My Blog

JELLY CoWorking – what’s not to love??

Well as many of you know, last week saw the very first Shropshire Jelly Co-Working event at the fabulous Enterprise HQ in Coalport. If you’re wondering what Jelly Co-Working is, click here

From the feedback received and my own personal experience, it was a great success and the places for the second event went within an hour and a half of being available so I take that as a good sign!

The best bits of the day (and reasons why you should consider coming to a Jelly) for me included:

• Lots of those annoying little IT questions that slow us all down got answered instantly by the more IT-savvy attendees.
• Often there was a buzz in the room as people chatted, sometimes in small groups, sometimes the whole room. At other times there was complete silence as we all cracked on with work.
• I was genuinely less distracted there than when I work from home – I couldn’t go do the ironing/cooking/cleaning/shopping because I was ‘at work’.
• Someone sneezed (bear with me!) and someone else said ‘bless you’ – when you work on your own day in day out you don’t get that feedback – it put a smile on my face anyway (yes, yes, I may be nuts).
• Some attendees asked for advice on things (e.g. how their new website was looking, how to deal with a difficult client, what social media they should be using etc) and got instant honest feedback from like-minded people.
• Having lunch with people – what a treat that was and made a change from my usual bagel & jam lunch at home sat at my laptop not actually having a break….
• Someone offering to make me a cup of tea – I’m telling you it was the little things that mattered most!
• Meeting people who I’d had conversations with on twitter/facebook and finally getting to meet them and having time to have a ‘real’ chat in person.
• I got through a lot of my admin that I always put off (mainly my accounts!) – come on admit it, you do it too…..

I could go on, at some length believe me, but hopefully you get the gist!!

If you live in/around Shropshire, I truly hope you’ll come along to a Jelly event soon – more venues coming soon – more general info here

If you live elsewhere in the UK, click here for details of the nearest one to you – if there isn’t one, set one up – great helpful articles can be found here – I’ve spoken to 6 people in the last week who want to set up Jelly events in their area – its growing very quickly!!

Like a lot of things in life, better to try something than not and think ‘what if’ – 70% of small businesses fail – this is a great way to meet like-minded people, share ideas, collaborate even – the possibilities are endless…

Tags: co working, home working, jelly, Shropshire Jelly