The wonders of Twitter have been distracting us of late (not hard, I know) and we have been neglecting our blog somewhat. So as it has been a month since I last mentioned what has been going on here, we thought we’d post a quick rundown of recent events.
Most of all we must say there has been a general feeling of industriousness here at FunkBunk over the last few months. There has been coworking and collaboration a-plenty as Bunkers Provide Design, Hallway Studios and Purity Productions have been working together to produce an online events management system and new website, due to launch in August. It has been great to see everyone coming together organically to produce some really great, effective work.
FunkBunk were also proud to be part of the WorkHubs conference on the 29th June. The conference, held at BT’s Business Centre and attended by over 120 people confirmed a national and public interest in the WorkHub & Coworking concept. FunkBunk is just one of many fantastic WorkHubs all over the UK and an outcome of the conference was that a supporting network will be created to support work spaces like ours - the next generation of workspaces to fit the low carbon economy. You can find out more about the conference here: http://www.liveworknet.com/live-work-article580.html
On the 4th August we hosted our first ever Jelly. The peeps from Chiltern Jelly came together for a spot of monthly co-working and the event went down so well they have rebooked for next month with a view to making the Jelly a monthly feature here at FunkBunk. A Jelly, in case you were wondering is a free all day event were people from all different industries (mainly home workers) come together to simply work in a different environment. We supply the tea, coffee, desks and broadband and Chiltern Jelly even supplied home baked cakes! It’s a great way to change your working space for a day and meet some new people. We look forward to hosting many more!
You can find out more about Chiltern Jelly here and book yourself on the next one on the 1st Sept here.
On a silly note, a Buzz Lightyear costume somehow made it into the ‘Bunk and it was shoe horned into a video competition for Olympus called ‘Read My Lips’….. You can see the slightly surreal effort online here.
FunkBunk are also now proud to be part of the newly formed Milton Keynes Design Forum. This group promises to be shining light for design in the Milton Keynes area. We shall definitely be posting on this more in the future but for now, if you are a professional connected with the design industry you should signing up to their website.
Our new pricing plan at FunkBunk is proving popular and we are loving meeting all the new FunkMonks when they come in for their couple of day’s a month. There are still plenty of spaces available for both part time and full time desk rental packages. So whether you are looking for a permanent base or just hot desk to use as your second office on the odd occasion please get in touch. (Download the pricing plans here)
I had a rather nice email the other day from a chap called James Armstrong who is completing a Postgraduate in Occupational Psychology at Leicester University. James is doing some research into how office locations affect the work/non-work balance.
As this is out particular area of expertise we have all filled out the survey (only took a couple of minutes) and we encourage you take part in this interesting bit of research (while you are having a cuppa and a biscuit perhaps?).
This month sees the 1st annual WorkHubs conference at the BT Business Centre in London (29/06/2010) and FunkBunk will be attending to drink some coffee, eat some sandwiches and generally hob knob about the place talking to anyone who will listen.
As well as the consumption of sandwiches, founder of FunkBunk, Sam Cranwell will be sitting on a panel talking about supporting rural homeworkers.
Apparently there are tonnes of you guys working from home in the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire villages such as Stewkley, Wing, Cublington, Soulbury, Wingrave, Eaton Bray, Edlesborough and Pitstone to name a few.
Sam will be taking part in a discussion with Roger Turner (Head of Rural Economies, Commission for Rural Communities), Ian Baker (head of economy, DEFRA) & Nick Kirkham (Founder of Old Glove Factory, Holt, Wiltshire - a fine coworking space). They will be trying to uncover what benefits places like FunkBunk have for homeworkers in rural communities and the challenges we face in setting up and running our establishments.
If we get some piccies or videos from the event we will post them here!
Now FunkBunk comes in four different flavours to suit your office needs. We realise that hotdesking doesn’t suit everyone, and renting a permanent office might not float some people’s boats either.
With FunkBunk becoming a more active coworking WorkHub every day, serving Milton Keynes, Leighton Buzzard and Aylesbury we are learning more about small businesses needs and wanted to offer more flexibility and better pricing to you guys.
