X[TREE]M CO[SPACE]
I have been working remotely for a very long time. When I joined Vesko and became the co-owner of X Challenge Park in 2019 the first thing that I did was to try and figure out how we can get a good internet connection in the park so that I can do all the work that I usually do from there. That turned out to be more complicated than I thought. The way to get internet was though a dish which we have close to the skate pool, which points towards another dish located at the top of a close-by hill. The connection was decent and there was about a 30Mb download speed on the speed tests. There were a few issues though. The connection was laggy and every few minutes there would be a 10–20 seconds drop which would get very annoying when on Zoom calls. Then the modem could not handle more than 20 people at the same time. I took this as a fact and learned to cope with it for the first summer as we had so many other more urgent issues to deal with.
In the year that followed (2020), I started asking around and trying to understand the technical limitations of the current setup. The internet provider told us that the only way to improve this is to dig a 3 trench and bring a wired internet connection this way. Since Tsarevo is a summer destination they refused to deal with this during the season which meant that this could only happen in November. The nice surprise during this process was that the connection would be optical. Vesko who has a place close by was there to make it happen.
Once we knew that we had a proper internet connection Vesko had the idea of making it from shipping containers. He went shopping to Burgas, the closest big port, and got two containers.
He agreed with them to keep them there while we figure out when, where and how we would modify them.
This is where Mina joined us and started preparing the initial plans for them. We got the medium size containers which measure 5.9 meters long, 2.34m large and 2.28 meters height.
She started to play around with different ideas of how to maximize the space. I don’t remember all the iterations we did but we ended up with a layout that would allow us to open them in the summer and close them easily during the winter and at the same time fit as many people as possible while maintaining a sensation of space.
The end result was that we decided to convert the two side walls into floors where more people could sit. Mina then came up with the idea to add a lather that would look like a swimming pool lather with which one could go on top of the container and also work from there. We were broke so Vesko promised to offer Mina a windsurf course in exchange for her plans. Mina hates doing realistic 3D plans but I was convinced that this was the only way of trying to onboard IKEA.
By that time we knew that the only way we can pull this off financially was with the help of IKEA, although they hadn’t reacted positively to any of my emails which started in 2019.
We kept on working on the plans and prepared a presentation for them explaining our entire idea. I sent that presentation on March 16, 2021.
Originally we wanted to get some sliding windows and close the middle part of the containers with those.
That approach worked. IKEA liked the idea and gave us the green light.
In the meantime, Vesko found a local guy who works with metal who agreed to execute Mina’s plans. So he got to work and gutted the containers.
In May the metal guy was done and we transported the containers to the park so we can start on all the interior work.
This is when is was our turn to do the works on the inside. We got the materials and started working.
We wanted to have all the electrical cabling hidden as much as possible and have the plugs in the middle of the container and on the two sides.
With these projects everything is always more complicated than originally expected. To make things even better we were now also running on a really tight schedule. We had our first team building with a software company WPX confirmed 3 days latter and they requested to have 6 working seats. We decided to focus all our efforts into making at least one container look as close to finished as possible.
The IKEA furniture arrived just on time for that but we were still very far from having the proper internet connection. So we signed a contract with our backup internet.
We worked together to assemble furniture, wire the lights, run tests on the router, clean everything and get ready for our sort of soft opening.
The team building was s success and we dove back straight to work as there was still lots to be done. A few days latter we got a visit of 36 young entrepreneurs from all over the world who were on a working trip.
Vesko had found some windows with metal frames which he got for next to nothing but it meant giving up on the idea of the sliding windows and re- arranging the plans. We gave Mina the dimensions of the windows and asked her to help us figure out how to place them there and make them look as if this had always been the plan.
She found a way to use them by placing them in the middle sideways one on top of each other. Then Vesko and Ivan built frames for them and we placed them inside. We broke 2 windows while doing that but after a bit of trial and error we managed to have them as we wanted.
We then received the wood that we needed for the terraces. We had to cut it, sand it and place it. Our cooks decided to take a break from working on the menu for the restaurant and helped us with that. It was almost as if one of them was at the salad station and the other on the meet. We became a mini factory.
Another of Vesko’s super powers is welding. He cut the original metal frames of the windows and repurposed them as our high table legs. Which we then painted black.
We also ordered 60 pallets with which we started to make a deck between the two containers.
After placing the windows we added frames on which we could place a fabric with which we could partially close the inside of the containers.
The last remaining piece was the IKEA branding which we decided to make from plywood and a CNC machine in the style of the space. More or less at the same time is when Mina came up with the official name X[TREE]M CO[SPACE]. A really cool wordplay.
Last but not least was getting the fiber optic internet connection to work. That was another uncharted territory where Elitsa, who was responsible for managing the space worked with a system administrator. He coached us on what infrastructure we needed to buy and showed us how to install it. I wanted to have a really cool user experience. So we created an open network that you can join automatically by being there. Then, once you are in you get a popup window with the X Challenge website open and you can input you user and password. It was next next level. Our internet was now fast (150Mb), stable, reliable and could handle lots of simultaneous connections.
We then began operating normally 7 days a week for the remaining of the summer. We also started our [OUTSIDE]R TALKS. A series of conversations with people we admire and who share with us and our visitors their knowledge in a fun and informal way. We will begin to post these conversations on the park’s Youtube channel soonish.
We did an instagram reel to promote the space once we were almost ready. You can see it here.
This project could not have happened without the efforts of everyone involved and without IKEA trusting us. I am grateful . I am very happy about how it turned out and I can’t wait to see what this summer will bring. We (obviously) have new ideas on what to add to it but more on that when the time comes. I learned a ton of things along the process and I hope that you can learn some too through these words.
Feel free to ping me if you want more details on it.
Peace.
