
Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from - darrenbuckner
https://workfrom.co/
======
Udo
Adding new sites should be easier. I get that this is a tradeoff between rapid
engagement and trust, but since the project is so new it's vastly more likely
that a visitor will want to _add_ something as opposed to successfully looking
it up.

Maybe the focus on cities, while great for the lookup scenario, should not
play such a big role when adding data points. My suggestion: just open it up,
have a form where any member can add a coffee shop, at any location (Google
Maps-powered). As site admins you could review the submissions later and sort
it out.

For example, I was initially motivated to add some places near me. That's in
Germany, so no cities there yet. This means I've got to jump through the hoop
of adding a city, at which point any user who was previously excited about
adding stuff to the database becomes stranded and loses interest. I would like
to add sites in different cities, so technically I would have to open up
requests for 3 cities - in a sparsely populated area like Germany that's not
feasible. I'm more interested in how far away a location is than what city it
is in.

Also, you should make use of the browser Geo API.

~~~
nqzero
could you just your favorites here ? i was in germany in 2007 and 2010 for a
total of 5 weeks and didn't find a single coffee shop that was conducive to
working. thinking it's time to go visit friends again ...

~~~
Udo
That depends on what you're looking for, locally. Starbucks is always a pretty
good option in Germany, but of course shops have varying levels of noise and
connectivity.

The Starbucks in Frankfurt near the old stock exchange is pretty good if you
can get a place at the big table it's even office-like, and generally shared
by people doing the same thing. The Starbucks in Heidelberg works for me, but
it's relatively small. There are also several non-chained coffee shops in
these cities where you can feel right at home.

Also, if you're ever in Austria, Vienna is absolutely beautiful for coffee
shop work.

The secret to finding these things in Germany is to know they come in
clusters. For example, Berlin, Frankfurt and Heidelberg are pretty decent and
you can find several nice coffee shops there. Find cities that are somewhat
cosmopolitan, because size is a bad predictor for coffee shop density here. In
between there are vast stretches of absolutely nothing, but then again
distances in Germany are generally ridiculously small even though Germans
don't think so.

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groundhog
This looks really useful! This isn't meant to be a criticism, but I was
wondering how your website will overcome the issue of people not wanting to
publicize their favorite work spot to prevent overcrowding? Also, from your
experiences so far, are cafes happy to have people sit in their shop for
extended periods? My impressions are that while some places (cough, nice
people in Portland) encourage such behavior, others may not take to campers so
nicely.

~~~
jakejake
I would think that places who have wait staff would not appreciate people
taking up tables without ordering since it would directly affect their pay.
But a coffee shop that does mostly take-out business may not mind so much
having the appearance of a busy, popular cafe.

I do think it's good to be mindful that you are utilizing a business's space
and facilities, and they are able to provide these to you by selling food and
drinks. So you should try to be a courteous customer and support their
business.

~~~
darrenbuckner
We've gotten a lot of feedback from business owners that the average patron
staying to get some work done is a good steward of their space and spends
money often. We hear stories of people staying for hours and hours, not buying
anything - but we've found this is just not the norm. With that said, we do
encourage our community to support businesses with their evangelism AND money.

~~~
jakejake
That's nice to hear, I've always wondered about that. I grew up in a small
town where every business for young people to hang out would fail. It was
partially because we didn't have much money to spend, but I realized later in
life that we didn't feel any responsibility for supporting the businesses in
return. It's not that we were selfish necessarily, we just didn't understand
how things work. Then when a business would shut down we would all complain
about how we had nowhere to go, but failed to consider the fact that we had
utilized the place to the fullest extent without making many financial
purchases. As I recall this happened with an arcade, a couple of coffee shops,
a skating rink and various other businesses.

Now that I'm older I do see a lot more clearly that when you find a business
that you like, you should make a point to support them and help them to stick
around.

~~~
mgkimsal
Local coffee shop owner here in town echoed that to me last year. The teens
hanging out rarely buy anything. Adults 'hanging out' are often working (or
studying) and are far more spendy(?). He counted me in that 'spendy' lot, but
I'd rarely spend more than a couple bucks every hour ($4 coffee, then a few
hours later a coke, banana or $2 tea). So... the 'non-spenders' really are not
spending (I feel like a cheapskate half the time I was there).

