Coworking in Brighton just got better…

We’re very happy to announce that The Skiff and The Werks have teamed up to offer you Roaming Co-working, giving you the freedom to work (and network) at either venue.

Roaming Co-working is available now to existing members of The Werks (who have Regular Joe or above membership) and existing members of The Skiff (who have Roaming Mates or above membership).

Roaming Mates Membership costs £40 per month and gives you all these benefits:

• 5 days use of the The Skiff each month including co-working, meeting, project and event spaces
• The freedom to use these days at The Werks as well as The Skiff
• Additional days at The Skiff at just £10 per day
• As much Skiff tea, coffee, WiFi & power as you can take

You can sign up to be for Roaming Mates Membership right now here. If you are already a Skiff Mate you can simply cancel your subscription and then use the previous link to sign up to the new Roaming Skiff Mates membership.

Hope to see you out coworking sometime soon!

Tuesday’s from 7pm is BrightArray at The Skiff. The aim of the evening is to create the perfect environment for people building things with software to demo their applications, share code, develop great user experiences and found startups. More infromation at http://brightarray.org

Thursday’s from 7pm is BuildBrighton at The Skiff. The aim of the evening is to create the perfect environment for people who love to build things with electronics. The group has already transformed one of our rooms in to a full-time workshop / hackerspace that members can access 24×7. More information at http://buildbrighton.com

Over the last six months we’ve hosted events and activities including: BootCycle, Brighton Agile Forum, Brighton Animators Networking Group, Brighton Drupal Workshop, Electronics Workshop, Five Pound App, FlashBrighton, IET Younger Members Meetings, LearningLunches, MobileCamp Brighton, Money Workshop, RewiredState, RobotBrighton, Show & Tuttle, Slack Space Open Space, The Beermat Entrepreneur, UX Brighton and many more adhoc gatherings, business meetings, workshops and company away days.

Our busiest week: 13th July to 18th July

Next week we have something on every single weekday evening. If you’ve never visited our space it’s the perfect time to come and say hello. Why not make a day or two of it? Spend the day coworking or hacking on a project and the evening participating in one of our events. Your first three days of coworking at The Skiff are free so it won’t cost you a penny!

7:30pm Monday 13th July – Many paths to the top of the (mobile) mountain

This event is a dress rehearsal for the “Many Paths to the Top of the (Mobile) Mountain” workshop which Joh Hunt and Tom Hume will be presenting at Agile2009 in Chicago at the end of August. More details at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2770467/

8pm Tuesday 14th July – £5app Meetup

A meet-up for programmers, web developers and designers to discuss and showcase their “£5 apps” – lightweight software created by one or two people who take a simple idea and run with it. More details at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2770972/

6pm Wednesday 15th July – iPhone Developers Meetup

This is the meet-up for anyone with an interest in iPhone development. If you have ideas for apps, or you want to start coding for your iphone, or just want to meet other like-minded folks over beers then come along. More details at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/3017732/

8pm Thursday 16th July – First Hackerspace Meeting

Hackerspaces (http://hackerspaces.org) are community-operated physical
places, where people can meet and work on their technical-creative projects. This is the first weekly meeting for people that want to make a space like NoiseBridge (http://noisebridge.net) happen in Brighton. More details here:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/3070998/

5pm Friday 17th July – Show & Tuttle

20 people surrounding one mac and a projector, showing each other things on the internet. no prep, no schedule, no agenda, no context.
Make it fun, educational, awesome, entertaining, inspiring, etc… let’s see where the conversation takes us. More at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/3071010/

Future Events

Upcoming is our preferred service for sharing events. You can find out about almost everything that’s happening at The Skiff through our venue page at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/venue/375497

Want to discuss an idea for something new? Please join our Friends of The Skiff Google Group:

http://groups.google.com/group/theskiff

Over the last five months we’ve welcomed more than 200 of you through our pink doors to cowork, participate in community events and collaborate on various projects. One of the things you’ve asked us most is how much we charge people to use the space. We’ve always been clear on what it costs if you want to become a part-time member with your own key (£150+VAT per month) or a full-time member with your own desk and key (£250+VAT per month). However lots of you don’t want to make that kind of commitment but do want a nice little place to work in the middle of town where you can comfortably:

• Collaborate on projects
• Get some work done
• Use a reliable internet connection
• Charge a laptop
• Spend time with like-minded people
• Help yourself to tea and coffee
• Organise events

 
We want to see more of you enjoying The Skiff and at the same time make sure that what we’re doing brings in enough money to keep the space going. Since we opened in November we’ve been very happy for people like you to stop by up to once a week for some free coworking. We’ve been hesitant to change this but what we now ask is this:

If you feel you’ve got some significant value out of spending time at The Skiff, or if you’ve spent more than around three days trying the Skiff for free, please consider either of the following:

• Contributing £15 including VAT per day of use using this button:
  
  
  

• Becoming a Mate of the Skiff for £20 including VAT per month using this button:
  
  
  

As a Mate of The Skiff you’ll get the following:

