Dahle Communication

How early is too early for Christmas Music?

One thing I like about co-working with everyone at Meso is the relaxed, yet get your work done, atmosphere. What I have learned over the past couple of months is that it has the relaxed feel of a coffee shop, but the people here all have things to do and are not here just to get coffee and chat. Its the perfect mix of coming to work, yet being able to banter from time to time.

Part of that relaxed atmosphere is the music we decided to play. Its not the typical 92.5 music (Sioux Falls people will know, for those of you not in Sioux Falls, think light pop music from the 80's, 90's and today - we all have them). I've created a station of mostly alt-country acts on Slacker Radio including Wilco, The Jayhawks and Ryan Adams that we listen to sometimes. Overall, its a different mix of music that adds to the atmoshpere.

This morning however, my ears heard something that I didn't expect to hear for at least another 10 days - Christmas Music! Don't get me wrong - I love Christmas music, especially the songs done by greats like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra! But a week before Thanksgiving?

So, what do you think? When is it too early to play Christmas music? When do you start singing along with the radio to all of the songs you know by heart because you hear it every year? Is today a little too early? My co-workers don't think so - some of them I'm suspecting probably have their trees up already.

Co-Working Space opens up in Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls, South Dakota is still a fairly small town. The population is about 156,000 with the surrounding metro area of about 235,000. While this is easily the largest city in South Dakota (with a population of around 800,000) it is still small compared to a lot of other cities.

There are clearly advantages to Sioux Falls still being a small town. The drive to work is usually quite short, there is not a lot of traffic, crime is very low and our educational system is top notch.

However, one of the down sides is that it takes a while for things to catch on here. One of those is co-working spaces. 

As wikipedia tells us, "Coworking is a style of work which involves a shared working environment, sometimes an office, yet independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization."

The most known (at least to me) is Regus. Regus offers themselves as the largest network of offices for people to work out of - and they advertise a lot on ESPN Radio, which is why I know them.

Citizen Space  is another co-working space that is growing and expanding into different cities.

With this in mind, Josh Aberson of Green Acre Real Estate decided to set up Meso in Sioux Falls. Meso (short for Mesopotamia) is up and running and is offering to Sioux Falls the co-working experience that probably would not have reached us for a few more years without his doing. 

I am excited about it because that is where I am now working out of. Communication is a big thing for me (which should be obvious to all of you) and the idea that I could work around other people from a variety of different industries was too much to miss out on. We'll be able to bounce ideas off of each other, give each other some ideas and offer a sometimes much needed different perspective since we come from different worlds.

I'm excited about the new space and hopefully it sets a new trend for Sioux Falls - that we don't have to wait forever for things to come our way. Sometimes we just have to bring it here ourselves!

Finally, I will say that this hopefully means that I will be posting more blog posts as well as starting some video posts! It's going to be a great fall and winter (as much as most of us don't want it to get here), so stay tuned!