Lexington has a new co-working and incubator space located in theLexington Distillery District called Collexion.  I caught up with Co-founder Todd Willey, president of Rubidine on the details of Collexion. What is Collexion?

Collexion (pronounced: collection) is a Nonprofit group that is in the late stages of formation, with the goal of uniting, energizing, and publicizing the innovative and technical community in Lexington.  

Who are the members of collexion?  Who is this targeted at?

Membership is open to everyone, with steep discounts for students. Our goal is to have a good mixture of businesses, students, professionals, and hobbyists.  We want to provide a large group to network and collaborate with.  By creating a network for talented individuals, we hope to entice new business formation, place talented students in local companies, and have new hobby projects and associations form.

Is Technology the main focus?

Technology is our main focus, but there are some artistic and cultural implications of new technologies, so in addition to completing our own technology projects we are going to integrate with local artists and cultural organizations to help invigorate Lexington's technology culture and position innovation as a recognized benefit of living in Lexington.

We don't want to become a walled garden of innovation.  Our goal is to reach out in engage everyone in Lexington, and raise the overall technical abilities of the city at large, not just within our organization.  As such, we're going to host workshops and other events that demonstrate what people in Lexington are doing and teach people how to do it themselves.  Incorporating children and families in the innovative culture is key to having innovation become a mainstay in our lifestyles, so we're working on programs that will teach basic and advanced skills such as fabrication, programming, and do-it-yourself projects at levels appropriate for young children up to adults.  We want to provide a safe, collaborative place for people to learn in a noncompetitive, nonjudgmental environment.

Your locating in the distillery District, is that correct?

Currently we are meeting at coffee shops while we work on getting a more permanent location.  By the end of the month we should have a location of our own.  We just talked to Barry McNees about being located in the Distillery District.  We're very interested in that because there will be lots of opportunity to work within the district and incorporate some of our ideas throughout the neighborhood as the area grows.

Everyone is welcome to attend our daily meetings and participate on the mailing list.  More information can always be found on our website at  http://collexion.net/