We’re taking over the Hearst cafeteria twitter.com/jonsteinberg/s…
— Jon Steinberg (@jonsteinberg) October 31, 2012
The problem is, much of Lower Manhattan, where many are located, is still without power and Internet. But entrepreneurs, engineers and developers aren’t letting that stop them. They are camping out in one another’s apartments and offices in an attempt to still get a day’s work done. Of course, any place with a humming Wi-Fi connection, whether a coffee shop or an Apple Store, seems to be drawing displaced workers eager to get back into the swing of things. But camaraderie spurred by the storm seemed to knit the New York start-up scene together a bit tighter.
A few Kickstarter employees spent the day esconced in the Chelsea offices of Boxee, an Internet TV start-up, taking advantage of a speedy wireless connection and an espresso machine. Some Foursquare employees relocated to a friend’s offices in midtown Manhattan, not far from the temporary offices that BuzzFeed, a social media news site, set up in the Hearst Tower building. Actual co-working spaces, including one called the Secret Clubhouse, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, were taking in stranded refugees from Gawker, Tumblr, SpokenLayer and other companies, who either could not get into the city for work or whose offices were still without power.
It’s not just technology companies who are becoming impromptu office buddies. Bill Werde, the editorial director of Billboard, posted a message on Twitter thanking QuadGraphics, a design firm, for letting his company work out of its offices for the day.