I think Mike Kessler can actu­ally do this. He’s already over­come the worst bar­rier to entry we faced when we were explor­ing a local cowork­ing facil­ity: the ten­dency to dilute your deci­sion­mak­ing by being too com­mu­ni­tar­ian. And I have a feel­ing he might even beat the second-​​worst bar­rier to entry: the cost of com­mer­cial real estate in down­town Ann Arbor.

Not by hav­ing a lower cost. If that were to hap­pen, the local world’s tan­gi­ble power struc­ture would col­lapse, and those well-​​regarded wear­ers of finely spun black wool coats who hold the city in their black leather gloves would fly into a panic. Heaven for­fend any­thing rent­ing in such a prime aban­doned build­ing in the quiet part of Main Street nobody walks down for less than $23/​foot. Mike’s over­come the bar­rier by hav­ing a bird in the hand: Ed Shaf­fran.

So I’m com­mit­ting to pay­ing my share for six months, for what­ever that’s worth. I’ll hold court there dur­ing the days, take my busi­ness and plan­ning meet­ings there, use it as a base of oper­a­tions when I wan­der Main Street and Lib­erty and State to other meet­ings, do my genetic pro­gram­ming and com­plex sys­tems train­ing ses­sions there, set it up as a per­ma­nent base for our Scan­ning Bee dis­trib­uted dig­i­ti­za­tion projects, have after-​​hours par­ties and user-​​group meet­ings there.

What­ever. I’m in. I like it.