Christefano Reyes and Lee Vodra will present: Building Droplabs: A Business Model for the Open Source Community
Founded in 2011, Droplabs is a coworking space, classroom and makerspace in Downtown Los Angeles. Our community is made up of members who support each other personally and professionally in a positive environment.
The coworking services and developer programs we offer, like Free Coworking Days, Coders with a Cause, Mobile Device Lab and Developer Boot Camps, were made possible because of our love of open source and a passion for learning.
We'd love to see more places like Droplabs, and we're happy to talk at SGVLUG about how others can replicate our success - and avoid or overcome the challenges we've had over the years:
- Identifying a space to build a location-based community
- Traffic and parking in Downtown Los Angeles
- Making decisions in a consensus-based organization
- Empowering members to become leaders
- Disrupting the coworking business model
- Paying the bills (rent, insurance, staff, etc.)
- ... and still having fun!