Rarely is such a complete document of the living city captured so completely on film. Join us this January 8th at 6pm in celebrating this amazing testament to a vibrant community.

Caroline: A Collective Experience is curated by Shannon Duncan and Ned Dodington. The show is hosted by C2 Creative at Caroline Collective.

Artists include University of Houston instructor Shannon Duncan and Intermediate Photography students Brittney Connelly, Correy Crawford, Osman Galindo, Leah Hebert, Angelique Huber, Yanine King, Tenshi Lau, Shannon MacGregor, Gabe Pastrano, CJ Soukup, and Alejandra Trevino.

Caroline: A Collective Experience
Opening Reception: January 8th, 6pm
Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline St. Houston Tx, 77004
Show runs through Feb. 19th 2010.

The Muscle car as become a symbol of Americana in the 1960′s.¬† Envied and remembered by many, let us take a look at the evolution of vehicles from the big four (yes there were four major American makers at the time) and see how they effected business, racing and common culture.

The event is free and open to the public courtesy of C2 Creative.
RSVP’s are not necessary but encouraged.

September 15th 2009
6:30 – 7:30 pm
Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline st // 77004

We never seem to learn this lesson. But seriously, anything construction related takes almost triple the time allotted and double the cost. Take our lock-replacement scenario for example. We needed to replace a lock on a sliding glass door recently. Simple fix right? Sure. We figured it’d take 3 hours tops, that’s including getting the replacement hardware which should be easily accessible at any hardware store or home depot right? Right?! Wrong! Of course the door was made in the 70′s and no one has anything close to the right hardware, so it has to be special ordered from Pennsylvania, and of course when it gets here, the doors have been so jimmied over the years that even the special order stuff doesn’t work. Almost two weeks late and four times the original cost (two wrongly purchased sets, the right set and expedited mail delivery) it takes a heavy drill, some rather rough sounding hammering and a set of lock-washers to fix a patio door lock! Sheesh!

But a padlock alone will work for now. It’s taken us almost exactly a year to get around to this, and honestly it’s always been at the top of our to-do-list. But, dude, it’s hard to find a welder in town who can “work with our budget.” We were fortunate enough to meet Marty, a UH studio arts student who specializes in welding and metal work. Marty came over to Caroline yesterday and helped us to finally make our gates more user-friendly. He added some steel plates, cut off excess material and lined it all up just right so that we no longer need to bother with that noisy chain! Thanks Marty!

p.s. if any of you need the assistance of a good metal worker get in touch with us at Caroline for Marty’s contact info.

Part of our mission is to be as open and inclusive as possible. This is how we work to create a productive atmosphere and maintain an innovative and exciting buzz. Diversity and opportunity are important to foster but it’s important to keep a focus and maintain order and professionalism. We’re slowly learning to be ok with not being everything for everyone and that a little bit of curation can go a long way.

Speaking as landlords of a type, and being under our own, we know first-hand how crucial close communication between both sides of the equation can be to a successful business relationship. From our experience, very few people actually want to cause problems, or “get away with something.” However, mistakes can be made and people (ourselves at times) can land in uncomfortable situations. Open communication and the ability to face a problem “head-on” has proven itself time and again to be one of the best, if only effective solution to uncomfortable business problems. Plus, we’ve also found that most people, landords included, are interested in finding effective solutions to complex problems. Who doesn’t like a stumper!

We’ve struggled with this one for a while. Since the beginning of Caroline Collective we’ve been adamant about keeping our day-rate free. The central idea of Caroline Collective is to foster community and serendipitous connections across a wide range of interests, skill and boundaries — charging folks at the door just didn’t seem to make any sense. Well, we’ve learned that some things just need a little value assigned to them. So here are the facts:

It cost Caroline Collective roughly 18 bucks per person per day to maintain the coworking space. That’s just the cost of the space, not including operational expenses. So we figure it’s pretty fair to offer a suggested day-rate of $10.00 per person. 10 bucks gets you all the great things that you love from Caroline, and now you get that added good feeling of knowing that your contribution is helping to sustain an exciting and innovative cultural institution. Of course, you can give less or even more, after all, it’s only a suggestion.

We’re talking about both density in general and in specific. In our opinion it’s best if a coworking location is smack in the middle of something busy. We’re close to something like that here in Houston, located at the north-end of the Museum District, but one of the unique things about Houston is that it has lots of centers and you can’t be close to them all.

In specific, we’ve found that density is necessary for a coworking space to maintain it’s “vibe.” We’re pretty sure that there should be a maximum of about 8 feet between each person in the coworking space at any working time and we’re constantly trying to achieve this. There are generally two ways to solve this situation: go out there and get more people in, or shrink your space. Appropriately enough, we feel that space is a particularly Houston issue.