Posted Friday, September 26, 2025 by Sri. Tagged DSCAFE

Old Link to Coworking Page from Home Page

Sri’s Virtual Coworking Cafe (AKA the  DS | CAFE) is where I and other nerdy positive-minded people try to cultivate a good “working vibe” as we pursue our individual goals. We have a diverse range of people from around the world sharing their stratagems for figuring-out stuff that’s on their mind.

This is a working online chat room, and the general idea is to provide the level of distraction you need to have a productive day. Visitors can drop by at any hour of the day to mingle with the regulars, sort of like visiting a nice coffee shop. People engage at whatever level they are comfortable with, and can choose to partake in the vibe by joining a topical discussion room, sharing photos showing-off project progress, or doing paced work in a group audio chat room. What you get out of the experience is really up to what you choose to put in.

Old Virtual Coworking Page

About the DS|CAFE Coworking Discord

The DS|CAFE Discord is a virtual office that has became a virtual coworking space in 2016. It’s designed to provide “the right level of distraction” you need to have a productive day with the option of sharing our interests with each other.

What is it For?

Hanging out and working on stuff together is more fun than working alone!

We strive to make the DS|CAFE a friendly and thoughtful space. There is no restriction on the kind of work or projects. Working on some code? Writing a blog post? Cleaning your house? Trying a new recipe? We like hearing about it all! In addition to the work-focused rooms we have “after work” and “long form discussion” areas to cover different interests.

What are the People Like?

We have a diverse range of interests and nationalities. In general the vibe is being conscientious, curious, considerate, self-empowered and positive-minded. Our regular participants tend to be inquisitive project-minded people who love sharing what they are learning and making.

Lurkers are welcome! Come and go as you please, read and share what’s interesting to you. We encourage people to experiment with new ways of working together.

Our Main Chat Areas

When you first connect to the server, you’ll be asked to first read the community guidelines and then click an emoji to reveal the Coworking part of the server. The coworking area consists of:

Our general #chat, where you can introduce yourself and ask questions. Voice chat rooms Workalong and the related #workalong-notes chat room where people in voice chat can type. Every room has a description at the top of the screen next to the channel name. It will tell you the room purpose and provide additional guidelines, if any.

Chat Room Guidelines

Here is a short version of our Chat Room Guidelines. For the full one, browse through the #welcome guide and click the links to the various sections.

  • Remember this is a PUBLIC discord! – What you post here can be read by anyone who joins. Therefore, be conscientious about posting personal information about yourself or other people without full knowledge and consent. If you want to repost something with attribution, ask permission first!

  • Practice Tolerance and Inclusivity – Be aware that we have a diverse range of members: Christian ministers, atheist, technical people, artists, gamers, businesspeople, LGBTQ+, etc. of all ages from all around the world. All are welcome to discuss our shared interests and common humanity in a tolerant and kindly manner.

  • Maintain a Positive Environment – This is a supportive, thoughtful forum where people can be themselves. Be mindful of making sweeping arguments or observations. You can use qualifiers such as “in my experience” as a way to qualify the scope of your observations without compromising the strength of your opinion. Idle disparagement made in a joking manner can still create conflict; remember text-only chat does not convey your emotional intent very well.

  • Links go in #linkshare to minimize distraction – Our main rule is not to post photos or video links (any media link) in the #chat room. Please post those in #links-and-pics. You may post plain text links in the course of conversation by wrapping the URL in angle brackets (<>).

  • Signal that you are Venting –Having a bad day and want to vent? Preface your post with VENT, which tells everyone that you are just blowing off steam and this is not your normal state :-)

  • Lurkers are welcome! – Lurking is completely OK if that’s what you need to be productive! We will leave you alone after an initial greeting :smiley: You also are not required to use video (or your microphone, for that matter) if you are in a chat room; your ghostly presence will still add to the feeling of people being around.

Old Patreon Description

Hi, thanks for visiting my Patreon page!

In August 2019 I started to focus my efforts on creating community over design work. I'm also doing a LOT more software development these days, and that leaves little energy for me to do design. On the positive side, this means that I might be able to make interesting apps some day! I've provided more details in the August 15 post Patreon Hiatus / Changing Directions.

Supporters still have access to the perks that I'll continue to provide yearly. And of course all my past productivity tool work is still available for free to everyone!

HOWEVER...

