Susan and Jacob went to the Coworking Unconference in Austin recently and left Office Nomads in the questionably capable hand of Alexandra and Charlie for three days.  In the past they have both often said that it would be great to prank a Resident who leaves for a couple days on vacation.  Well, with Jacob and Susan both out, Charlie and Alexandra took it upon themselves to get pranking.

Susan came home to find her entire desk and all her unattended belongings wrapped in wrapping paper.  No pencil was forgotten and even her sweater and slippers were lovingly wrapped.

Jacob returned to find his desk enclosed in a box.  It took a lot of tape and cardboard boxes but we were able to make him a nice little cubicle.

It was great fun having everyone in the office in on the prank, giving helpful hints on better construction or wrapping. Nobody leaking it out to the interwebs before Susan and Jacob returned and both had great reactions.  Now Alexandra and Charlie need to watch out if they ever leave ON for too many days…

We have a quiet week happening here at Office Nomads with just the usual yoga and Happy Hour on which to keep tabs.  Hopefully we’ll see you this week!

In the past we have done our best to keep you all updated on the news from Office Nomads. You’ve heard about our neighborhood campaign to start another coworking space in Seattle, when we are lucky enough to score some great press, and when we make changes to our membership offerings.

Well, that’s fun and all, but it barely scratches the surface of the great stuff that happens within the walls of our Capitol Hill coworking space. So welcome to the first of (hopefully) many posts featuring projects and happenings from our members. They are a hard-working bunch, and are usually working on something awesome:

• New part-time member Ryan Luce launched a free, comprehensive website that helps folks with Type 2 diabetes find clinical trials that are right for them. The site helps those who are interested in clinical trials sort through the huge number of available trials with ease, and find trials that are close to home. The website is called Corengi, and it’s pretty awesome.
• Long-time member Ariel Stallings added a new website to her Offbeat Empire called Offbeat Home. It’s the newest gem in her crown of beautiful, fun, and useful websites for folks who are looking to navigate their lives a little differently than the norm. Check out the sweet yurt drawing on the home page – it’s my favorite!
• Matt Davis is a local salesman for Rulon, a Florida-based company that manufactures and installs stunning acoustical wooden ceilings and walls. This week Rulon began producing these beautiful ceilings for the Legacy Emanuel Children’s Hospital in Portland OR. In just 4 months, the project will be done, and will hopefully have earned either a LEED gold or platinum certification. Go Matt!

Rendering of a children's hospital in Portland OR

• In the realm of amazing things that don’t happen every day, member George Divoky recently heard from an actor who was playing a part inspired by his arctic bird research at the National Theatre in London. Yes, you read that right. George had no idea that his life’s work had inspired a playwright to base a couple of characters off of him in a play about climate change. But apparently, they did. So off to London George went to go watch himself (as portrayed by two different actors) on stage. You can read all about it (and I’d highly recommend it) at the Adventures in Climate Change blog.

Pretty neat, eh? Stay tuned for more updates from the goings-on here at Office Nomads!

Thursday is our Winter Open House!  We are really excited to showcase the work of Cleo Peterson this quarter.  At our Open House on Thursday we’ll have the usual snacks and drinks and Cleo will be here.  It’s bound to be a good time!

Also noteworthy is the Brown Bag tomorrow which will be lead by Lisa.  The topic is “Searching for Exoplanets”.  It’s going to be a blast so make sure you’re here Tuesday at 12:30. In addition, we’ll have the usual Happy Hour, yoga and good times.  Hopefully see you this week!

Thanks to all who were able to make it out to the first meetup about the opening of our second coworking space. It was great to see some new faces along with some current members, and to get to hear more about what folks are looking for when it comes to building our next coworking community.

Hosting meetups such as we did last night is an important step in the early days of any coworking space. Not only is it important for us to provide a space for members of the community to give recommendations and pose requests for how the space will work, but  there is huge value in creating a way for members to actually get involved in the process. As we’ve said before, people support what they help to create. We hope that folks who are interested in this earlier phase will join us to go visit spaces, continue to brainstorm with us as we develop the plans for the space, and get to know other members before we open the doors to the next space.

If you missed the event, never fear – the next one will be soon! And as always, if you have any suggestions, feedback, or recommendations to make, drop us an e-mail at grow AT officenomads DOT com so we can get you in the conversation.

We are pretty excited about this week.  What’s not to be excited about?! Member Lunch on Tuesday is sure to be a hoot.  Then AirBnB is hosting a meet-up here at ON.  We love AirBnb’s mission and are super psyched to meet them.  Yoga, Happy Hour and Sweet Jams round out the week.  Great week, right?!

Busy week here! We’re starting a monthly Business Development Meet-up on Tuesday and then working on developing our own business on Thursday with a discussion about our new space at The Red Door.  The grand finale to the week will be brought to us by Charlie and his sweet jams.

When people ask us what differentiates a coworking space from other possible workspaces, we now have a way to quickly summarize:

Happy new year everyone! We are hitting the ground running in 2011 and are excited for the next steps towards opening another coworking space in Seattle.

We wanted to write with an update on the Neighborhood Campaign we launched in November. After hearing from approximately 120 potential members (whoa!), we can now confidently say that we are now focusing our efforts north of the shipping canal. The majority of our responses were for Ballard, Fremont, and Greenlake. We’re thrilled!

So what’s next? Well, we’d love to meet those of you who are really interested in our next space! We’d like to invite you to join us for a casual coworking meet up on Thursday, January 27th from 5-7pm at The Red Door in Fremont. We will give an update on our progress, and will talk about the future space and how it might work. Please RSVP by either adding yourself to the Facebook event or by e-mailing grow AT officenomads DOT com.

Hope to see you there!