2011. What a wonderful year for coworking at Office Nomads! Here are 10 highlights of a fabulous year on Capitol Hill:

1. We searched and searched for a great place to open a Northend Office Nomads. While we didn’t find the perfect fit, we did connect with a great community of coworkers, and are continuing to keep our eyes open for an opportunity for a Northend space.
2. From building bikes that can survive in harsh rural African conditions to helping folks find clinical trials they can take part in, our members accomplished great things this year. They also contributed some fantastic things to the office, including fancy-shmancy signage. Office Nomads members, you guys rule.
3. There were pranks. Many pranks.
4. We geeked out on our own member data.
5. We celebrated Coworking Day on August 9th in Seattle, alongside of celebrations happening worldwide.
6. Jacob made us a Twitter Box!
7. We all got to work in different ways.
8. Nomads shared all the different ways they worked to negotiate their memberships with their bosses. This not only was really interesting to hear about, but has helped other Nomads (and coworkers around the world) negotiate coworking memberships of their own.
9. We got our travel on! Office Nomads represented at a variety of events around the country and the world, including Austin, Berlin, and LA.
10. Most importantly, we rounded out our awesome team with the addition of the absolutely fabulous Chelsea McClain. We could not be more excited to have her as a part of the Office Nomads team!

And that just about rounds it out. What an incredible year! Thanks to all of the Nomads, our friends, and our families for making Office Nomads all that it is.

Chelsea & Alex, community cultivating rockstars

See you all in 2012!

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!

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.

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!

I was honored to be invited to speak at the first Coworking Europe conference in Brussels. The conference was amazing. I love talking about coworking and how great was it to be in a room with 120 other coworking enthusiasts. There were a number of folks from the US but I was the only space owner. I met people from all over including Brussels of course, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russia, The Netherlands, lots of people from Germany and as far away as Latvia and the Ukraine. There were folks opening up spaces, established space owners, researchers, government officials, as well as representatives from Cisco, Medusa, and Steelcase.

The event was at The Hub Brussels which I have to say is an impressive coworking space. They have 5 very gracious hosts that work hard to make everything go smoothly for all their guests. The setup they have is a little different then how we do it at Office Nomads. For one, there are no resident desks. This leaves the room pretty flexible and everything is on wheels to make it even more so. We showed up on a Thursday morning and the office was in full swing. The next day, the first day of the conference, they had transformed everything into a large event space. Saturday, after everything was wrapped up, we watched as the hosts put it all back in a period of less then 15 minutes.

I talked fellow nomad Trevor into coming along so we could talk to folks about Nadine, the open source coworking software project we are working on. We also talked quite a bit about the CoworkingDB project and the topic of coworking affiliations and networks came up quite a bit. I’m still processing all the conversations so I’m not sure what to report on at this time.

After Brussels we went on to Amsterdam. We were stuck in our hotel for the first day due to stomach sickness but the second day we made it over to The Hub Amsterdam. From the Coworker.NL site, and from what we were told at The Hub, it seems there is quite a bit of coworking. I was not able to find anything on the coworking wiki and couldn’t get in touch with the folks behind coworker.nl. I would have liked to have more time to visit smaller independent spaces and make more connections in Amsterdam. It’s a great city and I would love to spend more time there.

Next stop was Berlin, where I am now. Alex Lang, one of the bright minds behind Cobot, put us up at his apartment which is quite nice. He’s traveling in Istanbul so we don’t get to hang out with him more. Today we are hanging out in Co.Up, his coworking space and there is a great atmosphere here. Lots of natural light and it didn’t take long before we were engaged in some great conversations with Thilo, Alex’s partner, and Jan, a member and developer for CouchDB. Yesterday I spent the day at Betahaus and had lunch with founders Christoph and Tonia. In the evening I went out to dinner with the team behind Club-Office. Between Co.Up, Betahaus, and Club-Office I’ve seen quite a spectrum of coworking here. If I lived in Berlin I’d have a hard time choosing between Betahaus and Co.Up since they both feel like home. Perhaps I wouldn’t choose.

We have a little more time here in Berlin and then Trevor flies back to Seattle and I fly to London on my own. I have plans to check out The Hubs and The Cube as well as Hub Culture, and Tech Hub which have nothing to do with The Hub. Also meeting with Richard from WorkSnug, an iPhone app that helps folks find a place to work.

Have you heard? Office Nomads is looking to open another coworking space in Seattle!  At our three year anniversary party, we took the opportunity to let folks know about our plans, and even created a fancy-shmancy web page to go along with it.

We’re incredibly excited about the opportunity of opening another space, and bringing coworking to another one of Seattle’s great neighborhoods. We’ve had an incredible time creating Office Nomads for the last three years, and are eager to kick-start another platform on which another incredible coworking community can grow.

You can read a whole bunch about our intentions around the second space by heading to the Grow Page and downloading one or both PDFs which overview our business and financial plans. We are in the beginning phases of the process, and are working hard to gather the necessary funds to open as well as reaching out to various communities to hear more about what they’d like to see in a coworking space.

