The Story of Bright Cowork

Aldo sent me this video tonight. So proud of our tribe here in Winchester… an amazing group of people!

The prequel:

In 2004, I escaped the stress-fest known as the DC metro area and moved to the peaceful and beautiful Shenandoah Valley, effectively putting a mountain between DC and me.

By 2006, fully decompressed, I decided I’d made a terrible mistake and contracted a home builder in Austin, Texas. I was out of here!

The next part of the saga is a long story. The short version: the move didn’t happen.

I felt pretty stuck.

This was an exciting time in the world. Coworks were coming alive, Barcamps and Refresh meetups and hack weekends seemed to be taking place everywhere except Winchester. I was in a town without a single event like this, and I was pretty sure there weren’t any people who would attend such a thing around here anyway.

Thankfully, with Squidoo still very much in start-up mode, I worked a ton. But I spent my non-working hours moping around (and reading more stories about the cool stuff happening outside Winchester). I ended up driving back to DC a lot to attend some of the events there.

Finally, in 2008, I decided moping wasn’t a particularly good thing, and neither was all that driving. So I set out on a more positive and productive path to see what was possible.

The video starts with the story from that point on, where I discovered that I could use Twitter to search for people in the area, and include keyword searches for locating people with similar interests. Combining a search by zip code and the term “PHP” on Twitter helped me find Aaron Collegeman, who immediately became the symbol of hope for me in what might be possible.

After meeting Aaron and later watching him take an idea I had and build something beyond my expectations, I started dreaming again.

Bright Cowork came a short time later, after inspiring meeting with Marilyn Finnemore, who owned the coolest building in old town Winchester… designed for collaboration.

So here’s what happened:

Here are a few of the coworkers who were part of this video:

Aaron Collegeman: Lead developer at Squidoo, founder of Fat Panda, and one of the greatest developers I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with in my 16+ year web career.

Marilyn Finnemore: CEO of Mind & Media and owner of Bright Center, and the one who took a big chance on making Bright Cowork happen.

Aldo Bello: CCO of Mind & Media, documentary film wizard, a guy who reads as much as anyone I know, and one of the most likable people in this world.

Scot Lienke: Drummer and operations manager at Syscom Services, and all around nice guy with one of the best laughs around (though Aaron is in the same league).

Gannon Beck: author, illustrator and founder of OO-RAH.com. Gannon has taught me more about collaboration and learning than I thought possible.

There are many others who are part of this awesome community. If you’re here or find yourself visiting, please stop by and say hi.