Influx

In the Brand You economy, everyone seems to be working for themselves which has huge upsides and one big downside, you lack the social connections of the typical office environment.

Amit Gupta (the founder of Photojojo) missed the interaction of other employees, so he decided to open his home, his place of work, up to anyone.

This doesn’t happen every day, but every few weeks Amit benefits from interesting conversations with a host of different freelance workers and gain new contacts, ideas and general stimulus.

Amit called the concept Jelly and now this thing is taking off from its humble birth in NYC around a year ago, there are now Jellies all over the US and the seem to be spreading across the planet.

Here’s a 10 month old video that shows the diversity of talent at an early NYC Jelly.

What is Jelly? from Amit Gupta on Vimeo.

It’s interesting to see how people have an amazing capacity for ingenuity, understanding the “social gap” that’s lacking in the freelance world and coming up for a solution.

Given that Starbucks achieved much of its success by creating a Third Place, it’s done precious little to evolve the concept and missed out on a host of opportunities as a result.

The company may have introduced good coffee to the masses, but it hasn’t introduced true cafe culture.

Look next time you are in Starbucks, there is very little social interaction, just a lot of individuals who are happy to be part of a crowd.

What about Kinkos- shouldn’t it be doing something?

Seems like there’s a huge opportunity here.

Posted by Ed Cotton