One of the many and varied benefits of working for Automattic is their support for co-working spaces – given that we all work from any flat surface with a wireless signal, it’s often nice to find a spot that is not your home where you can get down to business. This might be because you have kids at home, or you’re trying to maintain work hygiene, or just because you like it – like anything, the reasons will depend on who you ask and what day it is.
The tricky part is finding a good space – we don’t have any real dedicated co-working spaces in Saratoga Springs, though we do have some office farms and other rental options – what we lack is the kind of open floor plan, both work-and-social kind of combination of table-share and mental catalyst. A place for combinations. While there are places with the appropriate footprint, the cost to rent or other factors have driven Team Sharatoga away from leasing a number of offices in town – a three year lease, for instance, is a scary proposition for an untested model.
Inspired by Bob Horan’s move to open his unused classrooms to local businesses, I’ve reached out to the Business program at Skidmore College – it seems that maybe a similar arrangement with them could be mutually beneficial. Get students closer to folks working in cutting-edge fields, provide some space for those people to work in an academic setting. I’m meeting with them tomorrow.
Simon Ouderkirk 
If you want moral support I’m happy to tag along.
I like this very much. It reminds me of a traditional residency, where a highly successful intellectual (usually in science, math, history, or literature) would spend most of the day in a university’s library and labs in exchange for free usage of the university’s facilities. The intellectual got access to extensive libraries and labs, and the students got access to someone in their field to talk to occasionally.