Last week we began a great partnership and friendship with Pat Ramsey, or as we like to call him, The Cospace Geek. Pat is intelligent and friendly, and anyone that knows him in Austin will tell you exactly the same thing. On the chance that you don’t know who he is yet, and want to learn more about The Cospace Geek, read on.

Pat is the Design Chief & Accessibility Guru Extraordinaire for slash25 code. Specializing in standards-based design, Pat believes in making code that works… beautifully. He leads the Austin WordPress meetup group and is active in Refresh Austin, a group of Web professionals “refreshing” the creative, technical, and professional aspects of their trade. Pat serves as both an adviser and trainer for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies. He’s been a speaker on the topics of accessibility and web standards at events around the country.

Pat enjoys traveling, cooking and a well-made cocktail. He also enjoys the occasional cigar (not during allergy season, though). He’s a Native Texan and a conversational speaker of Spanish – well enough to get around Central America.

If you’re at SXSW Interactive, it’s not hard to find Pat. Just look for the guy in a kilt and see if he’s got a Texas accent.

We couldn’t be more excited to have Pat on board with Cospace. Not only will he help make our website into a work of art, but he will also add a techie eye to what we do. Kirtus and I are admittedly light in those areas, although we love being around it, because we are both geeks at heart. We are also thrilled to have his input on SXSWi. He has been going there longer than I have been legal, so he knows his stuff. We aren’t sure if we can go along with the kilt idea though.

You can learn more about Pat and his company, Slash 25. Or just google him. You will find some videos of him at SXSWi. Pat has many, many looks in these videos. My personal favorite is the goatee/chop thing he has going on. So jealous.

So cheers Pat.  Thanks for being on board.

Andrew

So our day started at the gym. A very good start. Nothing gets the brain warm like getting the body warm. Then Kirtus and I needed a place to cowork. Hmmmmmm. Where to go?  Yesterday we went to Scooters on Parmer. Great place, and we had a great contact there. But we thought we would try something new. So we hopped on the iphones, and found a Barnes and Noble by the mall.  Perfect.  There’s a Starbucks there, so of course it will be a good place.  Everything looks promising when we show up.  Tons of open space, and a lot of coffee.  But wait….NO PLUGS.  I know, it’s crazy, a Starbucks with no plugs.  We debated for about 5 minutes about why they don’t have plugs.  Probably because a bookstore draws enough loiterers.  They don’t need more. 

So back to the iphone.  Oh good, another SBucks right down 183.  This one was good.  Nice layout, lots of big desks, and the counter has the register on the left.  For some reason I don’t like the register to be on the right.  But I’m weird like that.  Luckily we sat down right next to the only plug in the place. Kirtus has a special laptop that must be plugged in for its “special” abilities to work.  And my computer kept wanting to connect to the T Mobile hotspot, not the Starbucks network that I have access to (Thanks Uverse!)  That got us a solid 2 hours of work. By the way, Cospace is coming along great right now. We are about to roll out all of our initial membership options. 

So then it’s lunch time.  Again, we got lucky because Quizno’s was right next door. 

For the afternoon we went to the Library.  We got lucky there to because they had an unused testing room available.  Perfect quiet space for us to talk and work.  At least until the guy looking for the New York Times kept coming by.  Finally he decided he wanted to use the computer in the room.  No biggie, we have our laptops and there is plenty of room.  He even has big headphones, so we know he will be respectful and quiet.  But then he whips out a rag and a spray bottle, apparantly to fumigate the mouse and keyboard.  Is there a new virus scare I don’t know about?  The smell eventually went away.  Then the guy proceeds to work for a bit, and crank the music up so loud on his headphones that I could hear everything he was listening to.  On the off chance that I couldn’t, he took care of me by singing along.  Frustrating.

So he leaves eventually.  Then a nice lady comes in and starts using the computer.  She was fine, until she started announcing every click that she was making out loud.  Once the burping started, we knew it was time to leave. 

The moral of our tale is we go through the same things a lot of you do.  We don’t always know the best place to work, and even the best places have their drawbacks.  We need Cospace to open just as much as you do.  To have a place where we know we will be comfortable and be able to get work done will be awesome.  Imagine a superfast wireless connection that is easy to connect to, free coffee, a nice, big desk, and people that you know and like.  How much work would you be able to get done then?  Probably a lot more than you think.  Which will make help make your business grow, or give you more free time to enjoy the fruitsof your labor.  We can imagine it, and we are going to make it a reality. 

So stay tuned for more information.  This place is going to be awesome

Andrew