Office Nomads started the process of removing a troublesome wall in our space. For us, this is not just the removal of a physical wall, but a social barrier that has been perplexing us for some time now. Check out the video below on the first step we took towards taking walls down in our space.
Again, taking this wall down is more than just to complete another successful construction project at the office. We’re taking this wall down because:
Coworking spaces are not about walls. In fact, most coworking spaces, ours included, have as few walls as possible. Walls (cubicle or otherwise) separate us from one another and create barriers to meeting each other. This wall had only served to separate some of our members from one another, so we took it down.
Walls = isolation. The majority of our members come to our space to get away from walls that isolate them from the rest of their community. We found that even on days where the rest of our space was brimming with coworkers, the closed-door room in our space rarely saw much traffic. No one wanted to be isolated back there, as it meant they missed out on the buzz and energy happening in the rest of the space. Watching people sardine themselves next to one another while there was plenty of available space in the back room only encouraged us to take that sucker out.
Natural light is awesome! This separated room didn’t get nearly as much natural light as the rest of our office, making it a much less desirable area to work in. So we knocked that sucker down and let the light flood in!
We are only partway finished the project and are excited to take the next step (reframing, finishing, etc.). We’ll keep you posted!
Yeee-haw! Susan’s first blog post EVER. I don’t know about you all, but this is a pretty big day for me. I’m surrounded by bloggers daily, and am excited to get my first thrills from publishing my thoughts out on the world wide web.
On a more news-worthy note, a few fun things have happened today at the space. I thought I’d share.
First, I painted another set of walls. We’ve been hemming and hawing over how to get some color in the space to make it feel more comfortable, and it is a spectacular feeling to get the process get started. With the amazing help of our good friend and amazing interior designer Piper, we’ve chosen a few great colors and have started making progress. Today was another set of brown walls – chocolate-colored goodness. Check it out:
Second, thanks to my good friend Drew, I came across a noteworthy article I thought I’d share. The P-I reported on a local gentleman who procured an award-winning vehicle from a 1970′s competition for gas efficient vehicles – this one racked up an amazing 376 mpg! Talk about exciting, and this with 230-plus-year-old technology. You can find the full report here, but this is a particular section I enjoyed:
The mileage from the mostly stock four-cylinder came from heating and insulating the fuel line so the gas entered the engine as lean vapor. Then they drove the car on a closed course at a steady 30 mph.
So some of that wouldn’t work in the street, McMullen concedes. But if the car were made more drivable and lost 200 mpg — it still would get 176 mpg.
“Here’s a car that was 20 years old at the time of the contest that was the project of a couple of guys in a garage,” he said. “You can’t tell me we can’t do better than this with cars today.”
Here at Office Nomads, there is always talk about ways in which we can help to make an impact on climate change and to help create a more sustainable neighborhood in Capitol Hill. Although personally I believe that one of the keys to moving forward is to move away from individual cars and really start digging into better public transportation, I thought this article was pretty uplifting. Though y’all might get a kick out of it.
That’s it for now. Happy Thursday, folks. Over & out.
