We're finding out whether there are enough of us in Dorset to make affordable hot-desking worth doing. Coffee's a given. Hustle culture is not.
No inspirational posters. No standing desks with motivational quotes on them. Just a decent place to work.
A solid connection and something drinkable. That's the baseline. Everything else is a bonus.
Your house is fine for working in. It's also where you live, sleep, and eat cereal at 3pm. Getting out now and again is good, actually.
Not on Slack. Not in a thread where someone's written "as per my last email". Just people, in a room, occasionally talking.
No fist bumps. No nine o'clock stand-up. No one's going to ask where you see yourself in five years. It's just a place to work.
People who stare at a laptop for money and occasionally want to do it near other people. That's mostly it.
Building models, wrangling embeddings, explaining to your partner what embeddings are. All fine here.
Analysts, engineers, the person whose SQL query has been running since Tuesday. Come. Sit.
Frontend, backend, full-stack, or "it works on my machine". All equally welcome, no judgement.
Building your own thing and figuring it out as you go. Others are doing the same. Some of them will be here.
Working for yourself is great. The bit where you haven't spoken to anyone since Wednesday is less great.
Your office is two hundred miles away. This is closer. You don't have to eat lunch at your desk.
There are more people working in tech in Dorset than most people realise. Developers, data people, AI folks, freelancers, people building their own thing. Most of us have never met.
This isn't about building a curated network or disrupting anything. It's about having somewhere to go. A desk, a coffee, and a few people around who understand what you do — without having to explain it.
That's it. No pitch beyond that.
Put me on the listTakes about a minute. No spam, no sales calls. If there's enough interest to make this work, you'll be the first to hear about it.
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Cheers. We'll be in touch when things develop — hopefully with an actual address sooner rather than later.
If you know anyone else who'd be up for this, feel free to pass it along. The more the merrier. Or at least the more justified the rent.
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The honest answers. Which, at this stage, are mostly "we don't know yet".
We're looking at Dorchester as the base — somewhere central and walkable. We haven't found the right place yet. That's partly what this is for.
We're aiming for something you'd pay without sighing. Day rates that don't require you to expense them to justify turning up. Exact figures depend on the space — we'll be straight about it when we know. What we won't be doing is charging London prices in Dorchester.
We're in the "is this a good idea?" phase. Which is why this form exists. Which is why you're reading this. If the interest is there, we'll move forward. If you're filling this in, you're directly helping answer that question. So thank you.
The target is people who stare at a laptop for money. That's a fairly broad net. If you work digitally and want somewhere decent to do it alongside people who get it, you're welcome. We won't be checking your GitHub.
None. This is not a gym. There are no monthly payments, no guilt about not coming enough, no "we haven't seen you in a while" emails. Turn up when you want to. Don't when you don't. We're genuinely fine either way.
That's the plan eventually. Some casual talks, the odd demo, people showing each other things they've built. Nothing with a dress code. But step one is finding a desk and a kettle. We'll get there.