Our first community meeting was awesome; we got to all know each other a little better, give an update on how New Work City is doing, and get feedback on things moving forward.

Here are some highlights, compliments of Raines Cohen, coworking coach (with my notes in bold):

• watching @nwc community meeting live via #uStreamhttp://tinyurl.com/62otzs
• @tonybgoode sez he is thankful that enough people signed up for @nwc#coworking that he doesn’t have to go broke for the holidays
• @nwc #coworking is up to 18 members, having #Xmas party Thurs 12/18. Congrats on rapid growth rate! L:New York City, NY (corrected the date to 12/18 -Tony)
• @nwc #coworking moved its blog from #tumblr to #WordPress (feature: categories!). Also has lockers, library, calendar; #eggnog soon. (eggnog will be at Christmas party -Tony)
  
• @nwc #coworking planning #NoiseReduction sound-dampening technology so conference calls don’t sound like bathroom stall.
• @nwc #coworking is looking for a #contractor, someone good with a #sledgehammer
• @nwc sez “whenever we advertise #coworking for free, tons of people show up”
• @nwc planning a “get your act together” Saturday session for mutually supportive #coworking plate-clearing, inbox emptying, and disgorging stuff
• @nwc closes #ustream live #coworking community meeting: “Let’s get the hell out of here and have a great Thanksgiving” 

Have you been aching to get your cowork on, but you’re stuck doing something else during business hours?

Are you working on a side project during your off hours, or when the boss isn’t looking?

Or are you just the type of person who likes to hack for 15 hours straight?

Indulge in your workaholism at this free evening coworking jaunt. Bring a laptop and some work to do!

New Work City opens at 9am, so you can join us during the daytime for our standard drop-in rate ($25), or you can come at 5:00pm and work through the evening for free.

Our host, Whitney Hess, has informed us that this event can and will go rather late into the night!

RSVP here!

Thanks Whitney!

We were visited by Benoit and Anne-Marie from Coworking Joliette in Montreal today! They’re visiting NYC for the weekend and thought they’d drop by to check out our space and get some ideas for theirs (they’re opening soon!)

It’s always great to meet and share thoughts on the space and community. It’s hard to believe that I’m already in a position to be giving advice on getting a space up and running

They’re wonderful people and have already invited me to come visit in Montreal sometime soon. I would love to take that offer sometime and check out their space!

Salut to you, Benoit and Anne-Marie! Best of luck with Joliette!

Sometime a little after 5:00, Fredrick made a cheesy reference to The Wallflowers’ One Headlight. Since I happened to have Rhapsody running, I pulled up the song and started playing it.

What followed was an epic playlist of mid-to-late-90′s alternative and pop rock that kept us jamming through the evening!

Enjoy:

1. The Wallflowers – One Headlight
2. Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy
3. Semisonic – Closing Time
4. Barenaked Ladies - One Week
5. Foo Fighters – Big Me
6. Del Amitri – Roll to Me
7. Everclear – Santa Monica
8. Eve 6 – Inside Out
9. Lit – My Own Worst Enemy
10. Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life
11. Smash Mouth – Walkin’ on the Sun
12. Harvey Danger – Flagpole Sitta
13. Oasis – Wonderwall
14. The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony
15. Collective Soul – December
16. Green Day – Nice Guys Finish Last
17. Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
18. Bush – Everything Zen
19. No Doubt – Spiderwebs
20. The Mighty Mighty BossTones – The Impression That I Get
21. Goldfinger – 99 Red Balloons
22. Save Ferris – Come on Eileen

Listen to this playlist via Rhapsody here!

We had a bunch more we didn’t get to. Stay tuned for part 2!

New Work City was proud to host the first meeting of people who want to help organize BarCampNYC4, New York’s latest entry into the world’s awesomest unconference.

Sixteen people from various backgrounds and NYC organizations came together to meld minds and take the first big steps: determining preferred dates, venues, and sponsors, and determining who will talk to whom to follow up.

We also streamed it live on our UStream account, which we’ll try to use for more events in the future as well. I was happy to see that, after we ironed out some technical difficulties, the folks watching online were able to see and hear the meeting pretty clearly, and even contribute to the meeting.

It was an amazing meeting of some of NYC’s best minds, and one thing that struck me more than anything else was the sheer resiliency of both BarCamp and our community. Observing how the meeting transpired, I had no fear of BarCamp jumping the shark, and after four events with continuously growing success and interest that’s impressive.

Viva la BarCamp! Check out our notes from the meeting here.

Our next meeting is likely to be Monday, December 1st at 7pm at New Work City, if you’re interested in helping out, come join us!

Hello New Workers!

We’re going to start doing regular meetings to recap what’s going on at New Work City– what we’re working on, what needs to be worked on, and ideas for the future.

There’s a lot to do, and we’re going to continue to need your help along the way. Right now, our highest priorities are as follows:

1. Get keys and swipecards for full-time members
Waiting to get through security is a pain, especially when stepping out for just a minute to get a cup of coffee or some lunch. We’re working on finishing the necessary paperwork so we can get keys and swipecards for our members. We’ll keep you posted on that!

