Back in 2006 when I was scouring Philadelphia for smart, interesting, creative people to eventually become a part of Indy Hall, one of the first people I met was Chris Nagele. Chris was running Wildbit, a software design and development consultancy that cared immensely about its craft, and at the time was the only person from the team in Philadelphia besides his girlfriend, Natalie. We quickly became friends and supporters of each others’ work, and I can remember when Wildbit launched it’s now very popular version control hosting system Beanstalk as “Project Alpha” just a month before we opened the doors to Indy Hall.

When Natalie joined Chris full time at Wildbit, they decided to officially become members of Indy Hall and proudly made our coworking space Wildbit’s headquarters.

I got to work with a few of Wildbit’s other team members over the coming years –  which wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t know that the team was spread across the globe. Chris ran (and still runs) one of the most talented virtual teams I’ve ever seen, having developed his own practices for recruiting a team and building products together in spite of up to 12 hour time differences. While they were still doing design consulting, I even got to hire them for a couple of projects and worked closer with some of the remote team members.

When Chris and Natalie got married and started their family they chose to move their office back home, but remained devoted supporters of Indy Hall. In particular, when we moved into our new office in 2009, Natalie collaborated with Dana on much of the early interior design touches that made the new space much more vibrant and friendly. Chris and Natalie’s daily participation waned with the birth of their daughter, but their support of me and of Indy Hall never wavered.

Act II

It was near the end of 2010 that an unexpected conversation led to an exciting proposition: Chris and Natalie wanted me to join Wildbit as their first Philadelphia team member. I took on a proactive communication role - spending time with our customers and partners outside of the standard support channels, getting to know our customers and our market better.

In just over a year since joining, we added 4 more amazing Philadelphia team members and moved the local team into a beautiful office on the 7th floor of the same building as Indy Hall. I got to go on two team retreats to Spain to spend time with my international league of coworkers. I challenged and changed some perceptions and habits of the team, and had some of my own challenged and changed as well, in all cases to our mutual benefit. I interacted with some of the best customers on the planet, collaborated on launching features and marketing efforts with a team that feels like a family, and together we learned and applied our efforts to growing two products – Beanstalk and Postmark – that the entire team is proud to provide. And most recently, we launched a mentorship community and program for bootstrapped ventures with a roster of product founders that I’m very proud to call my friends.

One of the challenges of the role that we knew from the start was that I would not be able to be full time – my responsibilities to Indy Hall and other projects/partners were important to me, and thankfully Chris and Natalie wanted me to be able to continue with those efforts. The fact is that I’m rarely, if ever, only working on one thing at a time and while it looks manic and chaotic from the outside (which sometimes it is), the value I’ve always found has been in my ability to apply lessons from one project to the benefit of another. That cross-pollination is ever-present in my work, and it’s a big part of why I choose to work the way I work. I really do love it that way.

Act III

The unfortunate side effect of that choice, though, is that there’s little room for permanence. With the decision to grow Indy Hall comes the difficult decision to end my time on the Wildbit team. It goes without saying that there’s been nothing but support and love from the Wildbit team as we made the decision for me to transition away from my daily role on the team.  We will continue collaborating on ThinkStrapped, though, and I’m looking forward to meeting the founders and teams of the 10 companies we recruit early this summer.

The last 18 months together were really only a concentrated exposure to what I’ve seen Chris, Natalie, and the team accomplish since meeting them in 2006, so I’m excited to see what lies ahead for Wildbit – I’m 100% certain that it’s nothing short of amazing for the team and customers alike. It’s difficult to think about not being a part of that future. I remain a loyal fan and supporter of Wildbit, their products, and perhaps most importantly their customers, many of whom I’ve forged relationships with over the last year and a half.

At the same time, Indy Hall is exploding with potential of its own and I’m beyond excited to be turning the majority of my attention to it for the first time in over 2 years. The “expansion” ahead includes much more than just adding a few thousand square feet to our footprint and a bunch of great new community members to our roster.

