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My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

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Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#31

Post by gillygize »

cgarrigue wrote: post #27
patio11 wrote: post #17

My favorite part about the coworking movement in Japan -- and I don't get much exposure to it since it hasn't arrived in force in Ogaki yet -- is that it provides a community and social reinforcement which says "Just because you're not a salaryman doesn't mean you're a homeless vagabond!" to participants. Japanese young folks, in particular, can really use that message. It is not a particularly popular message in Jap…

Is coworking a popular thing in big japanese cities? Being a salaryman since arriving in the country I haven't had any exposure to it. However I noticed the place where the Tokyo iOS developer meeting happens every month would be perfect for co-working: many rooms of different sizes, enabling people to set up some group meetings whenever is needed.

Tokyo iOS Meetup organizer here. The place where we meet is a company called Voyage Group, which is actually a proper company rather than a co-working space. It is unique in that, as I understand it, it is made up mostly of small, wholly-owned subsidiary companies, which is why there are all of those different-sized rooms. You are right that it would be good for co-working, too.

Co-working spaces have definitely expanded in the past couple years though. Co-ba in Shibuya and Hub Tokyo in Meguro are two that I have visited that seemed like they had good communities.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#32

Post by new299 »

Anyone know if they hold any English/Dual Language events? I'm working for a Biotech startup in Osaka (www.quantumbiosystems.com) and am interested in getting to know the local startup community.

Actually, we're kind of interested in starting a hacker space in Osaka too as a bunch of people we've hired are from the Hacker/Maker/Open hardware community (Bunnie's novena is our embedded compute). If anyone knows of anyone else who might be interested in working on that please let me know (address is profile).

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#33

Post by greggman »

I had a little experience last Nov/Dec coding at/from 2 coworking spaces in Tokyo

One, co-ba (http://tsukuruba.com/co-ba/) I picked mostly because it was closest to where I was staying. They have 2 floors, one of which is open 24 hours. When you sign up full time they give you an RFID card that lets you into the 24hr floor anytime.

On the non-24hr floor they often organize events that start at 7pm. They also organize many social outings which I find a huge plus.

Also, as a programmer they invited me to be part of the "programming section". I'm not sure what all their activities are but one I enjoyed more than I thought I would. That was, every Friday at 4:30pm, if you wanted to you could participate in a coding exercise.

Someone would propose a very simple programming problem like "write code to draw a multiplication table", something that could be done in a few minutes. Their goal was 30 mins or less. We'd then go over everyone's solutions. I got exposure to languages I hadn't had experience with. I got exposure to solutions that hadn't occurred to me. They'd even ask style questions like "why you name your variables like that" which brought up interesting discussion as well.

Now that has me wondering if USA based co-working spaces are similar.

I also helped at some friends who worked from one of the http://co-lab.jp/

Both of them had rented permanent desks. I just sat at an open table when helping them out. I don't really know what that place was like other than it exists. It was much bigger than co-ba.

Not a co-working space but there's also the Pico Pico Cafe in Kichijoji (http://www.picopicocafe.com/). It's run by the guy making Voxatron (http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php). It's effectively his office. He opens it 3 days a week as a cafe and works on his projects those days as well.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#34

Post by greggman »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #3
usaphp wrote: post #2

Looking at the photos, I started to think, is there any young developers who use PCs instead of Mac's, any photo of a coworking space I saw lately shows that everybody is using Mac.

Macs just work. I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years, first on an older Thinkpad (rock solid but eventually slow), later on a decent HP (with a little hardware problem). I bought Airs for my wife and daughter. I would help them with something, then return to my machine, and feel a little more frustrated each time. Airs have better hardware, better software, a better user experience, and are rock solid (if you don't…

Wow, I wish my experience was like yours. I've found my mac laptops no less frustrating than my windows laptops. They crash just as often, they lock up just as often, they have strange issues that have me digging through apple support websites just as often. The finder still drives me nuts even after having been on mac for 6 years now.

And worse, the 2 or 3 times a year I want to play a game they don't run it. I managed to play through The Stanley Parable in VMWare Fusion but the game froze around once every 1 to 3 mins. Switching in/out of fullscreen mode would unlock it.

I'm not planning to switch back .. yet .. but I do think about it. Especially as a game dev, unlike webdev most game devs are on Windows.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#35

Post by jamesgeck0 »

greggman wrote: post #34
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs just work. I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years, first on an older Thinkpad (rock solid but eventually slow), later on a decent HP (with a little hardware problem). I bought Airs for my wife and daughter. I would help them with something, then return to my machine, and feel a little more frustrated each time. Airs have better hardware, better software, a better user experience, and are rock solid (if you don't…

Wow, I wish my experience was like yours. I've found my mac laptops no less frustrating than my windows laptops. They crash just as often, they lock up just as often, they have strange issues that have me digging through apple support websites just as often. The finder still drives me nuts even after having been on mac for 6 years now. And worse, the 2 or 3 times a year I want to play a game they don't run it. I mana…

Who said anything about Windows? Running Ubuntu on laptop hardware can result in much more excitement than one strictly requires.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#36

Post by hosh »

Thinking about Japanese culture ... I would think coworking spaces are spectacularly more successful than in America. Even misfits in Japan feels a strong need to bond with their affinity groups, whereas misfits in America can take it as a point of pride.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#37

Post by PeterWhittaker »

w1ntermute wrote: post #13
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs just work. I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years, first on an older Thinkpad (rock solid but eventually slow), later on a decent HP (with a little hardware problem). I bought Airs for my wife and daughter. I would help them with something, then return to my machine, and feel a little more frustrated each time. Airs have better hardware, better software, a better user experience, and are rock solid (if you don't…

> I was an Ubuntu user for over 10 years That's impossible. The first Ubuntu release was on October 20th, 2004 - less than 10 years ago.

You are correct: I installed Ubuntu on my first laptop, which I bought in 2001 - I forgot that it ran XP for a time, until I finally got pissed at how I could not access my data the way I wanted to. (Thanks for forcing me to dredge back up those memories, thank you very much.)

I cannot remember if I started with Breezy or Dapper, but it was one or the other.

So a long time then: From B or D to September 2013, when my Air arrived.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#38

Post by whosbacon »

new299 wrote: post #32

Anyone know if they hold any English/Dual Language events? I'm working for a Biotech startup in Osaka (www.quantumbiosystems.com) and am interested in getting to know the local startup community. Actually, we're kind of interested in starting a hacker space in Osaka too as a bunch of people we've hired are from the Hacker/Maker/Open hardware community (Bunnie's novena is our embedded compute). If anyone knows of anyo…

There's a HN Kansai that's pretty tech and startup oriented. They meet once a month, rotating between Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka. Most of their events are in English and attendees cover both Natives and Expats. Worth exploring. http://hnkansai.org/
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