2. Sound absorption in the conference room and phone booth
As anticipated, noise levels and building out quiet spots to be on the phone are definitely a priority. While the echo issues in the main space have mostly subsided, the conference room and phone booth still need work. We’ve got a couple of friends who have volunteered to donate or create some art for the space, on nice sound-absorbent materials. We’re also considering inviting an artist to show off their works in the space, or even doing a weekend art event. We’ll discuss in more detail at the next meeting.

3. More stuff! Lockers, bookshelf, microwave, coffeemaker, couch, projector recycle bins, switches, and more
We’ve got a lot of errands to run! We’ll be making continuous improvements to the space, and will be looking to you to help us check everything off our list. (PS- if you have or know someone who has a couch in fantastic condition that they’re looking to get rid of, let us know!)

We’re working on several of the above items already and will be keeping you up to date. We’ll also update the Stuff We Need list so you can help us out!

The next City Council meeting will be Wednesday, November 26th, from 5-6pm.

Yes, we know it’s the day before Thanksgiving. We totally don’t expect you to come, but we’ll plan on streaming and recording the discussion and posting it here.

Also, just to be clear– there isn’t actually any formal city council, just us members and mayors

Until then!

Mayor Tony

- I’m enjoying being the first person here, working on catching up, when two guys I don’t recognize walk in. “I’m told we can work here?”

- Sebastian and Phillip from TripWolf.com, our first drop-ins out of the blue.

- I introduce Mike, who came in next, to them.

“We should talk,” he says. “What startup are you in?”
“Tripwolf”
“Oh, I know you guys! I read about you in TechCrunch!

- I try to ask the newest members for their suggestions for music for the space, and Sebastsian suggested Kruder & Dorfmeister (as what he describes as a “cultural export”). Great ambient music.

- Gathered around the LCD and watched Gary Vee prank call a beer merchandise businessowner to illustrate how to monetize a video blog on an artibrary subject.

- Whitney giving Gregory some free UI consulting on his site. “Prepopulate content… Flickr has a ‘recognized’ and ‘unrecognized’ home page…”

- Gregory considering doing a video to introduce his site.

Tony idea: Wouldn’t it be great if WTFisTwitter.com were a platform for people to post videos explaining anything? WTF is (startup name). I’d love to post a video describing Greg’s product too.

- Talking about people with booked schedules. Tony getting more and more interested in the idea of sponsoring people’s time.

- Mike brought us Financier cookies. If you haven’t had these, then you don’t know what you’re missing. They’re incredible gourmet pastry cookie things, and were a great cap off to yet another amazing day.

Today’s overall attendance: 9 people (3 FT, 2PT, 3 Drop-In, one Mayor)

After signing the letter of intent for New Work City’s space, the first purchase I made was, at first, perhaps an unnecessary one. I got a giant sticker of our logo.

Kendall Schoenrock, founder of LTLprints, has been a friend of the community for a long time— he was one our first (and only) paying customers at CooperBricolage, and introduced us to Richard at Gramstand, a fantastic cafe to work in. We ended up moving the community there and having a lot of great times over the past year there.

So when it came time to get started moving into our new space, I talked to Kendall about getting some signage for the space. Since I didn’t want a sign that was too humongous, Kendall offered to print a bunch of smaller stickers with the remaining material on the sticker sheet. These smaller stickers were indispensable in directing people to our kickoff party (sadly, no photos of this).

As you can see in the photos below, the print really brings character to the space. And thanks to some early testing from Alex at IndyHall, we now know that these suckers are virtually indestructible. If I ever needed to, I could peel this thing off the wall, roll it up, throw it on a wall elsewhere, and have no doubt that it’d work fine.

Thanks Kendall and the LTL Prints team! Best of luck on your launch and success!

This is the first in a series of posts that will recap what we did, learned, and shared throughout the day. So far, every single day has provided us with great new ideas, knowledge, and good times!

- Charlie Oliver brought us cupcakes and signed up her assistant for membership!

- We discussed hours and the membership model, and came up with a really interesting idea for expanding NWC’s operating hours by letting members take shifts to keep the space open during evenings and weekends. Much more on exploring that idea soon!

- Gregory suggested we listen to the Black Keys today; they’re an excellent blues/funk/garage rock band of whom Tony is now a fan.

- We got paid a visit by Dana from NYC Wireless, who fixed the NYCW router in our space and learned about membership. He’ll be returning tomorrow with his team to try it out!

- Electronically introduced Gregory to Muna, a lawyer who works with small businesses and entrepreneurs.

- Fredrick & Tony continued to work on getting the printer back online. Still no dice.

- Whitney suggested we buy a cheap dustbuster instead of doing lots of manual labor sweeping up our new carpet tiles. Good idea!

- Tony showed Gregory & Whitney Behance Notebooks and Action Method Online, much to their enjoyment.

- Whitney echoed earlier discussions on having profile pages for each of the members, which led to:

- Todo: Migrate blog to WordPress & give members author accounts.

- Finally, Whitney took one step further an idea Tony was working on: a regular “recap of the day” post, the first of which you are reading now

- Met Mitch from ExamBuilder.com and talked about membership, usability, and pronk

Much more to come!

Join us Monday, November 3rd and check out our new digs!

We’re still working out a few kinks, including absorbing noise, upgrading our connection, and building out a phone booth room— but in the meantime, New Work City will be ready for people to come work!

We just might spring for some breakfast and coffee to celebrate our first day. See you there!