So it’s not exactly a goodbye to Wildbit and crew, but instead turning the page to a new chapter for all of us to begin writing.

Love and thanks to Chris, Natalie, Ilya, Eugene, Igor, Milan, Dima, Oren, Tema, Dana, JP, and Russ; and to all of Wildbit’s customers and partners I got to know and appreciate – you know who you are.

Wildbit, I think I love you.

/via @anoemi

I noticed a post on a popular forum in Philly (hat tip Sean Blanda) about getting to know your neighbors. When living in a city, knowing your neighbors can be critical to safety and security and is often overlooked. Beyond safety, it can be a lot more fun to know your neighbors – you have to live near them after all!

Interestingly enough, I noticed that the tips could be applied to having better connections to your coworkers and improving your work experience. Translated through the lens of work:

Step by step on how to work in a coworking space / or anywhere in the real world… 

1. Stop by direct coworkers’ desks and see other office-mates in the hall and start a conversation. Say “Hello.”
2. Nod and say “Hi” to all people you see on your office.

Stuck?!

1. Say “Hello, my name is__________.”
2. Be courteous, ask their name also.
3. Offer information on your life for example “I work at _______.”
4. Follow up with something like “What do you do?”
5. Conversation should follow with coworkers like “Where do you live?” OR “Do you have kids?” OR “I get here early as I work on __________. What time do you get here?”
6. –New relationship established.–
7. And repeat steps 1-5 on all coworkers.

Let me explain.

Felix Schurholz has been writing the group extensively about “free coworking” for a while without a lot of context, and I think he confused some other contributors when they took his posts and put them at odds with one of my favorite posts about a case against free trial coworking.

I had a feeling that something was up, so I did some digging. I quickly found this great interview with Felix on Shareable today, I think it does a MUCH better job of explaining what he’s thinking than he had on the list so far.

Hold on to your butts, because the rest of this post might ruffle some feathers.

As I mention in the comments, I totally agree with his core point: MANY paid coworking spaces aren’t differentiating themselves from business centers and aren’t keeping in line with the coworking core values. Social capital is often missing from the exchange between the provider and the member. Any community or collaboration is the result of proximity, but little more.

But this isn’t about free vs. paid, this is about refocusing on the coworking core values and building whatever we do, free or paid, with them in mind.

I can think of examples of the core values interpreted well, and poorly (or not at all), in both courts, free and paid. “Coworking” has reached a wider audience than the people who know and understand the core values, so this is an expected side-effect that we all still need a way to navigate.

I’ve also had conversations with many business center providers who acknowledge that a lot of their customers actively DO NOT WANT the kinds of effects that coworking spaces excel at. They value privacy, exclusivity, or other things above the things that we value. That’s not wrong, it’s different. One of the things that’s increasingly clear to me is that coworking is much more successful when it’s about providing choices than when it’s about forcing a new paradigm of any kind.

Freedom of choice, Freedom of Fees

There’s free as in beer, and free as in speech. This confusion comes up in open source software a lot because some software is “free” (no charge) but not “free” (access to the source to modify and interpret). I think this is a classic confusion of “gratis” versus “without restriction”.

In this case, Felix seems to be combining the two when in fact, they are not necessarily dependencies fo one another.

Given that coworking was largely born of open source roots, we shouldn’t be surprised to be running into this confusing distinction.

Returning Focus to the Values

Personally, I’d rather not focus on people who aren’t living the core values because it’s not a productive way to lead. Instead, I can focus on what we do to uphold them.

Indy Hall’s business is strong and growing (again), not in spite of the core values, but BECAUSE of the core values. ESPECIALLY in times of growth, we turn to the core values to make sure we’re making the right decisions by our members, and creating a unique experience that they love. I’ve even been pushing past the usual structure of community, openness, sustainability, collaboration, and accessibility and into a more actionable model, which I’ve started writing about as we develop it for ourselves.

