Last night Tara Brown hosted a meeting here at Office Nomads to kick off planning for Seattle’s first Bar Camp. BarCampSeattle is going to be on June 14th and 15th at a location that will soon be determined. The first meeting was mostly to get the ball rolling and see how excited people are. We filled our main conference room and despite the high turn out we actually got a lot done too! Priority #1 is to find a venue and we have some great leads. Next we will focus on sponsorship and promotion. If you are interested in helping plan we are having our next meeting here on May 6th, 7PM. Contact Tara to let us know you are coming. You can also join the Facebook Group.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of taking a spectacular road trip down to the ol’ birthplace of coworking – beautiful San Francisco. As I predicted, as soon as I crossed over the California border I was greeted with sunny skies, warm(er) air and spectacular views everywhere from Mt. Shasta to the bay area itself. What a treat (yes, I heard it snowed in Seattle while I was gone…suckers)!

On my drive down and while I was in town I had the pleasure of dropping in on some of our fellow coworking spaces (confirming that Office Nomads folk really DO love field trips).

First up was a quick visit to Souk to say hello to Julie and the coworkers in the Pearl District in Portland. It was a treat to get to be in her space and to truly see how the personalities and styles of space owners are reflected in their spaces. Souk is cool – beautiful whites and blues contrasting against their exposed brick walls. Julie was busy welcoming a large event happening in their main area, but took the time to swing me through the space. Thanks, Julie!

While in the bay area, I was able to spend a little bit of time at both Sandbox Suites and Berkeley Coworking. Roman took me around Sandbox Suites bright and early on Monday morning. We took a turn around the space, I got two-floor envy (man, how great is it to have a balcony??), and we talked a bit of coworking shop, which is always a pleasure with another space owner. Thanks to Roman and his partner Sasha for creating such a fun, welcoming space!

After Sandbox, I swung out to Berkeley on my way back towards I-5 and visited with Sean and Brian, two of the charming regular residents at Berkeley Coworking. Again with two-floor envy… These two gave me a warm welcome and showed me around their collaborative space. They were also kind enough to point me in the direction of the popular Berkeley Bowl, home of spectacular veggies shopping that kept me well fed on the drive home (and avoiding the ever-tempting bags of Combos in various gas stations on the way back…).

Then it was back on the highway for 12 hours of completely unsustainable road adventures for Susan. Hey, environmentalists get to endulge from time to time too…

Thanks again to all of the other coworking folks for their hospitality over the weekend – know that we always welcome field trips to Office Nomads!

There’s a trick I use as a writer when I have to finish a piece, but my brain is just not ready to engage. I write something else instead. I’ve found that if I shift away from focusing on whatever piece I need to get done and just write something, anything, it gets the blood flowing. That’s why I am writing this post. I have a huge feature due in a few hours that’s only half written, but I can’t seem to get into it right now.

Conveniently, the problem I am having getting going is tied directly to coworking. See, this article has kept me working at home for almost two weeks now because I’ve needed to do a ton of interviews and like a schmuck, I have a land line that I’ve never looked into transferring to the office. (I’m looking as soon as this piece is done, believe you me.) The effect on my mood and my health is very clear. I’m tired all the time and I feel on the verge of getting sick. Worse yet, now that the piece needs to be done, getting the words onto paper is like pulling teeth. Because there’s nothing and no one else here to stimulate me, I’m being distracted by online environmental games, political gossip and of course e-mail.

I thought a clearer case for couldn’t be made till Jacob sent me a link to a blog where the need to leave your home office was summed up perfectly:

When you’re all alone in a home office day after day, you can spend whole afternoons staring into refrigerators or examining suspicious skin discolorations. Isolation breeds inertia, and some freelancers experience a sudden loss of creativity or productivity, as if their abilities were somehow tied to the social expectations of working with a team.

I may not be cleaning the refrigerator (takes a lot more to get me to do that), but inertia has set in. At least I’m writing now so I can go and try and get that draft done. Just 1,000 words to go.

With that, I’ll leave you with a picture of my only company during these lonely two weeks. I miss you Office Nomads!

We didn’t have permission slips signed by our parents and there was no school bus, but Susan, Jacob and I took a field trip this week to check out the offices of StartPad, another coworking site in downtown Seattle.

When I first walked into the offices, the feeling I got was so similar to what I felt when I’d walk into my offices at Amazon.com back in their start-up days. I felt as if I were suddenly transported back to the late 90s. I don’t mean to say that the place feels behind the times. It’s just that there’s a certain kind of energy around tech start ups and StartPad is awash in it because it’s a coworking space geared toward tech startups.

Honestly, it was really neat to be surrounded by that kind of energy again. The people all had harried looks in their eyes and computer equipment seemed to be everywhere (though orderly). The offices were well laid out with lots of discrete areas so no one group would ever feel like they were on top of another. One major difference with Office Nomads is that there are private offices with walls and doors. The ones I saw all have windows on the hallway side so no one ever has to feel totally isolated. A nice touch.

Susan, Jacob, Mike (who owns StartPad), his office manager Zach, and I hung around in one of their conference rooms talking about each company’s origins and reasons for being. As I said, StartPad exists to give software and Internet startups (20 so far) a place to come and work mostly because Mike has spent a lot of time starting his own companies. They hold a bunch of educational events for that community (including one on setting up a corporate structure on April 29) and are also compiling a database of service providers and references for companies that can serve their community.

I have to be honest, not being a software guy, my eyes kept wandering to the foosball table in the corner. I wanted to try and get a game in, but our parking expired before I could work it into the conversation. Ah well, next time.

Later in the day, the StartPad guys came up to Office Nomads to join us for Monday lunch (“Brought to you by Wednesday“). Susan and Jacob sprung for pizza and, as is the norm for our weekly office lunches, we all spent a lot of time sitting around the fancy, new conference table Susan and Jacob built laughing and joking. (Though there was no talk about Britney Spears for once.) Afterwards, Susan and Jacob took the guys on a tour of the space and spent some more time talking with them about various visions and hopes for Seattle’s coworking community.

Of course, it’s the idea of community that’s drawn all of us to coworking, so it was nice to get some time to create some with another space in the city. Hopefully, a few more will pop up that have the same desire as Susan and Jacob and we’ll take some more field trips.

Thanks is due today to the great Austin, TX coworking space LaunchPad for a really good interview with Susan and Jacob they put up today.

It’s always fun to see what people want to know about this place and the team that put it together. It’s even more interesting when the questions come from folks who are also trying to set up their own coworking space. The interview contains some interesting nuggets from Susan and Jacob about their thoughts on the coworking “movement,” their strengths and weaknesses, and their feelings around the evolution of Office Nomads’ space. Well worth a read!

Following up on Susan’s Office Nomads news news at the end of last week is an interview with Susan herself on the Small Business Guru Podcast. It just keeps rolling around here!