Coffee & Power‘s third workclub is set to open in Portland, Ore. at Urban Grind, a favored ReadWriteWeb remote workplace. The San Francisco-based “meta-company” opened its first workclub in its home city and a second one opened under its own power (and coffee) in Santa Monica, Calif. in December.
Portland will now be the third front in Coffee & Power’s campaign to provide an economic backbone for the new normal: remote, independent, project-based work. Whether you’re a Web developer, a costume designer or a little bit of both, Coffee & Power provides a network for job listings, discovery, trust and payment. The workclubs provide coffee, power and space for everyone’s work and collaboration.
Coffee & Power’s mission speaks to me. How can any remote worker not be excited by the prospect? It was co-founded by Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, no stranger to experimental, online economic models. After a brief run with its own virtual currency, Coffee & Power has now switched to dollars and focused on ways to be the new office for independent workers working for each other.
“We’re working on how to give Coffee & Power workers health insurance,” Rosedale tells me, “and we think it’s solvable, too.”
Coffee & Power is an online job board for people to post work they can do and work they want done. It processes the payments and maintains the reputations. It also operates in physical co-working spaces, called “workclubs,” as hubs for this activity.
While Coffee & Power itself works on raising funds, hiring developers and building out its network, co-working spaces are lining up to put its signs in their windows. It’s a great way to attract creative, coffee-hungry workers to your establishment, and it’s an almost-no-cost expansion of Coffee & Power’s mission.
Portland is a place full of freelancers, contractors, artists and artisans, and we need a support system like this. After covering Coffee & Power for a few months, I introduced its leaders to Dian Crawford at Urban Grind in the hopes of opening a workclub here. I’m thrilled that this worked out, and I’ll be working from Urban Grind even more often now.
Today I visited Urban Grind and talked to Dian about the partnership:
(I’m sorry that this video is so small. I shot it in portrait mode like a fool.)
The new Portland workclub at Urban Grind launches on March 14 at 6:30 p.m. The event will feature Scott Kveton, CEO and co-founder of the Portland-based mobile platform service provider, Urban Airship. I am so bummed that I can’t make it, because I’ll be on a plane back from SXSWi. But in case you need more evidence that Portland’s tech future is bright, you should stop by.
Photos by Tovah King
