Sure, there are lots of cheaper DSL providers out there than Speakeasy. However what people forget when comparing DSL packages with Speakeasy is that they don’t require you to have your phoneline hooked up to AT&T. That saves you a lot of money to begin with — Citizen Space has a VoIP line for the door and the rest of the residents use cell phones or VoIP too.

Speakeasy has incredibly good up-times and good customer service, and also don’t mind what you use your line for. You can host off of it if you want.

The BestBuy merger may change that, although BestBuy want to focus on business use so for Citizen Space it may not be as much of a problem as residential customers.

I attended a day-long public speaking workshop at Citizen Space this past Saturday, and I was impressed. I’ll probably be back to use the space for some client work and possibly see about using it for a tech co-op meeting as well.

With regard to costs, you may want to know that in my 8.5 years of dealing with DSL in Northern California I’ve never dealt with a better vendor than Sonic.net. They’re local – based in Santa Rosa; affordable – their most expensive business-class DSL package is half what you’re paying Speakeasy; and their customer service is top-notch. I realize that Speakeasy has an odd cult-like following in San Francisco, but I’m hoping that the Best Buy-out will cause people to re-evaluate the quality and practicality of their DSL vendors. (I’m connected to Sonic.net by virtue of the fact that I’ve been a happy customer for 7 years and know and like many of their long-term staff, including their founder/CEO.)

Graham

Also, on the topic of costs, I think Citizen Space is in a unique cost position because of their San Fran location; the rent numbers (depending on what you’re looking at) in Seattle are much more affordable. I can think of a half dozen cities I’ve lived in where I’d be able to find a 5,000 square foot old building for $500 to $800 a month. Too bad all those spaces in Seattle are “going condo.”

Anywho. Thanks to Chris and Tara for making these numbers public. It puts a bit more perspective on what it takes to make a space like their’s run.

So far it’s an experiment — a costly one — but one that we think is worth it.

So what makes it worth it? Well, for one thing, we need an office for Citizen Agency, the space’s sponsor — and we could have gotten one all by ourselves and saved some money, but we prefer working around other people (and we did the cafe thing for quite awhile and simply couldn’t bare taking clients to them anymore!).

We also wanted a space for hosting events and for growing community. So far that seems to be working.

It’s clearly not a sustainable venture, but the hardest part — attracting interesting people — seems to be working. Now if we can figure how to turn it into something that sustains itself, that’ll be even better.

As for a money-making venture, we’d take community first — and find other ways to support ourselves (i.e. consulting or building products). So no, we’re not really looking to make money off the space — but instead use it as a tool to support our other work.

Finally, our goals are to set a model — and an example — that others can learn from. So far we’re bootstrapping this and seeing what sticks. This way others can try it out and maybe learn from and avoid some of the mistakes that we’ll inevitably making getting it off the ground. So yeah, we’ll see things play out from here!

Why exactly are you doing this? what are your goals?