March 2013
Luncheon Speakers Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce luncheon meetings are held at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge, 555 Otto St., at noon each Monday, federal holidays excluded. Everyone is welcome!
March 4 - Erica Delma
Delma will discuss the YMCA’s role and the power of community and the hopes for the future.
March 11 David King
Port Townsend’s Mayor will discuss “What we got done last year, what’s on the boil for this year, and what’s on your mind.” Sponsor is Lexar Homes
March 18 - Penelope Partridge
The project coordinator of the Felicity Ann Boat Project will discuss how the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding has partnered with Port Townsend School District, Jefferson County 4H, and Puget Sound Voyaging to offer an exciting learning opportunity for local women and girls.
March 25 Rhody candidates
Candidates for the Rhododendron Festival court, Kaila Olin, Emma White Thunder, Yarro Lanphear-Ramirez, Megan Walsh and Corinthia Cardona, will talk about the process of being a Royalty Candidate and take questions from the floor. Sponsor is Uptown Nutrition
CoLab opens doors to entrepreneurs By Frank DePalma & Heather Dudley Nollette The very first coworking space in Jefferson County, The CoLab, opened its doors to coworkers this week in Port Townsend. The CoLab is a membership-based collaborative workspace for independent professionals, providing the place, the community of colleagues and the unique opportunities to connect with other professionals across a wide selection of industries. As the owners of The CoLab, one of the inspiring things that we’ve learned over the last few years of researching and testing the increasingly popular global and national trend of coworking, is that when we get in the same room with other independent professionals, we discover innovative and unexpected new ways to build our individual businesses, while finding immediate relief from the isolation that we so often experience when we work 100 percent from our homes or alone in offices. Although coworking is quickly gaining popularity around the world, it is new to Jefferson County. Starting a coworking space in a rural community has a different set of challenges and advantages than it does in urban environments. In Jefferson County, we have a whole lot of homebased businesses. These entrepreneurs can quickly begin to feel a lack of connection, sim-
Heather Dudley Nollette and Frank DePalma are at the heart of the CoLab, a cooperative working space located above the Silverwater Cafe in Port Townsend. Coworking is quickly gaining popularity around the world, but is new to Jefferson County. ply by the fact that they spend most of their days in front of a laptop or other task at their kitchen tables, alone. In 2011, we started gathering a small group of these entrepreneurs together in the same room, just a couple of days a week, to work alongside one another and to share ideas when they struck. That peer group has continued to evolve and has significantly informed our decision to open an “official” dynamic coworking space here at home.
A NEW WAY TO WORK
During this discovery phase, we’ve continued to be directly involved in our community by volunteering for local organizations, several of which have “economic development” as part of their mission. New concepts such as “coopitition,” which balances “cooperation” and “competition” to represent a new paradigm, have become part of our local conversation. The coworking movement is a powerful physical representation of “the new economy,” and
The CoLab is evolving naturally out of our community’s collaborative, project-based economic engine. One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned in this process is not to rush it! Several of our core coworkers have been meeting weekly for over 18 months to discuss and promote the concept of coworking locally. The process itself has been a collaborative effort. We’ve received input from many people representing diverse industries, Continued on Page 2