At TechHui, Truman Leung has successfully organized a couple of “Jelly” sessions. A “Jelly” is traditionally coworking at one participant’s home, but it’s been working well at local cafes. There’s a Jelly Coworking Group to discuss and organize more such meetups. Meanwhile, on the Big Island, Brent Norris is starting a coworking group in Hilo, taking advantage of the Hawaii Innovation Center.

Of course, a conventional coworking space would be a permanent, dedicated, privately operated location where there’d almost always be like-minded folks for conversation and collaboration. But these are a great start!

Perhaps most intriguingly, a friend mentioned to me that the Hawaii Arts Alliance may be developing an initiative that could create a “digital arts space” that could conceivably also work with and for technology groups and companies.  With government support, no less. I’m definitely hoping to learn more about it.

With the Manoa Innovation Center facing possible homelessness, it seems like the perfect time to create a different kind of tech space, a grassroots incubator, a real-world business lab… something more flexible, agile, and fun. Stay tuned!

This site will document the on-again, off-again, and on-again dream of creating our own HatFactory or Citizen Space. Separately, “Lumi” means room or space, “hana” means work. Together, the word sounds much more elegant and meaningful than this dream probably deserves.