New to the area, looking for cowork / hackspace info

[Chris Anderson]

I'll try to keep my intro brief: I'm a hacker type in silicon valley
with a focus on OS design and embedded systems and also a fan of
coworking/commuity spaces like Noisebridge (San Francisco), Hackerdojo
(Mountain View) and HackerspaceSG (Singapore). I've spent a good deal
of time in SEA over the last couple years for work and have the
opportunity to live out here and work remotely for a great deal of
time between Hong Kong or Taipei. Taipei didn't seem to have much of a
startup/coworking community and I'm fond of Hong Kong already so it
seemed like a good choice. So come september I'll be moving to Hong
Kong and looking to find a place where I can work and meet people /
take part in the community. I have a few questions though:

- How many regulars are generally hanging around the boot.hk office?
The list seems fairly low volume
- Is Hackjam.hk a subset of Boot.hk, or something else entirely?
- Is there a possibility someone could show me or tour the more
interesting tech / electronic districts of HK with me?
- (Offtopic, apologies): In looking for a place to live from September
to January I've found one place at 100 Shek Pai Wan Road and another
at 535 Canton Road. The former seems pretty far from the city, but I
can't seem to check if public transit to there is good. Both cost
roughly around 15,000 HKD. Would it be in my best interests to try to
stay within Kowloon or the northern part of Hong Kong Island?

Thank you for any advice and feedback.

[William Liang]

Hello Chris,

Welcome to HKG. I myself worked in bay area for many years, and have
visited noisebridge, hkdojo.

my friend and I wanted to create a hackerspace a year ago, and decided
to start with a cowork space first, so my friend Jon went ahead and
started BootHK, and I started hosting the hackerspace meetup weekly at
Boot. As we speak we got a space in Sheung Wan on HK island for our
hackerspace, and will be meeting there for the first time tonight to
talk about how to use the space. It is of course tiny by US standard
:-)

to answer your questions, Boot is daily occupied by about 5-8 people.
there is a monday meetup that totally packs the place (40+) for
startup community meetup.

when you get to HKG I can show you around a bit of the electronics
market, but the area is dwindling. where you really want to go is
across the border in shenzhen. that's where the electronics actions
is. hong kong is all finance and real estate now :-(

shek pai wan is on the hong kong island on the south side near
aberdeen. canton rd is near the shopping area of mong kok on the
kowloon side, and is the old industrial material sourcing area. you
can still find a lot of power tool, stock material, etc around canton
rd. most people prefer to stay on hkg island side, but shek pai wan
does not have a subway. its a hard call, but i think you will prefer
hkg island side. also, public transport in HKG is omnipresent. it is
probably the most public transport friendly place in the world. there
is no subway serving shek pai wan, but there are tons of buses and
minibuses.

drop me a line when you get in town in sept. looking forward to meeting you.

> --
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--

-William Liang

[李學斌]

Hi Chris,

There are many hidden gems in HK.

Thanks to Jon and co. in Boot.hk, we can have regular meetups
on Monday ( for Startups ) and Tuesday ( HackJam )

On Wednesdays, you may go to Lan Kwai Fong to join WebWed,
where people show up with local mobile app demos and PR
agents are around.

http://www.webwednesday.hk/

If you want more tech and search strategies, there is a monthly
Web Analytics Wednesday.

http://www.hongkongwebanalytics.com/

And on every other Thursday, we will have the Hacking for HK
people gather in Kowloon side. They are the HKLUG who speak
about embedded system and OS stuff.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacking-Thursday-Hong-Kong-%E9%A7%AD%E8%83%BD%E5%B7%A5%E7%A8%8B/227438117273539?v=info
http://wiki.linux.org.hk/w/HKLUG:Mainpage

On Fridays, hmm, why not have some relax ?
Many of the underground music parties rock on Friday.
You can check out from http://www.undergroundhk.com/v2/
( But the real things are really really underground )

Most of the annual events, like Software freedom day, BarcampHK
go on Saturdays.

For places, apart from Boot in Wan Chai, William has mention his
new base in Sheung Wan, and Kin Ko has just announced the
Startup Commune in Fo Tan ( Shatin , N.T. )

Some game developers will have irregular gatherings in Tsuen
Wan. I am also trying to group some Web designers for sharings
in either Mong kok ( Kowloon ) or North Point ( HK Island )

You can visit the Science Park in Tai Po, Cyberport in South district
anytime. Visit http://www.cnngo.com/hong-kong whenever you want
to explore new places in HK.

For accommodation, it really depends on what lifestyle you would like
and where you would need to travel a lot.

