Another Move 1

One last autobiographical post to round out the story that started with “How I Found Out About Coworking” and “My First Coworking Experience“…

My husband Bryan and I were in Glasgow until Autumn, 2015. We loved Glasgow, but because I was working online, we had no reason to stay once Bryan’s contract started edging toward completion. With my work location independent, I told my him to look for the right job; I could move anywhere. He needed to make a difficult transition from being a post-doc to the private sector, and he found a position he was excited about in Nottingham’s Biocity.

We were happy to move to Nottingham, a dynamic medium-sized city with an interesting history, a couple of universities and plenty going on. Some of the other biotech-heavy areas in the UK aren’t as attractive.

When we moved, I immediately started looking for a coworking space in Nottingham. I found business centres, hot-desking facilities run by large property corporations and a few things I wasn’t sure I was eligible for. I didn’t find anything like Collabor8te or Workantile.

I joined one of the corporate spaces just to have a place to go. It was affordable, but I never wanted to work there. It felt oppressive in the same way as the large-company offices where I’d worked early in my career. Instead, I found myself working  out of a local coffee shop in Sherwood: Divine Coffee House.

It wasn’t long before I was obsessed with the idea of starting a new coworking space in Nottingham: one that was industry and socially inclusive, like Collabor8te and Workantile. A place designed around things that matter to self employed people: community, creativity, productivity, and flexibility: an inspiring space where people would want to work.

I came up with a name, reserved some URLs, built this website, put together a survey, had some business cards printed and started attending networking events, testing the waters.