Betamore: co-founders unveil ‘urban campus’ for coworking, tech education at launch party [PHOTOS]

Betamore co-founders, from left: Mike Brenner, Sean Lane and Greg Cangialosi
Betamore. It lives.
On the fourth and top floor of the 1111 Light Street building in Federal Hill, more than 150 people from Baltimore’s tech community gathered Friday night to celebrate the launch of the Betamore coworking and incubator space, what co-founder Mike Brenner calls Baltimore’s “gym for nerds.” [Full disclosure: Brenner is a partner with Technically Baltimore, which will be working out of Betamore.]

For Brenner and co-founders Sean Lane and Greg Cangialosi, the development and construction of Betamore has been an exercise in delayed gratification: the original September opening of the space was pushed back several times.
Apply for membership at Betamore.
As Technically Baltimore previously reported, the new coworking space offers dedicated (full-time) and community (part-time) memberships for $400 per month per employee and $200 per month, respectively. In addition, individual classes and multi-class courses will be held inside a 50-person classroom within the facility. The classroom is bounded by several sliding chalkboards, which separate it from the part-time and full-time coworking spaces. (Another sliding chalkboard runs down the middle of the classroom in order to split the larger room into two, 25-person classrooms.) Classes cost between $30 and $200, while courses comprising six classes or more will cost between $900 and $2,000 and will be Betamore-certified using Mozilla’s Open Badges platform.
But the heart of Betamore is the full-time coworking space, where a mural of Baltimore stretching from Canton to Federal Hill adorns the rear wall.
“When you’re an early-stage company, it’s much better to be in an open, collaborative environment,” said Brenner.
Watch a video of Greg Cangialosi and Mike Brenner speak at the Betamore launch party:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlFC8Vp76_4&w=550&h=309]
Several photos of the space are below, but for those working out of — or aspiring to work out of — Betamore, here are some of the perks.

• A living room-style section in the community coworking space, with large, L-shaped couches positioned in front of an 80-inch flat-screen TV.
• A wireless space so that people can broadcast their computer displays on any one of the TVs inside Betamore, including the two TVs in the classroom, the 80-inch TV and another TV in the conference room.
• Two smaller rooms across from the conference room where people can take phone calls and have meetings.
• Bike racks in the storage room.
• A dozen French presses because, well, awesome.

Photos of Betamore

Desks inside the full-time coworking room within Betamore, with the mural in the background.

The Betamore classroom.

The 80-inch TV in the part-time coworking space within Betamore.

Edgar Allan Poe watches over the community lounge.

Another view of the full-time coworking space within Betamore.