An optimist in our midst

We haven’t written (until now) about the great big CRASH that is Wall Street. You don’t need us to bring you up to speed. Is there any good news to be found in the rubble?

Yes there is. Turns out there’s an optimist in our midst worth checking out. Nat Torkington over at O’Reilley Radar is pointing to the potential plus side of this latest bust, turning to the last bust to illustrate his point and, yes, touting coworking as able not only to survive the financial crisis, but thrive in the face of it.

Torkington says recession is good for innovation. One reason? Without big (sometimes ridiculously so) budgets that come with flush times, “technologists cease to be paid vast amounts to duplicate the work of others.” i.e. less time and money is wasted — a forced thriftiness that’s not all bad. Not only that, but, he asserts, new products and apps that do make it in these hard times are bound to be genuinely needed, not just so much more superfluous (cr)app.

Open source will no doubt get a boost, prognosticates the optimist. Says he, “Last recession saw the mainstream legitimisation of open source operating systems (youngsters, take note: there was a time when it wasn’t automatically okay for an IT department to use Linux) because it was clear and away the most cost-effective choice.”

He also paraphrases fellow optimist and MAKE guru Phil Torrone, noting that with a recession, “people will have more time than money.” As Torkington puts it, “The low-cost high-impact physical events we’ve created (Ignite, hacker meetups, coworking spaces, foo/bar camps) will thrive even as big-ticket conferences feel the effects of pinched pennies.”

Glad to see coworking spaces included on the list of things that will keep making life better, crisis be damned. Just as the Internet bust left a lot of folks needing to figure out how to make their way without inflated titles and paychecks, thus spawning lots of cool creative class businesses, maybe this bust will pave the way for a whole new wave of independent workers. No doubt that spontaneous collaborations in coworking spaces really will bring the accelerated serendipity inherent in fueling such efforts.