For $250 Per Month, Eat, Party, And Form Companies

Last night we visited New York City's newest startup space, WeWork Labs, as they prepared to open up shop.

We sat at one of the longtables in the SoHo office, watching as construction workers flew around putting the finishing touches on the space.

"They're installing a kitchen over there," cofounder Matt Shampine told us. "Next to that, I think they're putting in a keg."

The space, which opened this morning, is a work in progress, just like the people moving in.

WeWork Labs is New York City's newest home to 30 aspiring entrepreneurs who still don't have ideas for their startups 100% figured out. It's a space for people of all backgrounds (marketing, PR, design and IT) to brainstorm, collaborate and develop companies.

WeWork Labs hopes that by sticking talented people in a room together for months at a time, promising ideas, friendships, and businesses will emerge.

If you're familiar with New York's other startup spaces, this might help put WeWork in context: If General Assembly is college for entrepreneurs and DogPatch Labs is high school, consider WeWork Labs elementary school. Heck, even pre-school.

WeWork Labs is the creation of cofounders Matthew Shampine (founder of We Are NY Tech), Jesse Middleton, and Adam Neumann.  "We came up with the idea for WeWork Labs about thirty days ago," says Shampine.  "We sold all of the sponsorships ourselves, so it's been a lot of work."

WeWork Labs is backed by ad agency Jay Walter Thompson, Boxee, and angel investor Spencer Adler, all of whom are offsetting the cost of the 30-50 members. Each member will pay $250 per month per desk. In return, WeWork Labs will provide them with food, booze, a lounge to hold parties, workshops, and startup support.

Shampine tells us the plan is to open WeWork Labs in cities across the nation. Another location in Meatpacking District is underway. Silicon Valley and Los Angeles are next on the list, followed by Boston and Chicago.

"The first six months of this is definitely an experiment," he says, "And if it fails, it will be our fault for not picking the right people to fill the space."

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See Also:

• GroupMe Launches Big New Brand Partnerships With MTV, Oxygen, Bon Jovi, And More
• Stanford Wants To Open A Campus In New York
• StockTwits Snags Yahoo Finance Vet As VP Of Product

For $250 Per Month, Eat, Party, And Form Companies

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Twitter launches simple online form to buy ads (self-service, like AdWords).

Twitter launches simple online form to buy ads (self-service, like AdWords).

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Twitter launches simple online form to buy ads (self-service, like AdWords).

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Wikileaks Is "A New Form Of The Press"

Here are some appearances I’ve been making regarding Wikileaks, transparency, and press freedom.

On CNN with John King Thursday night talking about the hacking of MasterCard et al, quoting this Guardian editorial arguing that the attacks are a form of civil (cyber) disobedience in defense of a free internet:

Here’s a link to BBC audio, on the same subject, discussing the shift from power-to-power to peer-to-peer architecture.

The Berliner Zeitung asked for a brief op-ed. Here’s the English text:

Should Wikileaks be stopped? The question is somewhat irrelevant. The movement it exemplifies – transparency – cannot be stopped.

I’m not saying that secrecy is dead. We still need secrets – about security, crime, privacy, diplomacy. But we have far too many secrets in government. One thing that Wikileaks reveals is the abuse of government secrecy.

But now governments will have to learn how to operate under the assumption that anything they do can be seen on the front page of this newspaper. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I say that government must become transparent by default, secret by necessity.

Transparency breeds trust. Whether for government or journalism or business, operating in the open enables the opportunity to collaborate with constituents.

We in journalism must recognize that Wikileaks is an element of a new ecosystem of news. It is a new form of the press. So we must defend its rights as media. If we do not, we could find our own rights curtailed. Asking whether Wikileaks should be stopped is exactly like asking whether this newspaper should be stopped when it reveals what government does not want the public to know. We have been there before; let us never return.

This post originally appeared at BuzzMachine and is republished here with permission.

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See Also:

• The Press Should Not Support The Government's War On Wikileaks
• NPR: Love Ya, But You’re Wrong For Barring Journos From Going To The Stewart/Colbert Rallies
• Wikileaks Has Given Power To Transparency

Wikileaks Is "A New Form Of The Press"

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NASA has discovered a new form of life in California's Mono Lake. The newly discovered bacterium, which uses arsenic...

NASA has discovered a new form of life in California's Mono Lake. The newly discovered bacterium, which uses arsenic in place of phosphorous, will "expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth."

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NASA has discovered a new form of life in California's Mono Lake. The newly discovered bacterium, which uses arsenic...

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Intel, Toshiba, Samsung To Form Chip Alliance

Lucas123 writes "According to a report from a Japanese news agency, semi-conductor leaders Intel, Samsung and Toshiba are forming a development alliance to halve the size of chip circuitry in order to create more dense NAND flash chips and more powerful processors. The vendors would not confirm the news report, but the Nikkei Daily said they hope to reduce lithography technology from the 20 nanometer size used today to something below 10nm. The news agency also said Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry may fund up to half the project's cost, or roughly $61 million."