Chelsea McClain

Membership Type: Part-Time 15

One of the newest Nomads, Chelsea McClain, is a true Jill of all trades. Actually, she’d probably make Jack blush with inadequacy.  That’s really the reason she’s here, too.  Jacob put out the call that we wanted somebody to help the Nomads with their own work.  Chelsea had the skills and saw it as a great way to utilize them. She has started at Office Nomads as a sort of all-purpose helper.  Bookkeeping, project management, picking up mail, and many other tasks are right up her alley.

But her skills don’t stop there.  Chelsea spends a few days a week here but fills the rest of her time with three other jobs.  On Mondays you can find her working the front desk at Dockside Co-op, a medical marijuana dispensary in Fremont.  She only has fantastic things to say about working there, especially how professionally run it is.

A serious passion of Chelsea’s is burlesque which she produces and performs here in Seattle.  Right now she’s preparing for the Burlesque Hall of Fame Competition in Las Vegas June 2^nd – 5^th. It’s a sort of a “burlesque Olympics” into which she was accepted with an act that fuses burlesque and contortion.  She spent her younger years as a dancer, primarily in African and ballet, but was inspired after seeing a burlesque show and has focused on that for the last three years.

When she gets home, work is not completely over.  Chelsea also has a small business for special occasion desserts. She flies under the flag of Radical Cakes and fights to liberate us from the belief that cake from a box is good enough. For years she has been making cakes, cupcakes, and pies for weddings, birthdays and other occasions.  Maybe we can convince her to use the Nomads as cake testers…

So look out for Chelsea.  She’s the one with the bright red hair, often seen strolling into the office wearing a helmet that looks like a watermelon.  She’s eager to help out Nomads in need. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10-3 she’ll be here. You can also contact her at Chelsea@officenomads.com.

We really can’t love our Nomads anymore than we already do.  They always have fantastic projects brewing and are pretty inspiring folks.  We previously posted about some how awesome they are and here are a few more great examples.

• Andy Hieb says that his company DTEK is always doing cool things. Of late, they built the new site for the World Affairs Council.  The site looks fantastic and the DTEK team is calling it their favorite. It’s loaded with great features and will be a great tool for The World Affairs Council to use to connect to the community.

• Mike Kollins is the Chief Operating Officer for World Bicycle Relief.  He has just relocated from Kenya to Seattle and is one of our newest Resident members.  I’ll let Mike tell us about the great mission of WBR. “We are a large non-profit social enterprise.   We have distributed over 75,000 bicycles in the last 6 years and trained over 700 bicycle mechanics.  Instead of using recycled bicycles (which tend to break down given terrain and loads, and have no spare parts in rural Africa), we have designed a bicycle specifically for the markets we are active in.  We have three assembly factories in Africa (Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia) currently with over 60 local employees.   We produce between 1,000 and 3,000 bicycles per month.  Our current project is focussed on improving academic performance and attendance of girl students in rural Zambia, where drop-out rates, especially amongst girls, are extraordinary high.  One of the primary reason for dropping out is transport due to safety and time issues.   Given the importance of having educated girls in society, we are using bicycles to help out.  We will distribute 50,000 to 500 schools over the five year period of the program. We have already distributed about 10,000 bicycles to date in this program.” Check out this Youtube video to get a better idea of what WBR does:  http://www.youtube.com/user/WorldBicycleRelief#p/a/u/1/sVdb5bl5z2s

• Something people at Office Nomads seem to always be discussing are TED events.  TED is all about “ideas worth spreading” and has an eye on changing the world.  Greg Bamford is excited to curate a TEDxOverlake event entitled “How People Learn: At Work, At Play, At School”.  This will take place June 18th at the Overlake School. Under TED rules, they are limited to 100 attendees but the event will be streamed online.  For more information and the latest news on speakers and their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Well, now you’re smitten with our Nomads, too, aren’t you?  We completely understand.

Imagine you are in the middle of a large project which you need to have emailed to a client in 30 minutes.  You’ve been up all night and have had 13 cups of coffee in an equal number of hours.  Suddenly you really have to go to the bathroom.  That’s fine, you can spare two minutes.  You get up, head to the bathrooms but (curses!) they are both in use! Now you have to wait, and wait, and watch those minutes till deadline tick away.

Well, this might not be your life.  But here at ON we have two bathrooms and a lot of busy folks.  One particular Nomad was tired of hearing folks complain about waiting for the bathroom and he decided to do something about it.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way he and everyone else could know when a bathroom was open?

Andrew had a brilliant idea and made signs that light up when both bathrooms are in use.  The signs are situated so that every desk in the space can see.  No more standing around waiting.  Before you even get up, you know if there’s a bathroom free.  Yeah, we agree that this was genius.

Probably the best part about this was that it was completely Nomad initiated and completed.  It’s not hard to see why we love our Nomads, is it?  Thanks Andrew for your great ingenuity!