POV Digital Lab LA (Traction Place) – CLOSED
Shared Office Spaces, Venues & Event Spaces
830 Traction Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90013
3.0 star rating
I came here for POV and a hackathon that was run by a bunch of hacks.
What I signed up for is building a website for a collaborative project group run by a project coordinator who had no idea what she was doing. I never met this person before so did not know what I was getting myself into when I signed up to join POV. We basically had a bunch of people who were getting paid by PBS to lecture and downright yell at us every hour and telling us that our project is very under-developed during the entire weekend. Yeah DUH we’re trying to make the best thing that we can in the little time we have possible. Stop bothering us! They basically would stop us mid-sentence and ask us what we’re doing and impart their hack wisdom every hour. It continued into the filmed presentations. And then it continued in the emailed comments a month later. That’s my hackathon in a nutshell and it was un-fun.
It wasn’t helped that it was hosted in this very stark shared office space made up mostly of concrete, glass and plastic. The perks of Impact Hub LA don’t include the uncomfortable office space with flimsy plastic chairs and very few power outlets. The perks of this place don’t include the one clean bathroom that they have that is located in very corner of the building in an adjacent hallway and the other dirtier bathroom shared by a bunch of other offices in another hallway behind it. The perks of this place don’t include it only having one entrance and exit via a fire escape to and from the cool Arts District location it is in behind the large parking lot. It is a very closed off place and has no outdoor patio area. It is as inviting as a large university classroom to get a cold computer science-y job done. Actually it not so fondly reminded me of this cold sterile building called the DARC (Digital Arts Resource Center) building that made us feel like we were in the ‘darc’ as it was a very white, cold, concrete cube with no cell phone reception that our studios were located in during my MFA at UC Santa Cruz.
Shame that they don’t incorporate more art into tech in their awesome Arts District location but it is what it is. If I were needing to work here in the future, I’d rather ‘create’ my own desk and code while looking at paint splatter and smelling art dust in one of the large art studio spaces with wifi nearby.
Useful: 1 Funny: 0 Cool: 1
12/20/2016