It’s a new year and legend has it that new years bring new possibilities. To increase my exposure to them I aim to attend more networking events and meetups, join in with some informal co-working (e.g. Jelly, spare desks, etc) and probably join a more permanent co-working space for a regular office-away-from-home.

This will be in addition to the cafe working I already do which I intend to write more about very soon. In particular, I want to get involved in Matthew Knight’s Freedesking project which aims to build a community around the small but growing collection of genuinely useful working locations in London.

As great as freedesking is at allowing me to work how, when and where I want, it isn’t great at presenting opportunities to meet new people to work with or at providing a consistent, guaranteed work space with a desk, quiet conditions, reliable connectivity etc. For both of these reasons, I plan to register with a London-based co-working space to get a few hours a month of quality work space away from home. There are a few different places in London and I will be reading up on all the options and writing up my findings on here very soon.

One of the challenges of co-working and networking for developers is that the nature of the work (long stretches of focus and concentration) does not lend itself to communal working (unless you are working with other developers where sharing skills can be invaluable). This means scheduling time for getting out and meeting people ahead of the day-to-day (paid) work and can lead to some hard prioritisation decisions. These opportunities are vitally important though and I intend to make every effort to seek out, attend and write about the growing number of events happening in London.

I am always keen to hear about great places to work or to meet people so please get in touch at @kpopper with any suggestions of events, co-working spaces, etc.