Tag: North Carolina

The First Coworking Space in North Carolina

Members working together at shared tables inside Carrboro Creative Coworking in Carrboro, North Carolina, circa 2008
Shared workspace meeting area at Carrboro Creative Coworking, Carrboro, North Carolina, circa 2008.

In 2008, Carrboro Creative Coworking opened in downtown Carrboro, North Carolina. At the time, coworking was still a new idea in the United States, and shared professional workspaces were rare outside a few major cities. Carrboro Creative Coworking brought this emerging model to North Carolina, offering flexible workspace and a collaborative environment for freelancers, startups, and independent professionals.

This post gathers the public evidence documenting the planning, launch, operation, and closure of Carrboro Creative Coworking. Taken together, these records support its place as the first coworking space in North Carolina.

Carrboro Creative Coworking was founded by Brian Russell and operated in downtown Carrboro from 2008 through 2011.

Documented Public Evidence

Timeline

  • March 2008: Local press documents Carrboro Creative Coworking in development
  • August 2008: ScienceBlogs announces Carrboro Creative Coworking
  • 2008: Carrboro Creative Coworking opens in downtown Carrboro
  • 2009: Additional local reporting documents coworking activity and continued operation
  • 2011: Carrboro Creative Coworking closes after multiple years of operation

Contemporary Blog Posts from 2008–2011

During the development and operation of Carrboro Creative Coworking, additional posts were published documenting the early planning, launch, and operation of the space. These posts reflect contemporaneous discussion of coworking as it emerged in North Carolina.

View archived coworking posts:
https://corvus23.com/tag/coworking/

Why This Matters

Coworking emerged in the mid-2000s as a new model for shared professional workspace built around flexibility, collaboration, and independent work. By 2008, coworking spaces were still uncommon in much of the United States, particularly outside major metropolitan areas.

Carrboro Creative Coworking operated from 2008 through 2011 in Carrboro, North Carolina, during the early adoption period of coworking in the United States. The sources listed on this page document the planning, launch, operation, and closure of the space during that period.

This post was written by Brian Russell, founder of Carrboro Creative Coworking (2008–2011), to preserve publicly available references related to the project and its historical timeline.

North Carolina has Worst Broadband In Country at 17%

(This information was manually converted to html from the original pdf which can be found here. It was created by the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SETOA).)

THE NC LEGISLATIVE EXPERIMENT HAS FAILED

Although access to affordable, fast broadband connections now determines economic, health, and educational opportunities and even public safety, North Carolina ranks dead last.

According to a June 2013 report issued by the FCC Wireline Competition Bureau, North Carolina ranks dead last – superseded even by Mississippi now- with only 17% of its households subscribing to the level of broadband the FCC deems necessary to engage in modern life.

First the industry asked the NC legislature to be deregulated, and they did, terminating local build-out requirements. Then they asked the legislature to stop municipalities from providing broadband, and so they did. And THIS IS WHAT WE GOT. Worst broadband in the country.

The legislative experiments have failed.

Time to reverse them.

State At least 3/768 Mbps
(advertised) Connection		 Households
(in thousands)		 Subscribership
Ratio
New Jersey 2,436 3,215 0.76
Massachusetts 1,914 2,549 0.75
Maryland 1,503 2,156 0.7
Delaware 240 347 0.69
District of Columbia 175 268 0.65
New Hampshire 339 519 0.65
Vermont 156 256 0.61
Colorado 1,217 2005 0.61
Washington 1,608 2,657 0.61
Virginia 1,855 3,079 0.6
Connecticut 799 1,372 0.58
Pennsylvania 2,896 5,025 0.58
Utah 508 903 0.56
Oregon 854 1,539 0.55
Arizona 1,220 2,440 0.54
New York 3,939 7,345 0.54
Florida 3,830 7,463 0.51
Nevada 511 1,027 0.5
West Virginia 373 766 0.49
South Dakota 153 326 0.47
Minnesota 1,017 2,097 0.48
Michigan 1,775 3,848 0.46
Nebraska 328 727 0.45
California 5,609 12,712 0.44
Wyoming 102 231 0.44
Illinois 2,150 4,861 0.44
Georgia 1,542 3,648 0.42
Indiana 1,042 2,516 0.41
North Dakota 117 283 0.41
Tennessee 996 2,522 0.39
Montana 157 415 0.38
Kentucky 658 1,732 0.38
New
Mexico		 302 806 0.37
Alaska 88 260 0.34
Kansas 366 1,121 0.33
Texas 3,024 9,113 0.33
Idaho 180 593 0.3
Louisiana 535 1,756 0.3
Wisconsin 682 2,289 0.3
Alabama 564 1,902 0.3
South
Carolina		 534 1,831 0.29
Missouri 693 2,390 0.29
Maine 147 556 0.26
Oklahoma 416 1,476 0.25
Iowa 302 1,231 0.25
Arkansas 294 1,159 0.25
Ohio 1,154 4,597 0.25
Mississippi 237 1,120 0.21
North Carolina 668 3,818 0.17

Source: FCC Wireline Competition Bureau, Internet Access Services, June 2013, status as of June 30, 2012; based on Form 477 data provided by industry service providers. Note: PDF source is Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2012, Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau, May 2013, Table 13 titled Residential Fixed Connections (Approximating the National Broadband Availability Target) and Households by State as of June 30, 2012.

Update: June 24, 2013 – I added a link to the FCC pdf that is the source of the data in the table above. -BrianR
Update #2: Added “(in thousands)” to the Households column to more acuartly reflect FCC document.

Exposing the lies of Telco shills

Check out this blog post by Fiona Morgan picking apart a “technical report” by the John Locke Foundation.

John Locke Foundation’s tech analysis: Epic fail

Some choice bits:

In a report bashing a city-owned broadband utility, the conservative John Locke Foundation reveals a stunning level of ignorance about technology.

“Wilson’s Fiber-Optic Boondoggle,” written by research director Michael Sanera and intern Katie Bethune, criticizes Wilson, N.C.’s $28 million investment in a fiber-optic network that makes high-speed Internet, cable TV and phone service to every resident and business in the city. The utility project, called Greenlight, is funded by bonds which under the city’s business plan are expected to be repaid through subscription revenue.

JLF leads with the critique that the technology “could be obsolete before it’s paid for.”

Come again?

“WiMax wireless Internet technology is rapidly leapfrogging fiber-optic cable technology, making it obsolete.”

To anyone who actually follows Internet technology, that statement is a howler.

Fiber is far and away the most advanced technology available for connecting to the Internet. It offers effectively unlimited capacity and speed. WiMax is the next generation of wireless technology, reaching further and moving data faster than the WiFi most of us use now — but nowhere near as fast as fiber. And every wireless system has to connect up to some kind of backbone. WiMax works best if connected to a fiber network.