If you're supporting me here BECAUSE you want LOTS of free downloads, that isn't happening for a while. There's three reasons you might want to support me anyway:

You want to show support for DS|CAFE, my virtual coworking community. Patrons that support at the $1 level and up gain a special Discord Patreon Role in the Virtual Coworking Chat Room. You like my prior design work and/or blogging, and would like to show your support! You are using my design at a place of business for profit as part of official business process. Individuals in the workplace can use my work under the free personal license. I appreciate any support...your accountant can probably expense it. Even if you just want to support me for $1/month for a few months, that's still great! It's also not necessary at all. If your funds are limited, please support the creators that you love who really would benefit from it! It's cool! You can follow this account to just keep in touch, or join us in the Virtual Coworking Chat to get the daily scoop :-)

Thanks to all for your support, and if you have any questions do feel free to ask me :-)

Rewriting the DSCAFE Coworking Page

My current vision for the DSCAFE is to emphasize these things:

  • People who want to get to know each other over time by sharing their interests, stories, and experiences in a supportive and friendly manner
  • DSCAFE as the extension of my online writing and representation across my personal development, productivity, and other ideas like The Tribe, ELBS, Creative Independence, and unvarnished sharing of my challenges and mitigations
  • DSCAFE as a place where people can shadow my process as I create these various things, because they like the energy of it and aspire to it themselves.
  • DSCAFE as a place where people can set up shop in this context and participate in its energy.

So why do I even want to do this?

  • I simply like creating and sharing stuff with people who enjoy each other's company
  • I have a strong belief that creating and sharing the tangible experiences we make is a way to do that.
  • I want to create a space where people feel safe to explore and try stuff without feeling judged. I want to encourage a joyful experimental mindset.
  • I believe that to make a good place for this, there is a cultural template that we can articulate to help make it clear how people can participate.
  • I recognize that it's up to me to set the tone and set the guidelines, and with luck a subset of people will follow.
  • I need this environment myself to be at my best! I suspect there are others like this too!

Claude Filtering Results for

"Intentional Action Space"

Actions Sorted

For Users:

  • Creating and sharing tangible work
  • Sharing interests, stories, and experiences over time
  • Making process visible (shadowing Sri's work)
  • Designing for safe exploration without judgment
  • Creating space for people to "set up shop"

For Sri:

  • Articulating cultural template + setting guidelines
  • Engineering environment Sri needs to be at her best

Outcomes

  • People enjoy each other's company through shared making
  • People get to know each other meaningfully (not superficially)
  • People can learn by observing real creative decision-making
  • People know how to participate and contribute effectively
  • People feel free to try stuff and experiment joyfully
  • People can pursue their own work within supportive context
  • Others with similar needs also thrive (mutual benefit)

FIRST DRAFT

DS|CAFE is a small Discord server where I share what I'm trying to maintain a cheerful productive day. It's open to anyone who finds this beneficial for keeping them engaged in their own work, sharing our motivational energy. While the active aspect of the server is for coworking in this way, the main mission of DS|CAFE is to foster friendships based on sharing our experiences over time.

DS|CAFE is works best with people who like to chat about their work and have an aspirational, positive-minded, self-empowered, and curious nature that identify with any of these statements:

  • You like being around people doing stuff. You are interested in productivity, self-diagnosis, and talking about your own challenges. At minimum, you are guaranteed a lot of interaction with me and others who share this vibe. You'll get the most from asking your own questions and sharing your own stories and challenges. You can also lurk and listen-in if that's more helpful. Our conversations tend toward thoughtful, with outbursts of silliness and deep nerding-out from time-to-time.

  • You like seeing how other people make things. DS|CAFE is where I live-blog ideation and project progress daily. You also might like it if you're the kind of person who share my interests in design, communications, and human-centered thinking on davidseah.com or dsriseah.com. But that's not all...we have open studios where you can have your own workspace to share progress, and encourage the posting of links to work you've done or other work you've found interesting.

  • You crave meaningful communciation with peers. As a coworking space, DS|CAFE encourages sharing stories, experiences, and knowledge over the course of daily conversation. The result is that people people get to know each other over time; strangers become acquaintances, and with luck friendships can blossom! I believe it's way better to do stuff surrounded by talented friends than forcing yourself to work in a vacuum. In our server, we like to celebrate anything that anyone reports completing, because we know how hard even small steps can be.

  • You are interested in productivity and personal development. I've written for a long time about productivity tools and the challenges in trying to become a more fulfilled creative person, sharing my reflections as authentically and transparently as possible. While DS|CAFE isn't structured around productivity specifically, it's an underlying theme behind many of our discussions as part of "getting things done". I also have started hosting various productivity challenges like the Groundhog Day Resolutions Mastermind Group for getting unstuck with low-stakes rules.

  • You want to learn how to develop authentic friendships. My believe that strong friendships have a foundation of shared authenticity, transparency, and curiosity. And for that to even exist, you need psychological safety to feel you can express that in the first place and feel that your voice matters. DS|CAFE has long been a working experiment for developing guidelines to make this possible, and it is an ongoing effort.

Another way to think of the server is that you will get back what you put in to the experience. The easiest way to do this is to:

  • Add an emoji reaction to people's posts!
  • Ask questions about other people's posts!
  • Share positive reactions to something someone has reported they did!
  • Post links to stuff you like in our link-sharing channel!
  • Share pictures of stuff you made!

One of my key beliefs is that for the universe to see you, you need to put something of yourself into the universe. If any of this appeals to you, join the server with this link: