About Alex Muse
Alexander Muse is a serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of startup experience. Alexander’s day job is with Big in Japan, where his team builds cool applications for mobile devices, including ShopSavvy built for Google’s open source Android platform. In 2007 he sold Fancast to Comcast Interactive and is an active investor and contributor in several companies including SpringStage, Architel, ServiceGuy and WhiteBox. Previously, he was founder and CEO of LayerOne, a venture capital-backed telecommunications infrastructure company he started in the late 1990’s. Alexander has been involved in several organizations including the Entrepreneurs Foundation of North Texas (EFNT), the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO), the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), IEEE, The Open Management Consortium, DFW Entrepreneur Network, OnStartups, Start-Up Phase Forum and Startup Ventures Links.

Dallas developers, designers, webprenuers & bloggers meet for Who’s Who holiday party in Uptown. Get the story on which Dallas online elite made the event and the games they played.

The founders of CoHabitat, a shared working space environment for start-ups, individuals and small companies, threw a holiday party with appetizers, games, drinks, dancing, and several of the Who’s Who of Dallas online media in attendance.

The location of the party was a historical house, located off of Thomas Street in Uptown, Dallas. During the workweek this house facilitates creative ideas and a social working atmosphere by bringing together businesses and freelancers who would normally be working from home alone. For a ridiculously low monthly rental fee, you can have your own office. After the workday ends this house becomes the perfect location for get-togethers, parties, and a relaxed less formal meeting-of-the-minds.  Pictures from the party inside.

The folks at CoHabitat are a very open group and anyone with a Facebook account could have found the event and attended, much like all their events. As the saying goes like attracts like, and just because there is an open party with a kegerator doesn’t mean every frat boy and his dog would show up. Even at the parties, there is a lot of networking and techie-talk similar to Dallas Geekmeet only younger, more hip, to those networking veterans familiar with the Dallas scene.

[Inter]Networking in Dallas

I attended CoHabitat’s Thanksgiving party in November and their crawfish boil in March, both of which were a blast, especially the boil. In my experience, I can say these have been some of the best events for meeting other industry pros. I would not say it’s the best environment for finding business prospects if you are a sales person, but great for finding business partners and collaborators if you already have projects needing special expertise or would like to launch new ones using the fresh ideas and skills of a savvy group of potential partners.

I met several iPhone application developers, designers, and database architects, many of which are already making a living with their own projects or getting close. There are those who are less technically savvy, more on the marketing, account, and social media side, like myself, which have
always been made to feel welcome.

Dallas Social Media Elite

Several of Dallas’ social media and industry elite including Dallas’ citizen journalist and online media darling Jennifer Conley of ILiveinDallas.com, also pictured is her beau Clay Cook.

Bev Garvin of the Dallas Interactive firm Urban Interact and Neil Lemons of Inbound Marketing Blog were also in attendance.

Above are Steven Ray, known for his fashion sense is a UI designer for Telligent Systems. Allan, a transplant from Wichita Falls, Texas, is a traditional print designer. Him and I have crossed paths at the last two events.

Stormy Shippy (facing camera) told me about an incredible college textbook search engine in which UNT students can use to search for the courses he/she are enrolled in and the site will list what books the student needs. It’s sort of a pricegrabber.com for college textbooks. They plan on expanding to other colleges in the near future.

If you are in IT, tech, online marketing, or application development, I highly recommend getting to know the people at CoHabitat and attending one of their get togethers. Become a fan on Facebook to get the latest info.

All photo attribution(s) thanks to John P. of  onemansblog.com. For 100s of more photos of the party, check out John P.’s photostream.