------
darrenbuckner
Hello HN! Workfrom was developed to help people find the best places to get
work done. We look at WiFi, access to power, background noise, food options
and more. We're expanding to new cities (US and international) and we rely on
our community to help hunt down and source places we list. Anyone can add a
location via our site. We'd love help finding places and please provide
feedback about how we can make this better!

------
tedchs
Nice job guys. I appreciate the optionality of having a password. I was also
able to successfully use your site with only my phone, which some sites have
issues with.

One suggestion, although it's helpful to have Wi-Fi passwords listed, I think
your team should confirm with the business before posting it. They might want
to be picky about who they give it to. I feel like me asking a coffee shop
person for the password is an implicit question of whether it's OK for me to
hang out with the laptop for a couple hours, and also gives them the chance to
tell me if it's down right now.

~~~
ratsbane
Seconded. I was confused by the no password thing at first until I found the
link on this page [https://workfrom.co/worker](https://workfrom.co/worker)
that described it. Now I like it.

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drivingmenuts
I don't think I could do work from a coffee shop. They make their money on
churn and my camping out in a chair for hours kind of prevents that.

I really have to wonder how the owners feel about all the other people doing
exactly the same thing.

~~~
dhimes
When I want to work outside the office, I prefer the public library for
exactly this reason.

~~~
aaronem
Does the public library sell coffee?

(There's an Enoch Pratt branch directly across from my favored coffee place in
Roland Park, which would be just dandy if it didn't have the weirdest opening
hours known to man. Closed on Thursdays and Sundays? Who _does_ that?)

~~~
dhimes
No, mine does not.

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canterburry
I would suggest you don't force people to sign up to add a location. I just
didn't add Coffee Bar in the mission district because I simply can't be
bothered to sign up.

~~~
icelancer
Likewise. Wanted to add hackerspace Metrix:Create Space in Capitol Hill (WA)
but even if I used a throwaway it wants me to validate my address. I can't
possibly see the reason for this.

------
collyw
I find my workplace distracting enough when trying to concentrate (thank god
for August, most people go away for a month where I am).

Do people actually find it productive to work in a coffee shop? There will be
even more distractions and noise than my office.

~~~
PedroCandeias
I do.

Alone, I get distracted easily. Around people, I'm less likely to browse away
from work because I don't want to be seen as a slacker.

At home or the office, I get no sense of urgency. At a coffee shop, there's
all sorts of time limits: from the draining battery to the feeling that after
a few hours my welcome will be overstayed. So stuff needs to get done...
rapidly.

When I'm near familiar people, my mind focuses a lot on their voices. When
around strangers, it doesn't care; their voices and other sounds blur together
into background noise.

I guess you could say that working from coffee shops is one way I "hack"
myself into being productive. So I'm not surprised to see others enjoy working
there too. But probably not for the exact same reasons. People's motives and
preferences vary greatly.

------
greggman
A few things come to mind:

Price: For example at some places I might recommend there's a "per hour"
charge. Examples: The Workshop Cafe in SF is $2 a hour. The Epicenter Cafe in
SF gives you passwords that are only valid for 1-2 hours depending on what you
buy. The Terminal in Tokyo is $3 per half/hour or $22 max for the whole day
but if you buy a $20 yearly membership it's $12 max for the day. They include
unlimited soft drinks (soda, coffee, tea).

I didn't see how I would list that stuff on your site.

Another is I'd like to be able to vote or rate, comment. Maybe like Yelp? I
just got to LA, one place that was recommended was "Paper or Plastik Cafe" but
I didn't find it very friendly to working. At least half the cafe is marked as
"No notebooks allowed" and the area where they are allowed is very dark and
uninviting. Maybe it used to be more friendly to workers which is why it was
recommended a couple of years ago but I wouldn't recommend it now.

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maknz
It's a great idea. Only suggestion would be to make it easier to add cities
and places and let the community report bad places, instead of what seems to
be a review-first approach. I'd rather more content (and the ability to add
content for my locals right away) than have to go through a "beta" phase to
get the city up and running.

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_pmf_
"Coffee shop owners hate him."

~~~
eps
Exactly.

My first thought would be if he allows easy delisting or if it would require
some form of legal arm twisting. I'm sure that busier places will not be happy
with being on the list.

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icedog
Am I the only one who prefers to work in public libraries? The San Mateo
library has plenty of seating/power outlets, a respectable cafe, and free
underground parking.

