Orlando Coworking featured in Chicago

April 29 2009, 8:09am

Medill Reports, the graduate Journalism student paper at Northwestern, recently wrote a piece on Chicago's COOP, a coworking space. Our own Eric Marden was in the space that day, and he was quoted in the article: Coworking offers new freedom to freelancers The coworking movement began several years ago in California, but has rapidly become a global phenomenon. “It's pretty widespread,” said Eric Marden, a freelance web programmer and coworking advocate. “It used to be where there would be one city in every state, and now multiple cities in the state, and sometimes multiple spaces in one city are happening, and that's become more prominent. There's a third one about to open in Austin.” ... Marden was utilizing the COOP space to work on programming projects while visiting Chicago with his family. He helps run a similar space in Orlando, Fla., and traded ideas with Rosen and Burritt during his stay. “The coworking [in Florida] kind of grew out of our BarCamps [open conferences on technology and culture],” Marden said. “For us, it's the physical hub now. Sort of the creative club house for all the stuff that was already happening all over the city, but it kind of lets us gel and have an area to work. We still all do our own thing, but we all kind of come together for that sort of stuff.” Full disclosure: Eric and Ian Monroe, the journalist who wrote the piece, are friends - Ian came to several Florida Creatives events while he worked for the Orlando Weekly here in town. That doesn't take away from the quality of the piece, it's just worth noting. Florida Creatives

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