I’ve just created a Virtual Coworking with Dave information page to describe the various ways that one can participate in this experimental community. Coworking, if you aren’t familiar with the term, is a kind of “intentional community” of people who are independent workers (freelancers, contractors, entrepreneurs) who work in the same physical space to have more interaction with like-minded individuals; read about it on Forbes and Harvard Business Review for the mainstream perspective on this trend.
I haven’t found a coworking space that fits my needs and pocketbook, so I am trying to make a “virtual workspace”. There’s two main parts to the approach:
I’m livestreaming projects on my YouTube Channel, which is like “being in the room with me” as I blather on about my work. People seem to like having the video play in the background as they work, and can optionally interact with me via the YouTube chat window.
I made an open chatroom on the popular video game chat system Discord, which is free and has voice chat built-in (nice for audio-only hanging out). I’m in this room when I’m livestreaming too.
I’m just getting this virtual coworking thing off the ground, but I am finding I do like livestreaming and will very likely stick with it. I think it could be a nice way for people to meet and talk about what they’re working on.
Check out the Virtual Coworking with Dave page for more information. I know this is a somewhat weird project to many people, so feel free to ask questions in the comments below and I’ll try to explain it further.
3 Comments
I’m really intrigued by this idea but I am trying to figure out if it would be a distraction or an enhancement for me. This may take some experimenting. :)
This is great. I’ve long thought that it would be fun to cowork with you. I’ll be sure to jump in on a session
The teams I’m with have been pioneering remote co-working for 10 years (now 100’s of full time remotes). Skype & Discord (mostly for the devs), plus asana. We spun out our own hub, Shrtct (I won’t leave a link, you can google it if interested). But the awesome part of remoting is getting groups of us together for real meetups and co-working, all over the world.