Founded in 2009, Tech Liminal is Oakland’s original Technology Hotspot and Salon – an accessible, technology-focused membership organization where diverse minds meet and learn to apply the right tools to solve the right problems. Tech Liminal features professional development groups for Programming, WordPress, Video, SEO, Online Marketing, Business Modeling and Product Management. In addition, we provide opportunities that allow people to explore technology in the context of pure learning, such as Workshop Weekend and STEAM Camp for Middle School Girls.
Our philosophy
Our community is made up of smart people of all ages who understand that learning never ends – that effort is required to perfect one’s craft. Tech Liminal facilitates collaboration to speed up the learning process while infusing joy into it. We create opportunities for people to practice their craft in a safe, supportive space.
Who we are
We bring together people from diverse backgrounds, at different levels of their educational and professional development. Our members are ambitious learners who want to master new things and implement their ideas.
Some of our activities are for fun (like Lego parties), others straddle the professional and the family (like Workshop Weekend), while yet others are for business (like our Group Project Accelerator Program, and weekly WordPress Support Groups ).
Tech Liminal has nurtured several local startups, including:
- Track it Forward – Time-tracking software for volunteers, spurred by a community effort in Oakland’s parks to track volunteer work. Track it Forward launched out of Tech Liminal in 2010, and has since been used to track over a million volunteer hours across the world.
- Workshop Weekend – A celebration of learning for the whole family, featuring workshops about electronics, chemistry, negotiating, programming, baking, sewing, Arduino, and much, much more.
- Learn Tech Labs – a programming and computer science bootcamp and licensable curriculum, now operating as the Port Academy.
A (very) brief history
Tech Liminal started Oakland’s earliest coworking space, on 14th Street, in 2009. Some of our initial programs included weekend un-conferences for Bloggers and newsmakers, in collaboration with Oakland Local and other startup news concerns. We helped launch Code for Oakland (which is now Open Oakland) and created a clean, well-lighted space for hacking.
In 2013, we moved to a shiny building on 12th Street, where we expanded our WordPress Support Meetups, operated a web development agency, and hosted many interesting intellectual meetups.
In 2016, Tech Liminal closed down the coworking portion of our business, and moved with our community, into the Port Workspaces in Oakland, California. We call this Tech Liminal 3.0, and it represents a refined focus on our core mission: to infuse collaboration into groups and individuals working with technology through in-person working sessions and coaching.
About our Founder
Anca Mosoiu is a programmer and consultant who loves complex, large-scale technology projects, where her curiosity and ability to translate between technical and non-technical helps teams get things done. Her past and current clients include the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Cisco Systems, Nike and Sony.
She has professional nerd credentials, as a Computer Science graduate from MIT. Subsequently, she worked as a programmer for a 3D startup in the 1990’s and helped design and develop some of the earliest websites and online stores while working for Razorfish. Her experience in the corporate and startup world was followed by a focus on local community, as a volunteer and an entrepreneur.
“Seeing how people use technology to solve problems, and how they face technology AS a problem, made me want to focus on the immediate experience. In the tech world, there is a certain amount of joy at a new app or a new gadget, but there’s also a lot of adaptation that we have to do, in order to use it most effectively. With people who don’t live in spreadsheets, for example, making use of data, or making decisions based on data, is a daunting task. So I want to help people work more efficiently through the time it takes to organize and practice using the tools, until it becomes ingrained.”