For the last year, Giraffe Labs has held a special place in my heart, even though there are plenty of people that spent more time there than I did. When Jackson Fish Market moved out of the space last April, I was convinced that we had a great opportunity to create a Hacker clubhouse / co-working space / geek hangout. Thankfully, Brian Dorsey and Anders Conbere were thinking the same thing. It didn’t take too much work to also convince the Saturday House folks to move up to Pioneer Square. But, when I couldn’t cover the financial obligations of renting the space, Anders and Brian were happy to step up and manage the space. Everything that the space is now comes from their hard work. And it’s been working pretty well for the last year, until the past few months.
Brian sums up the reasons for the shutdown of Giraffe Labs pretty well in the TechFlash article. I think proper care and feeding of the space is the core issue. No matter how much it seems like any project can run itself, there always has to be someone in the center, keeping things running, taking care of the space, keeping an eye on members, etc. Someone who can take a plan from “hey, that’s a cool idea” to actual implementation.
I don’t want to use the word “demise” here. Giraffe Labs was an amazing experiment, and I think plenty of people learned a lot from it. I certainly did. There’s still room for a low-cost geek clubhouse (Hackerspace) here in Seattle, and I don’t doubt that one, or two, or three will come along. Hopefully, I can get in on the ground floor. There will be a grand send-off on April 27th. I’ll be there – hope to see you, too.
There /are/ plenty of co-op geek lab spaces.. they’re just not self-promoting.