This is a post series about my desksurfing at BeCode.

We coined the term desksurfing at the Agile Spain Open Space Conference we held back in 2011 in Pamplona (my hometown!). It’s akin to what some fellows like Corey Haines and other journeymen were already doing. You go visiting another company to spend some time sharing experiences, programming and learning from each other. Cross-pollination for your brain.

Today, I traveled to Valencia for a week of desksurfing at BeCode. They describe themselves as a “punk incubator”, and you can certainly tell they are not very “enterprisey”!

• They are so underground they don’t put their office address (or the cave as they call it) on their web. I had to look for it to know where it is. Fuck! I just realized they don’t even tell what they are or do, except for a few sample projects!

• When I mailed them telling I wanted to go there, Xavi’s answer was (quite literally): “awesome, call me when you get here”. That. Was. It. Then, when I arrived he didn’t answer the phone (he later told me he was having a paella, wtf! :D).

• They hold free workshops in their office as part of their “neighbourhood development plan”, with topics as disparate as how to fix your bike or teaching kids html or programming with scratch. I think anyone can give a workshop there, they just have to ask for the space.

What am I going to do this week? I’m not sure yet, and I just don’t really care (well, I was curious, so after I insisted Xavi I got some more info and he proposed a couple of interesting options to work with them, we’ll see).

Then, why did I decide to come? AFAIK they are raw, honest, transparent and strong in their beliefs. And that resonates with me. I came here to live that, to see how they do things, to breathe their culture (and to share mine if they are interested). To have fun.