Personally, I like Felix’s sentiment a lot, lest it becomes confused with “free” vs. “paid”. I understand his position, though I personally would love to have him more strongly behind the coworking core values regardless of paid vs. free. Everyone would benefit from having more voices in this part of the discussion about coworking.

I referenced the book Betterness, by Umair Haque as a really great framework for discussing what we do that’s “special”. One of my favorite chapters in the book is about Arête.

What is Arête?

In Greek, Arête translates ”virtues”.

Virtues are behavioral patterns – or habits and their queues – that if practiced and matured bring a “side effect” of eudaimonia, which the Greeks translate into “a good life”.

 “…rich with relationships, ideas, emotion, health and vigor, recognition and contribution, passion and fulfillment, and great accomplishment and enduring achievement”

This is how Umair describes eduaimonia.

Practicing Arête helps to make things more authentic and more meaningful.

Authentic and meaningful experiences are at the heart of eudaimonia and not by coincidence, are also at the heart of Indy Hall.

Practice

The virtues themselves don’t provide the good life, though.

I like to think of it like going to the gym: if you go to the gym to lose weight, you’re likely to be disappointed or fall off the wagon if the weight loss doesn’t show up as fast as you want.

If you go to the gym to be healthy, your motivators are intrinsic and you’re more likely to push through the harder parts of the workout routine as you make progress with becoming healthier.

Weight loss will be the byproduct of becoming healthier. The good life is a byproduct of practicing Arête.

In order to practice Arête, it requires a transformation in perspective.

From vision to ambition.

From mission to intention.

From strategy to constraints.

From objectives to imperatives.

As a thought exercise, while we’re working on our expansion project, I wanted to make notes on how we practice Arête at Indy Hall through each of those specific transformations. This is a bit of a living document, and I’m going to encourage our members to add to it as well.

Ambition

Ambition replaces vision – and it answers the question “why are we here?” More specifically, ambition is meant to define the kinds of returns you will provide, and to whom you will provide them (hint: shareholders aren’t usually in this list).

The more genuine and “thick” the value is, the greater the ambition. There are less bonus points for “bigger” than there are for “better”.

For Indy Hall, our ambition is to make Philadelphia (and ultimately the world) a better place to make a living doing what you love.

Intention

Intention is an action required to achieve your ambition. How will you improve things for the people you interact with? What daily interaction(s) will make sure your ambition is being fulfilled?

For Indy Hall, our intention is to…

…help unlikely groups of likeminded people form relationships.

…focus on people and their interactions, and the formation of relationships.

…help people tell the stories of the experiences they have in Philadelphia.

…trust people to do the right thing.

…guide people to being good citizens of Indy Hall and of Philadelphia.

…support people in their goals of building businesses to last, in Philadelphia and for Philadelphia.

Constraints

Constraints are the things are not be done. Constraints exist to avoid things that do damage to the value being created.

For Indy Hall, we must not…

…do anything against our community’s interest.

…focus on desks or square footage.

…create something only because we think we’re supposed to.

…accept the status quo.

…accept a “no” at face value.

…compromise our core values.

…prioritize a transaction before a relationship.

Imperatives

Imperatives are the things that must be done daily. They’re focused actions that help achieve the intentions and ambitions.

For Indy Hall, we must…

…keep people at the center of every action, interaction, and decision.

…welcome new community members, and make it clear that Indy Hall is theirs, not just ours.

…always look for a way to say yes.

…teach others in our immediate and neighboring communities how we operate.

Do It Yourself

If you’ve running a business, from startup to Fortune 50, you need to practice Arête.

If you’re developing a community, from a family to a city, you need to practice Arête.

If you’re creating, from art to technology, you need to practice Arête.

If you’re working, alone or as part of a team, you need to practice Arête.

If your goals include doing things that authentic and meaningful, you need to practice Arête.

What are your ambitions, intentions, constraints, and imperatives?