Jelly! Collaborative Work-Together Environments in a City Near You

I’ve become fairly fascinated with Jelly lately. The idea is simple: individuals who may or may not know each other gather together on a semi-weekly basis in one place and they work together/separately for the day. Quote, “We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.”

Quote, “Jelly started in NYC in February of 2006 when roommates Amit and Luke realized that they loved working from home, but they missed the creative brainstorming, sharing, and camaraderie of a traditional office. (Office politics, not so much.) So they started inviting friends to come work from their home one day a week. They soon found that working in close proximity to new and interesting people every couple weeks resulted in new ideas and interesting conversations.” So far they’ve been featured in Wired, The NY Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and NPR. 

People are now doing the semi-weekly work-together in Manhattan/Brooklyn, Austin, Atlanta, Sydney, Philadelphia, and Boston. I’ll be working at the Jelly in Boston in December. I look forward to meeting some smart, motivated people, and trying a new work environment for the day. Other Jelly groups are getting started in different cities around the world, setting up their own wikis to stay connected and let each other know who will be where working on what.

Simple idea, huge impact. This is a perfect example of how the way an entire generation of people may come to view work, office culture, office hours, and so many other things that we think have to be a certain way because that’s all we’ve ever known. It’s a whole new work world, one with more freedom and less constraint. But we still crave the benefits of collaboration, social interaction, brainstorming, and human contact that the traditional office sometimes provided.

Maybe now we can have our jelly and eat it too. (I couldn’t resist. I apologize.)