SmartShepherd is moving
SmartShepherd has had a few homes in the last 5 years: working out of my study, out of the HAX office in Shenzhen, at the University of New England SMART Region Incubator and then Covid happened. The incubator decided to ramp down on-campus access so all the equipment ended up...back at my house.
Change of business model - change of facilities
Since 2018, SmartShepherd has concentrated largely on supporting key service providers in Australia and New Zealand (Sheepmatters and SmartShepherd NZ respectively), this has meant the equipment has moved to a use-case that I didn't anticipate - a lot more usage than we budgeted for in any one season. As a result, the devices often come back to home base to be refurbished. This activity is like any other factory work, sometimes it's smelly, involves soldering or glue and generally involves more work space than we had available back at "The Swamp" (our home).
The SMART Region Incubator did offer us space at their new NOVA facility in the business district of Armidale, but while the networking opportunities and general cameraderie of that space was very attractive, there are no factory or workshop like facilities their so we had to find an alternative.
Some months ago we identified a potential rental opportunity in Armidale and decided it was worth moving the business so we could expand into small scale manufacturing as well.
The Shed
Not much to look at right now - we're in the process of getting it painted and trying to work out how to partition the interior space. There is a small office in one corner that I have designated as a comms room. The fibre broadband connection is up and running along with some second hand networking gear and a new (to us) server that will be used for more comprehensive testing of software than the current AWS setup allows affordably.
It's not huge but it's empty - obviously we will need to toss up a few partition walls and refurbish the kitchen and bathroom but both are functional for now.
First workstation is in
Generally we work with two workstations and a workbench that the soldering equipment and other stuff on it. My workstation has been moved this morning and the networking jury-rigged through a wireless access point. The main part of the shed will be separate from SmartShepherd activities and will be available for other uses (small functions, SmartShepherd workshops, overflow space for activities requiring a lot of floor space).
It's going to be a tough couple of days while we move everything else out of the house but it already feels like a "new home" for the business and for a new stage of growth for SmartShepherd
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