Flaming Desks is a blog…

This appears to be the biggest question people are asking us.  But, also its the one that that has prompted the most answers from commenters too.  So, I thought I’d try to get it all down to a nice succinct answer.

Partly because I think it’ll be a useful bit of copy once we’ve got a Beta up, and partly because Dave asked me to and I said I would!  Here we go:

Q.  Why would anyone lend a desk for free on flaming desks?

A1. To meet / be around good people.

Nonsense had been doing this for a while - offering desks to people that are good to have around.  (In fact, the offer I made to Dave from White October that sparked the whole idea was partially motivated by us needing to develop relationships with awesome developers.)  Simon from Human Zoo pointed out that people could even ask for work favours e.g. “10 min chat about our website”.

This is my Dad. You could benefit from his wisdom!

Flaming Desks will encourage this by allowing Desk Lenders to state the kind of people they’d like to meet, and later by selecting categories so searchers can filter desks that are right for them.

A2. To feel good about yourself.
Lending a desk is a nice thing to do.  And we all know that being nice feels, well, nice.  Marcus from Proximity argued that its also nice to the planet; cuts down on wasted resource… I like the idea that one day Flaming Desks may be being used to such a level that we can count its value in No. of skyscraper builds abandoned!

Unnecessary.

Flaming Desks will be nice and friendly, and free - so should fit in this whole area… nicely.

A3. For tea, biscuits and solid gold timepieces…
Account Planning genius Matt Tanter (who is looking for a job right now, so feel free to use the comments to state your agency’s interest!) reminded us of a thought we’d had a while ago; allow people to ask Desk Borrowers to bring something along to say thanks for the free desk.

FYI: tea; milk, no sugar.

We are DEFINITELY going to do this, if only so Nonsense can invite Charlie Gower again and stock up on Custard Creams.  (I imagine that in other establishments the ask will be higher; e.g. to use a corner of Donald’s desk in Trump Tower, bring a Rolex…)

P.S.  I’ve made an ‘FAQ’ category, so we can put all this type of stuff in there and find them easily later.