Week #2

So begins week #2 in my transition to the Bay Area. Last week was a productive week and it flew by at lightning speed. In week #1 we looked at office space, set up a new laptop for work, found an apartment, found a car, moved our stuff into a storage unit once it arrived from the cross country move, joined several meetups in the bay and visited a candidate and a client in San Francisco. Oh, and we went to a Giants game on Mother's day and saw them sweep the Colorado Rockies.




I mentioned in my last post that I'd give reviews of the different coworking places I visited.
Here are my very biased and brief reviews:

1. The Hub- a pretty good spot in a great building. Their focus is social justice and green businesses, which although I support, it's not my focus professionally. It had a professional, quiet feel to it. Very modern and it felt more like a cafe than an office.
   


2. The BlueDoor- Super nice people. The space is very small and sits at a busy intersection where you can hear the traffic. The space is not set up for taking phone calls, so it would be ideal for a web designer or a coder. The type of place you could throw headphones on and get to work. - it has the benefit of being the cheapest place at around $250/mo for a reserved desk.



3. Sandbox Suites- My personal favorite. These guys have 2 offices in the city and one in berkeley. The Berkeley one is very close to my house and if you get a pass at one, it's good at all their locations. Their places are very clean and well appointed and they have a lot of great ammenities like free coffee and tea and even lockers. $295/mo is the bedouin pass which lets you roam from each facility without a reserved office/desk. They have a lot of space to work from and for long phone calls you can jump into a free conference room. The only downside to it is that I didn't feel 100% comfortable just jumping on a phone call because I didn't want to disturb people. That said, I still think I could make it work.
   
   


4. Berkeley Coworking- Another small spot with good people. As a disclaimer, they were in the midst of moving into the space, so it wasn't decorated. It had a feel of a hackers lair, with computer parts strewn about and a couple of coders sitting there working away. I liked the guys there, and it could certainly work, but I'm not sure it was the right vibe for me either because it was a little too quiet. Again, if you're a developer or creative type, then it could be great.

Now I'm going to test the facilities out and see what it's like to actually work there. That's the big test!