So we created FunkMonk, FunkTrunk, FunkChunk & FunkBunker to cater for the ‘homeworker who just needs to get out of the house occasionally’ through to the ’small business that needs a permanent base to develop their enterprise from’.
The wonderful creative magazine Weave (http://www.weave.de) have published us in a great article about coworking and workhubs in the latest issue. Now if only we spoke German…… but a friend of ours does and assures us it is a very nice article. We will try and post a transcript.
It also uses a photograph that we haven’t used enough and I really quite like:
“A place to work, a place to focus, a place to inspire, a place to achieve, a place to interact, your place, FunkBunk.”
Josh just showed me this awesome video about Photoshop CS5’s Puppet Warp feature. I cannot tell you how many times this would have been useful in the past. We are really getting quite excited about Photoshop CS5 here at FunkBunk and i’m sure the first FunkBunker to buy it will be everyone’s friend! I certainly am saving my pennies!
Gary is a resident at FunkBunk and regularly keeps us all entertained with news of local and international origin. The kind of stories that never get shown on TV and only make the smallest of columns in the local rags.
We asked Gary if he could give us a quick digest of his stories of the week - so here goes the first installment of ‘Gary’s News Flash’!
If you have ever worked from home, you will have loved some elements of it and quite disliked others. I have to admit I always liked being able to start when I wanted, and working in PJs was quite novel, but it really didn’t do my business any good. It sure as hell is risky ironing and answering the phone at the same time!
It turns out that loads of people in the blog world feel the same way too. It was quite enlightening to read some of their articles and comments. It made us feel that creating a workhub and a coworking space in the form of FunkBunk was really was the right thing to do.
There has been some interesting correspondence flying around recently and it turns out that the CLG (Communities and Local Government agency) have initiated research into workhubs as part of an enterprising low carbon national community. This research is with a view to setting up a national network for workhubs like FunkBunk.
We personally think this is great news as work hubs, coworking environments, shared workspaces (or whatever you would like to call them) like ours are the way forward for small business enterprise development in the uk. To find out that we are supporting a low carbon society as well makes us very happy.
The research is being carried out by the Live/Work Network and we shall be watching with interest and getting involved where we can. Improving our service along the way.
For all those FunkBunkers out there, there is a survey you can complete (before the 31st Jan) which will help with their research.
Want to stay in the loop and receive freebies, ideas and updates from the creative bunch at Funkbunk? Just send us your contact details below and we’ll keep you updated with the latest news, views, events and offers.
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We’re giving away free ‘half-day hot-desks’ so get your details over to us pronto and we’ll send you the e-voucher.
Please tell your friends and we’ll send them one too!
FunkBunk were also proud to be part of the WorkHubs conference on the 29th June. The conference, held at BT’s Business Centre and attended by over 120 people confirmed a national and public interest in the WorkHub & Coworking concept. FunkBunk is just one of many fantastic WorkHubs all over the UK and an outcome of the conference was that a supporting network will be created to support work spaces like ours - the next generation of workspaces to fit the low carbon economy. You can find out more about the conference here: http://www.liveworknet.com/live-work-article580.html
On the 4th August we hosted our first ever Jelly. The peeps from Chiltern Jelly came together for a spot of monthly co-working and the event went down so well they have rebooked for next month with a view to making the Jelly a monthly feature here at FunkBunk. A Jelly, in case you were wondering is a free all day event were people from all different industries (mainly home workers) come together to simply work in a different environment. We supply the tea, coffee, desks and broadband and Chiltern Jelly even supplied home baked cakes! It’s a great way to change your working space for a day and meet some new people. We look forward to hosting many more!
On a silly note, a Buzz Lightyear costume somehow made it into the ‘Bunk and it was shoe horned into a video competition for Olympus called ‘Read My Lips’….. You can see the slightly surreal effort online here.
Gary is a resident at FunkBunk and regularly keeps us all entertained with news of local and international origin. The kind of stories that never get shown on TV and only make the smallest of columns in the local rags.