• About 10 hours use of The Skiff over each month. Applies to: Coworking, meeting, project and events spaces subject to availability
• Additional days at £5 including VAT per day using this button:
  
  
  

  (that adds up to around £55 per month for 2 days a week usage)

• As much tea, coffee, WiFi & power as you can drink while you are here
• Recognition as a long term member of our community – you and your projects will be featured on our wall of Mates both online and in the space

Bookings

If you’d like to book one of our spaces for exclusive use, maybe for a meeting, workshop or event the following charges will apply:

• Commercial use – basement £25 + VAT per hour, meeting room £10 + VAT per hour
• Events with an admission fee – The lower of £25 + VAT per hour or 50% of takings.
• Mates use – basement £10 per hour, meeting room £5 per hour
• Free Community Events – FREE
• Crew use – FREE

Please email bookings@theskiff.org to make a reservation.

We still consider the development of The Skiff to be at an experimental stage. We’ll be accepting signups at these rates until the end of May and then we’ll review them to make sure they are having a positive effect on space. If you have any specific needs that don’t seem to fit with what what we’re offering, please let us know and we’ll see if we can work something out.

Updated 28th April: We’ve had feedback from a few of you saying that some of the above was a little confusing. We were saying that we were happy for people to drop in for free while also asking people to pay for 10 hours use a month. This wasn’t very clear so we’ve decided to instead say that we’d like people to consider paying for use of The Skiff once they’ve spent three days trying it out. You being here is more important to us than you paying for it but if none of us pays for it none of us will be here.

Government isn’t very good at computers. They spend millions to produce mediocre websites, hide away really useful public information and generally get it wrong. Which is a shame. Calling all people who make things. We’re going to show them how it’s done. If you can make things, and think you can do better than government this is for you!

Applications for attending the main London event have now closed, however, The Skiff will be hosting the Brighton Outpost and we still have space for a few more people to join in.  The plan is to start the day at 10 am on Saturday 7th March and be ready to present at 7pm. Teams at the Brighton Outpost will be in the running for the same Prizes on offer at the London event (they’ll be good).

This event has already caused quite a stir and the really brilliant thing is that a team from UK government are actually getting involved and supporting it!.

Click here to sign up.

Next Saturday 28th February we’re running our first one day event at The Skiff.  MobileCampBrighton will be a barcamp style unconference for mobile developers and designers to meet up and share their knowledge.  There’s loads of exciting things happening in mobile at the moment and this event should provide a good opportunity for people working on the various technologies to swap notes.

Sessions suggested so far range from user experience techniques to monitisation.

The event is being sponsored by Vodafone Betavine and Inuda.

To find out more and sign up please visit: MobileCampBrighton

skiff_pics, originally uploaded by fellow_creative.

Carl Jeffrey of Fellow Creative has now moved into The Skiff and he’s taken these wonderful photos of the space.

We’ve still got room for two more full-timers to take on the desks opposite Carl’s, so get in touch if you’d like to join us. Remember occasional coworkers are always welcome for a day at no charge, just give us a ring on 01273 697366 to make sure we have space on the day. If you find you want to come more regularly we have a few sets of keys available for a reduced monthly fee.

Our events space shown in the bottom left photo is now open for bookings. We can comfortably seat up to 30 people but it works equally well for small groups. We’ll post more details soon, in the meantime if you’re an organiser of workshops, talks or other activities and you like the look of it please email bookings@theskiff.org for more information.

The event is listed on Upcoming here: http://icanhaz.com/skiffwarming

Although we’d love it if everyone could come, we’re only a small space so we’re asking that everyone who wants to get in grabs a free ticket here: http://icanhaz.com/skiffwarmingtickets

Looking forward to seeing loads of you there!

We’re now actively looking for people to join us at The Skiff.  We should be all set up and ready for new coworkers by Monday 17th November. Please contact us or leave a comment if you have any questions.

First let’s look at the definition of the word:

skiff n.

A flatbottom open boat of shallow draft, having a pointed bow and a square stern and propelled by oars, sail, or motor.

The 49er Skiff is a high performance, Olympic-class sailing dinghy that usually features an asymmetrical spinnaker and requires that its small team use a trapeze to help balance the boat.  Great Britain won Gold in the 49er class in 2008.

We’ve always had a keen interest in the sea and sailing but we think this provides a good fit because:

• The Skiff is an open office which we encourage people to pop to and co-work or attend events at.
• The Skiff is located at 49 Cheltenham Place, Brighton.
• The Skiff is a high performance environment tuned to help people make a significant difference with their work.
• The Skiff has a logo that is modelled on an asymmetrical spinnaker.
• The Skiff is a place for small teams to come together and collaborate.
• The Skiff is an environment in which we all help balance time spent having fun and being productive.
• The Skiff was founded in 2008.

In addition “The Skiff” is easy to say spell and remember and is new media friendly.  This means we can track mentions on the web with ease and there are very few other things being discussed on the web with a similar name (http://howsociable.com/theskiff). If you take any photos, blog any blog posts or twitter any tweets about The Skiff please tag them with ‘theskiff‘.

The Skiff's logo, modelled on an asymmetrical spinnaker