/usr/lib

This is one of my fave places to hang out. I love the swinging chair and the red bean bag. I also love the pleathora of board games and nerdifacts. I have spent many hours here improving my brain.

Reality Check! Just because the Zappos CEO sprinkles cash around like fairy dust to support his noble vision of making Las Vegas into a mini version of Silicon Valley doesn’t mean everything he touches is a good thing. I’ve been to /​usr/​lib 3 times now and last night I left saying I’ve had enough. For a place that claims to support collaboration and socialization I’ve barely been able to strike up a conversation with anyone that claimed to be a part of this place. I got to listen to someone last night over-​inflate their social media prowess to a couple of women he found attractive but if an older guy like myself is wanting to ask about the 2 Arduino and Laser books on the shelves I get flat out ignored. It was beyond ignored, they flat out left, running out the door like a herd of cattle so one of their friends could take pictures of them. I thought I’d left the «queens» 3 blocks away at the Pride parade, but it sure looks like I found a couple volunteering here complete with full attitude.
So let’s take a cold hard look at this place. Yeah, it’s got a couple of tables to sit at, a white board with some good info scribbled on it for cool people with cool projects. It’s got a printer and a small classroom which is nice to have. But the bookshelves? WTF? It looks like someone bought the last tech books that Borders was trying to dump at $ 1 a pop before they went out of business and they got stuck on the shelves to make it look good. Toss in a small handful of relevant books for the purpose of making it all look marginally «presentable» (cough, cough) and that’s what you get in here.
The whole concept is a good one, it simply totally fails and falls flat on it’s proverbial face in the execution. When someone walks into the library on First Friday when the door is open, don’t ignore them just so you can try and score with the chicks by making them think you’re a social media God of some type. (Cause you’re not and if you had quit looking at the boobs to make real eye contact you could see the woman you were staring at just wasn’t that much into you!) Protect Tony’s investment by talking to the people coming in, people who have no problem paying $ 25 for membership on the spot. Or at least smile and say Hi. For a collaboration space I don’t think setting the bar at expecting a simple «Hi» is too much.
1 Star, because this place quite frankly is a waste of Tony Hsieh’s money in it’s current configuration and with the attitude of the people who are supposed to be in there to help support it. In a language a place like this can easily understand /​usr/​lib needs a reboot.

Love this place. It’s only $ 25 a year, and that’s just to keep the lights on from what I understand. You get a security card that gives you access to the library. There are a ton of tech books, a printer, some comfortable seating areas, and even a small classroom where myself and a few others have taught a class (
). If you need an area to escape and do some freelancing work, or you want to network with other tech-​minded people, then this is the place to go.

Las Vegas’s first official coworking space! (Correct me if I am wrong of course.) Being a remote employee, the idea of coworking really excites me, and /​usr/​lib is spacious and on the occasions I have visited for open house affairs, all the people have been super friendly and super techy. I am not super techy, so I haven’t paid the $ 25 a year for official membership. However, they offer tech-​minded workshops, books and generally a rad place to be if some combination of «software» and «engineering» makes your little heart flutter. They also host Vegas Game Days. 5 cheers to /​usr/​lib.