~~~
icelancer
I did this for some time while unemployed but the public libraries here
(Seattle) have absolutely awful Internet access. Probably due to the large
number of transient people watching... videos.

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hadoukenio
Error establishing a database connection.

This was always an idea in the back of mind to do. I'm glad someone else did
it for me :)

Best of luck.

~~~
darrenbuckner
sorry about the database connection. looks like the traffic is hitting us
pretty hard. we'll work out those kinks. thanks!

------
dustintran
I'm not sure how useful this would be. Do people willfully _drive_ from work
to a coffee shop in order to get work done, and not simply walk to their
favorite coffee shop within walking distance? It seems like distance is more
the contributing feature than anything else.

~~~
aaronem
It doesn't have to be about professional day-job work alone; for example, I
often bike to a coffee shop on weekends to work on my side projects, because
it gets me out of my apartment and away from all the distractions therein.

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mayneack
It's down right now, but is this like the hotel wifi rating
([http://www.hotelwifitest.com/](http://www.hotelwifitest.com/)) that was
posted recently? I hope so, I've wasted quite a lot of time in coffee shops
with terrible wifi.

~~~
darrenbuckner
Sorry! We're working to get things back up. We help find the best coffee shops
and cafes based on WiFi, access to power, background noise and more.

------
Phogo
Nice looking site, not really for me but looks useful to others. You should
look at disabling directory indexing, [https://workfrom.co/siteadmin/wp-
content/uploads/](https://workfrom.co/siteadmin/wp-content/uploads/)

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srom
That's great! However, I would like to be able to add places without the need
to be on site at the time of writing (e.g using a geocoding service like
Google Maps API)

I suppose it is a way to avoid spam though.

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egypturnash
Bookmarked for the next time I'm traveling and looking for a place to spend a
few hours with my laptop. I might add a few places in Seattle, though my
regular place is already there.

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peteretep
You've got to find a more representative photo of London

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matthewwiese
Registered and sent in a suggestion for a city. Just visited a local coffee
shop that would fit perfectly on a site like this.

~~~
darrenbuckner
Thank you!

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diggan
Seems like a cool idea and excellent UI. Would love to be able to contribute
to a list about Barcelona though!

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nXqd
Error establishing a database connection.

I find that an easy setup can handle this kind of traffic, plz fix it :D Nice
idea !

~~~
darrenbuckner
We're working on it! Something unexpected is happening. Thanks for hanging in
there with us. Please check back!

------
jmhobbs
I can not sign up for the life of me. I get my login link, follow it, and I'm
not logged in.

~~~
jmhobbs
Hmmm, looks like I did log in, but the header UI didn't change. I went to
[https://workfrom.co/worker](https://workfrom.co/worker) and it showed my
account as logged in.

Aggressive caching issue maybe?

~~~
muloka
Thanks for the link. I am experiencing the same issue.

~~~
juellez
It was indeed due to some aggressive caching. If you hit refresh or try again,
it should work again as intended.

------
manirelli
As someone who works from home this looks like it will become an invaluable
tool.

------
AnonJ
How's that so different from Foursquare and stuffs anyways.

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daniel_sim
Some interesting panorama effects on that Heart Coffee photo.

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codecondo
What about Bristol, UK? Anyone has got any recommendations?

~~~
webjames
Small St. espresso is worth a look, although I'm not sure it would be that
good for working from for a long time - but it depends on what you are working
on.

~~~
codecondo
Thank you. The work is related to writing, so most of the time I'd only be
taking up the space for my laptop, and perhaps a notebook or two to keep
notes.

I'd probably need at least 4-5 solid hours, during the working days of the
week. Any other place you know of, please let me know. I'm trying out a few
places, but I've found nothing of significance yet.

------
simzen85
similar project [http://coworfing.com/](http://coworfing.com/)

~~~
Udo
There are two flavors of coworking spaces, one where have a community office
that allows you to work there on short notice without a lot of commitment, and
the other one is basically a shared rented office space.

It may be cultural, but coworfing.com results for my country (Germany) yield
_only_ permanently shared office space. They're not places where you can just
pop in every once in a while.

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danvayn
When's Chicago coming?

~~~
darrenbuckner
We are eager to find a home in Chicago. We need to hunt down some great places
there first. We rely heavily on recommendations from the community. Once we
have enough places to be useful, we make them visible on the site.

