Grind - Designing the tech behind an all new type of workspace

BREAKFAST joined Co: Collective, Cool Hunting, Behance and Magic + Might to launch a new take on a members-only shared-workspace, and we've opened the doors to the first location in the heart of Manhattan on Park Ave.

Besides making sure that connecting a laptop to a conference room screen didn't make you want to knock someone's head off, we looked to introduce a slew of new tech ideas into the space. This includes a new type of check-in system that signs you in automatically by opening your laptop, rather than having to wait in the gym-like line to tap in. We're working on adding an easy way to make a suggestion or give feedback, and also designing an entirely new type of conference room system that's going to be the envy of many.

While there is all that to look forward to, it's the freshly installed Grind Gallery that seems to be grabbing most people's attention.

The gallery is a series of digital canvases that display a selection of Grind member's work which they submit or pull in from Behance via an interface within their Grind member profile page. With a tap of their member card their entire portfolio is pulled up across the canvases. Below each piece is a panel which lets onlookers "like" the work (sending an email to the creator saying so) or print the work as an on-the-fly business card featuring that image and the creator's contact details.

For those who like a little geeky peek behind the curtain, the Gallery uses canvas and CSS3 across a slew of Google Chrome browsers to display all the content which is synchronized via HTML5 websockets, all powered by a beefy box running Ubuntu. Take that.

Photo 1 by Jaeger Sloan
Photo 2, 3, 4 by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid

Some behind the scenes....