Southern district / Lamma Island / Saigon are kind of hideouts in busy
HK. Scenic landscape, hiking routes, recreation centers are nearby.

The two shores of Victoria harbor is about the real live in HK. Busy,
busy, non-stop busy live.

If you will go across the border and visit companys in ShenZhen from
time to time, you may also consider the suburbs in N.T. In the almost
abandoned industrial zone in Fo Tan, there you may find frontier
artists
working next to a game developer's studio, and next to a RFiD
equipment
assembly line.

--
@bencrox - @barcamphk

[Matthew Rudy Jacobs]

Hi Chris,

I know the boot.hk list isn't so active.

But boot.hk as a location is a rich and vibrant community.

We used to run the Ruby group there

and have since setup and run a group called Codeaholics through there.

As well as the weekly events you'll find listed,

it is also the obvious location for all the random user groups around to meet up.

So, yeah, its a great place.

To sell my own krew;

• http://codeaholics.hk/
• http://groups.google.com/group/codeaholics
• http://groups.google.com/group/hkror

[Chris Anderson]

Thanks for all the responses, that's a lot of useful information to
work through. Of the various locations mentioned, which would be
suited well to me wanting to buy a monitor / keyboard and use it when
I work and leaving it there? I'm trying to determine the best way to
work out there and I'm likely going to hold on to my 12" thinkpad
rather than get a larger system.

[Jonathan Buford]

Hi Chris, 

Most of the back and forth is on one of the FB groups pages, this was more active when we were starting up, but a lot of the interaction is in the space itself. 

There are a few different groups that use the space, primarily it is a startup cowork space, and during the day we usually have 6-10 people working in the space, but it varies with some days being closer to 15 or 20 with drop-ins and people traveling through. Right now we are in a more quiet period with many people taking vacation from HK during this period. 

The core group of startups are part of StartupsHK, which is a very active group of local tech startups, currently we have weekly meetups here with typically 30-40 attending each one, but have had as many as around 60. The total community is close to 200 active founders, early employees, and potential investors or mentors. 

Matthew already gave a brief intro to CodeAHolics, which does a monthly meetup, and this coming weekend will be doing a CodeJam for peerpatent.org to kick that off. 

HackJam is another group that was using the space as a meeting place for weekly meetups, but we just got a separate space in Sheung Wan that is being set up now. I'll be using that space for my prototyping shop, and it should be interesting to see what else comes together with a full-time space for that sort of work.

The current space in Wan Chai is going to be renovated (quickly) later this month, so will be a little better arrangement for meetings and more friendly for sharing the space between residents and people coming in for meetups. 

I'm the founder for BootHK, a co-founder of StartupsHK, involved with the other groups that I mentioned, and most of my time is spent on my new startup makible.com. 

Cheers, 

Jon

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 9:07 AM, Chris Anderson <chr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Lau Eddie]

another one after 730 startup fund:
http://main.snb.hk/snb/80sdream/index.jsp

http://startup-uprising.com/am730-startup-fund-detail/

Go go go ~

[Chris Anderson]

Thanks for the information, Jonathan. It looks like I have everything arranged now, so I'll be moving out to HK on the 5th or so. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and getting an idea of what the HK startup scene looks like. 

[Jonathan Buford]

Cool, let us know if there is anything we can help with.

[Chris Anderson]

Two things that come to mind now that I've sorted everything else out.

1) What's the best way to get a sim card with a reasonable data plan for a few months? In China / Singapore I usually just went to 711, but then I only needed them for 2-3 weeks generally.

2) Should I just stop by the BootHK location to say hello when I'm in town?

[Jonathan Buford]

SIM card: there are a few options, with cost and coverage differences. 3 and PCCW are the main ones with prepaid cards. For that short time, that would be your only choice.

Probably best to at least make sure one person knows you are coming, and depends on when you are arriving. We will be doing some renovations sometime in the next few weeks, so the space will be closed for a few days.

[Chris Anderson]

I arrive September 6th in the AM. Not sure what day I'd feel free of jetlag and up for adventure.

[Jonathan Buford]

Perhaps just ping me directly when you have an idea of when you are
wanting to come by.

Cheers,

Jon

[Chris Anderson]

Hi Jon,

I'm leaving tonight, so I'll be in town Thursday morning HK time. So any day Friday onward would work.

[Jonathan Buford]

Cool, perhaps just email me directly when you are settled in, and we will make arrangements.

Have a good trip.

Jon

[Chris Anderson]

I have surprisingly little to do today, so it could work if the timing matched up.