously points out that the question of whether coworking has a hyphen has been thoroughly explored and definitively answered at the website doescoworkinghaveahyphen.com. We recommend this resource for further discussion on this and related topics.

UPDATE #2: The Sun just put up the photo showing Mike Subelsky talking in our server closet. While this was highly amusing when it happened, it should be pointed out that there’s ample space in and around the Hive for taking phone calls and that Mike was simply trying the closet on for size at the exact moment the photographer was there. And so a moment was frozen in time. We neither require nor expect folks to use the closet when taking calls, and Mike will be the first to admit that as an experiment, results were mixed. We did half-expect him to emerge in his Superman outfit, though.

Tags: alex hillman, baltimore, beehive, coworking, geoff dimasi, indyhall, sun
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Twestival Baltimore @bhivebmore Thursday

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Twestival logo

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be hosting the first ever Twestival Baltimore at @bhivebmore on Thursday February 12. Stop by for some food & drinks and meet your fellow Baltimore Tweeps. Twestival supports charity:water, which helps provide clean water to people in the developing world.

This is also a perfect opportunity to check out the newly opened Beehive Baltimore! We hope you can stop by and say hi!

Tags: baltimore, charity, event, meetup, twestival, water
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Beehive at Ignite Baltimore #2

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Ignite Baltimore is a wonderful platform for discussing new ideas that are shaping the present and future of our city.

One of those ideas, of course, is coworking, and Beehive Baltimore is the first full-blown manifestation of the coworking concept here; so naturally we are taking the opportunity to share with our neighbors what we’ve been up to. Or more accurately, what you’ve been up to, as Beehive is truly a product of our community!

We have a really unique presentation planned — created by several of our members — and I won’t spoil it here, but we’ll post video as soon as we can and help show off the diverse pool of talent and ideas that make up the Hive.

See you at Ignite! It’s going to be packed so get there at 6:00 if you want in on the action. We can’t wait to show Baltimore what we’ve done in just 3 short months!

Tags: baltimore, beehive, coworking, ignite, members, presentation
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Beehive Baltimore