For a couple of weeks now, we’ve been asking for community feedback on where we should open said second space. Here are some initial results in order of popularity:

1. Ballard
2. Fremont
3. University District
4. Green Lake
5. Belltown / Columbia City / West Seattle
6. Uptown (Lower Queen Anne)
7. Queen Anne
8. Georgetown
9. Magnolia
10. Wallingford

Wish you saw your neighborhood higher on the list? Well get your voice heard by heading over to the Grow Page and submitting your preference. Be sure to drop your e-mail address in the contact field so we can keep you posted on our progress.

Have other feedback for us?  Drop us an email via grow AT officenomads DOT com and we’ll be happy to start a conversation with you.

This time three years ago, Jacob and I were nervously working through the process of negotiating a great lease for our space here on Boylston Ave.  We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. All we had was a great idea, some fantastic friends to help us realize it, and finally, 5000 square feet to try and make it happen.

Three years later, we couldn’t be more excited about all that has happened at Office Nomads. Since that first day, more than 500 people have come through our doors – some staying for just a day, while others have been here nearly every day since we opened. We’ve seen new businesses hatched, clients wooed, friendships forged, and yoga habits begun. It has been an incredible journey thus far, and we are encouraged and bolstered by the energy and excitement that comes from our space each day. It is a dream come true.

With our sincerest gratitude to our members and friends, let us thank you (with beer and cake)!

Please join us at the office on Thursday, October 14th from 6-9pm for our next open house and anniversary party! It’ll be a special night and we’ll have some special announcements to make. Please RSVP here on Facebook. And feel free to invite a friend or two!

Today marks a big day in coworking history: it’s the 5 year anniversary of coworking!

5 years ago today, Brad Neuberg sparked a movement when he coined the word “coworking” and started Spiral Muse in San Francisco. From the start, coworking was crafted as an open model, and one that required participation in order to succeed.  Since Brad’s initial start with Spiral Muse, a community of coworking advocates has grown and flourished across the globe.  Spaces have opened – each with their own identity and goals – all connecting back to one another through the open-sourced Coworking Wiki.  Theory, practice, and advice has flowed freely at the Coworking Google Group, growing from a small handful of participants to a whopping 2700 voices. Spaces across the globe connect their members by participating in the Coworking Visa Program. And we’ve only just gotten started.

There are more people than I could ever possibly list who have contributed, shared and queried the Coworking Google Group, thus creating the coworking community we now have.  They have contributed selflessly, advised wisely, and questioned thoughtfully throughout the years, enabling each of us to strengthen our work in the coworking world.

These folks have not only contributed to the growth and success of coworking overall, but to the growth and success of our coworking space here in Seattle. It has been over three years since the idea of Office Nomads hatched between Jacob Sayles and I. When we first got talking about what it is we wanted to do, it was discovering the term coworking that enabled us to clarify our goals and to feel a sense of belonging in a business venture that had previously felt uncharted. Coworking became our compass. Being able to identify as a coworking space gave us meaning, a platform to launch from, and a community to provide us with the support we needed.

During those early days of building and then opening Office Nomads, the coworking community was our sounding board, our advisers, and most importantly our great friends. There will never be enough words of thanks to each member of the coworking community.

So here’s to you, coworking. We raise our glasses in true salute. Off to another great year!

Eric Von Blon

Member Since: The beginning

If you have been in Office Nomads, you have met Eric.  It would be near impossible to miss him.  He’s a bit of a favorite around the office.  In the early morning he is the one who comes in and makes Office Nomads presentable for all of you.  He is also known for cooking up some mean waffles which pairs nicely with the hot coffee he gets going for all of you.

Eric came upon us after a long friendship with Jacob and a serious need for a place outside of his home.  Jacob told him about his plan to open Office Nomads and Eric jumped. “I had been working from home for 8 months and was going absolutely mad. It was really serendipitous.”  And so, Eric showed up and has been part of Office Nomads ever since.

In actuality Eric is trained as a Circuit Provisioner.  “I wouldn’t know where to begin to actually explain it,” he confessed.  The quick explanation involved ordering, tracking, and turning-up telecommunication circuits.  Yes, turns out Eric is a complex individual.  He is on the hunt now for a fresh gig in that field and until then he has taken up many activities to fill his time.  He does Quality Assurance work for Ryan Salva and Capitol Media.  That entails reviewing the websites they have designed and making sure nothing is broken.  At the same time he is a rock star in the house cleaning biz.  A number of Nomads have hired him and have welcomed Eric to work shirtless (yup) to make their homes sparkling.

If you haven’t befriended Eric yet, you really should.  He always seems to be involved in interesting stuff.  Many of us have seen the photos of him from the Zombie Walk in Fremont.  The cocollage features him taking a bit of Jacob’s head, it appears.  He acts as Fire Safety for Fire Spinners of Spinnery Arts.  That really means that he makes sure that nobody is lit on fire or hurt in any other way so, in other words, he’s the most important guy to have around when playing with fire.

Next time you’re in Office Nomads, make sure you chat up Eric.  Maybe he’ll make you waffles and tell you about the fancy chickens his mother paints.  Maybe you’ll hear a funny story from Burning Man.  Whatever the topic, it’s sure to be interesting.  That’s just how Eric rolls.