In one fell swoop, Eric Magnuson’s interview in SIJ’s Five under 35 article highlights the recent formation of our company Web Collective Inc — as well as connections around worker-owned cooperatives, Seattle’s Business Alliance for Local Living Economics (BALLE) chapter, and the Sustainable MBA Program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute.
Many of us in Web Collective met through our connection with BALLE Seattle and our work around creating thriving local economies. Prior to that I ran across the newly forming national BALLE organization while completing graduate work through the Center for Creative Change at Antioch University Seattle in 2001. Around that time I also stumbled on the world of open source and Zope (and soon Plone) - which quickly became the core of my business. A lot can happen in 5 years!
Congratulations! That’s a nice article!
Hey Brian, that sounds a great place to work. I wish there was a way for people like myself whose work is all remote to take part in a cooperative work place. That’s the joys of living in a smaller place specializing on a lesser known platform like Plone. I miss the sense of working together with others towards a common set of purposes.
Any thoughts? Is there a place for full-time telecommuters in that kind of work environment?
Oh, and be sure to add your blog to planet.plone.org. Just file a ticket at http://dev.plone.org/plone.org and I’ll take care of it.
Hey Gerry,
One of the ‘remote’ challenges is building the trust and relationships needed to run a cooperative business without seeing someone face-to-face. It can be a lot to cover over email and IRC
We do have one member who is not in Seattle very often, though there was already a personal relationship before distance became a factor.
Given that, I checked out your website and saw a lot of interesting parallels between the work you’re doing and the work we’re doing, so would want to talk with you outside of this comment to look for opportunities. Successful work on joint projects seems like one nice way of building a relationship over time.
Plus, I like your blog and was wondering about adding both twitter (though not a real twitter user yet) and linked in, and there they were on your site!