It’s a proud day at Office Nomads, when we are able to share exciting publicity not only about ourselves, but one of our fantastic members! In TWO Seattle magazine articles this month, Office Nomads got a chance to shine.

Office Nomads was featured under the category “Laudable Leaders” in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine for their “14 Hottest Companies” feature. It was an honor to be compared to many local companies who are also doing great work (including Susan’s “other” job – Cascadia Consulting Group!).

Chris Haddad, our inaugural member, was on the COVER of Seattle Business Monthly! Congratulations, Chris! Office Nomads was also featured in the article, along side other coworking spaces such as My Day Office and Cafe Zoka.

We’re feeling pretty darned proud heading into the weekend!

I’ve been terribly remiss in posting this and for that, I’m sorry, but it’s worth the wait, I promise.

Awhile back, the Not An MBA blog started working on a book about coworking. The fodder for that book is a series on the blog called Your Story where they are collecting and posting the stories of many coworking pioneers (and coworkers). The first installment on the site was Susan’s story about the start of Office Nomads. It’s a really nice read because Susan’s writing sounds just like she is: authentic, excited and ready for the next thing that comes at her.

The second installment was Jacob’s story about the start of Office Nomads. Like Susan, his telling of the tale gives you a taste of what it’s like to know Jacob. He is excited, willing to try new things and also ready for the next thing to come at him.

Since I am posting about Not An MBA (a great site, by the way), they have a newer post up there right now about the impact of coworking spaces on the design of in-house offices. According to the original article on Business Week:

As part of the project, between 25% and 50% of Intel’s 1,150 lawyers, marketers, and engineers working in these buildings will give up their assigned cubes. Instead, they will store their personal belongings in lockers and grab desks, whiteboards, and overstuffed armchairs in more colorful, Starbucks-like common areas on a first-come-first-gets-the-space basis.

It’s really interesting to think that these disparate, independent coworking spaces are infiltrating the minds designing spaces for corporate behemoths. Who wants to bet it’s because those designers are probably contractors who work in coworking spaces?

So, yeah, it’s really nice that coworking is getting all the coverage it has been of late. In the past few months there’s been The Times article (both of them), Mother Jones, CNNMoney, The SF Chronicle… Am I missing anything?

But you know how I measure the success of a concept? If it makes it into the pages of The New Yorker, the world’s single best magazine. If they notice something, it’s worth noticing. In the March 10 issue, they noticed coworking. Well, the fiction writer, Hari Kunzru who wrote their short story noticed coworking:

Raj’s office wasn’t what I’d expected. I was imagining—I don’t know what I was imagining. A flashy loft. A life-style statement. It turned out to be a shared suite, a dreary place with grubby tube lights and contract carpeting, where freelancers rented desks, huddling together to make themselves feel less alone.

It’s not the prettiest picture of coworking, I’ll admit, but the whole story is dark like that, so it fits. Anyway, I thought it was neat!

<em> That’s Susan reading the New Yorker story on a Friday afternoon.</em>

Howdy folks. A few little goodies from Office Nomads here on this rainy, dreary Friday. Even when the weather is bad, things are pretty good here at the office.

Meet the Sandwich Board!
Oh look at how fancy we be! Office Nomads now has our very own sandwich board, which is out there in the world to draw in the crowds to our ever-more-gorgeous office. Come out and take a look someday – the board loves it when people stop by to say hello. (Photo taken out on our nearby corner. That is not our building in the background – it’s R Place, a local dance haven.)

Ski Bums Shop Night
Ski bums invaded the office late last night, turning the cafe into a veritable ski shop, full of p-tex repairs, edging, waxing, and the ever-coveted cork rub. Classic ski flicks were shown on the “big screen” and a good time was had by all.

Gifts from Nomads
Everyone here at Office Nomads brings a certain something to the office. Witty banter, fabulous website design advice, superior editing skills, and sometimes…bacon mints. That’s right – bacon mints. Your guess is as good as mine, but if you’d like to give ‘em a try, we dare you.

Many of the big names in coworking descended on Austin for the SxSW conference this week.  To kick everything off, we all met up at Hotel San Jose to put some faces to names and talk about what we are doing.  The whole thing was arranged by Julie Gomoll and the people working to open Austin’s first coworking space LaunchPad.  Alex Hillman from IndyHall in Philadelphia was there as was Tara Hunt from Citizen Space in San Francisco.  Marcus Nelson from Citizen Desk came all the way from Wausau but he was bested by Patrick Tanguay and Daniel Mireault from Station-C who came in from Montrea.  But the furthest fliers were the guys from La Cantine in Paris.  Louis Montagne even complemented me on my outrageous French accent.  I got to meet Todd and Andrew from NonAnMBA who are in an ongoing coworking blog frenzy. I spent a good portion of the day yesterday with Marcus Nelson, Hillary Hartly (Citizen Space), and William Lawrence (Santa Cruz) and today I’m off to my first BarCamp event.  First I need to find coffee, something they don’t seem to worship here as much as we do in Seattle.

Seems Office Nomads may have unkowingly placed our fingers on the pulse of this whacked-out, work-addled society. I noticed while perusing the New York Times that one of their top-10 most e-mailed stories right now is about this very subject.

“What’s going on now is insane,” he said, assuring me that he used the term intentionally. “Living a good life requires a kind of balance, a bit of quiet. There are questions about the limits of the brain and the body, and there are parallels here to the environmental movement.” (Dr. Levy coined the term “information environmentalism.”)

The commentary was written by Mark Bittman who describes his efforts to escape work by taking a true day off each week after years of bieng the kind of guy who checks his e-mail in bed at night and as soon as he wakes up in the morning. For the past six months though, come Friday night, he’s been shutting off his phone, his Blackberry, his computers, his TVs and even his MP3 players and disconnecting.

It’s a pretty interesting piece. Lines like, “…I realized that a 70-hour week was nearly as productive as an 80-hour one…” make it a great example of why we put together the last post on finding a work-life balance. I also have to say that I love two terms I learned in the article: “secular sabbath” and “information environmentalism.”

Thanks to Flickr user IamSAM for the use of the photo.