Free-Agent Clubhouse

Close your eyes and listen for a minute to the sounds that echo around you, and you'll be hard-pressed to guess exactly where you are or what's going on. You can hear children racing around the room at breakneck speed, laughing and calling to one another. Dance music is playing -- though it's not as loud as it is in a typical nightclub. Cell-phones are chirping, dinner plates are clattering, and an espresso machine is hissing. And behind it all is the steady sound of fingers on a keyboard, expertly and continuously typing, despite all of the distractions in the room.

Now open your eyes and look around: You're sitting on a mid-20th-century-era couch, which is sitting on an ever-so-slightly frayed shag rug. The room is enormous -- about 85 feet from end to end, more than 50 feet wide, and with vaulted cathedral ceilings. Fine details suggest that the space used to be part of a church. At one end of the room are several tables set for dinner; a bunch of computers sit at the other end. There's also a bar, some magazine racks, a few bookshelves, two enormous conference tables, and televisions silently tuned to MTV. Some people are reading quietly; others are discussing a project for work. Toddlers run wildly in circles while their parents have a drink with friends. If you were to venture downstairs, you'd find three meeting rooms available for rent. Upstairs, there is a small lounge complete with a dance floor and a DJ booth.

So where exactly are you? A business-oriented nightclub? A rock-and-roll Internet café? A slightly down-at-the-heels country club? A funky student union? While the space has elements of all of those things, no single English word or phrase can accurately sum it up. To René Eller, 36, the Dutch filmmaker who created the space that abuts a picturesque canal in central Amsterdam, it's simply called Baby. Think of it as the first clubhouse for free agents, a members-only lodge for the Brand Called You set -- a place designed to facilitate networking, creative thinking, relaxation, and new-economy business.

"I wanted to build a catalyst for all creative professionals in Amsterdam who wanted to meet," Eller explains. "Creative jobs come with a lot of freedom, but being an independent creative can also isolate you." Eller knew from experience that in a city as small as Amsterdam, creative people tend to find one another. His girlfriend, "Analik," is a well-known fashion designer in the city, and his right-hand man at Baby, Martijn Roos, created and managed the first talk-radio station in the Netherlands.

Still, even creative professionals in Amsterdam sometimes miss connections. So Eller resolved to create a space that would act as a magnet for the community that he knew existed -- but that had yet to assemble. "I looked at old-style business clubs and tried to envision a Y2K version," Eller says. "Churches serve as gathering places for people who share the same strong beliefs, and certain clubs function in a similar way for sports fans. But there aren't very many modern clubs for people who care passionately about their work." What emerged was Baby -- part physical space, part cyberspace, and part global brand.

Build the Space

Eller's background makes him uniquely suited to play the role of clubhouse builder. He began his film career 10 years ago, dabbling in casting and set design before stepping behind the camera. Since then, he's become well-known for edgy commercials that have the look and feel of independent films -- ads for such companies as Aiwa, Coke, Heineken, and Polaroid. He's also worked with other filmmakers on music videos for Boy George and for David Bowie's side band, Tin Machine. Despite all of the locations that Eller scouted for those shoots, it took him three years to find just the right space for Baby. When he finally did, in 1997, he promptly bought the building -- an old church that had been serving as a dance studio -- taking money out of his production company to finance the purchase.

Eller tackled the building's renovation in waves. He started with the large room on the second floor and, when it was finished, threw a big party to promote the club. On the guest list was Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 28, who was starting his own company at the time. "I was skeptical," van Zanten recalls. "I didn't understand the concept. What was it? A big, hip church where I could work? A bar? A club? I got to the party early and, since no one was there yet, started looking around. When I saw this large room, my jaw dropped. It was so beautiful. I joined on the spot."

What happened next with van Zanten's company, V3 Redirect Services, exemplifies the whole idea behind Baby. It's a new-economy parable. By using foreign suffixes such as ".to" (which ostensibly places the site in the string of islands known as Tonga), V3 was able to give people better locations on the Web. Van Zanten bought 300 URLs -- among them www.come.to, www.welcome.to, and www.serve.to -- which he would tailor to his customers. For example, www.come.to/boris became van Zanten's personal Web site. The beauty of the idea was that it was all about redirecting people. And since the service didn't involve storing member pages, it didn't require an office to hold dozens of servers.