Happy Holidays from Office Nomads!  We hope you are all enjoying a relaxing holiday wherever it is you may be.  We could say it a thousand times and still not feel like we’ve said it enough – thank you all for your incredible support over the last year+!  We absolutely could not have come so far without each of our members, friends, family members, and neighbors supporting us along the way.  We are so proud of how much we’ve grown over the last year, and can’t wait to see what happens in the space next.

FYI, our space is currently closed to drop-in members until the holiday season is wrapped up - we’ll be open again in 2009! We hope that in your time away from the office you’re having plenty of fun!

(I sure am – here’s a little snapshot of the fun happening for me in Philadelphia with my family…)

Happy Holidays again – please be safe, have fun, and we’ll see you in the new year!

The view off the back porch where I'm stuck today.

Seattle rarely gets snow and when we do, it’s usually a dusting or a quick dump and then a just-as-quick melt. So when we get an actual, real live snowstorm–as we are right this very second–it’s a big deal. Because snow is rare here, even when there’s just a chance of it, the city shuts down. There’s 2-3 inches even in the low-lying parts of Seattle today, so going anywhere further than a walk is nigh on impossible.

In other words, snow in seattle is a capital-E Event. It’s one you really want to talk about because it is such an Event, so this morning, I naturally wanted to talk snow. But because it’s snowing and I do not live within walking distance of Office Nomads, so I’m working at home today, all alone. I’m left with no one to talk to about the snow, or call to the window when some crazy-ass driver in an “all-wheel drive” car skids down the hill. It made me realize again how lonely it is to work at home.

A sparsely populated ON waves hi to me. Not a replacement for live interaction, but cute.

When big Events happen in life, whether they are snow storms, weddings, new jobs or whatever, you want to share them with the people who make up your community. In this culture where we work as hard and as many hours as we do, the office is a prime source of community and the loss of it–even for a day–is visceral. I really miss Office Nomads and all the people there today so we could share this event together. Communicating online, while fun, just isn’t cutting it. I wish I could talk to them, stare out the window at the pretty snow with them, and slack off with hot buttered rum and watch Hulu with them.

Office Nomads is my community and I feel like I should be there for this. I miss you guys!

Awww. I miss you too desk.

It may seem silly to you, but for some of us the question “Does coworking have a hyphen?” is a big deal.  When I first came into Office Nomads and began writing for them, it was something we discussed for a long time. We ended up saying no to the hyphen. Although my initial instincts were for the hyphen, I now like it without. Independents Hall’s Alex Hillman is firm in his stance that coworking does not have a hyphen while most media outlets (especially the older, mainstream ones) are in the it-has-a-hyphen camp (read: co-working).

But I have to admit that I still feel a bit of ambiguity about the issue. I thought it worth sharing since Alex is initiating another push on the issue and it seems like the good thing to do to make sure everyone is aware of the battle they’re entering.

My understanding comes from the fact that I work as a journalist for a living and as such, I can tell you exactly why coworking appears and will continue to appear as “co-working” in most publications.

It’s the fault of the Associated Press Style Guide which is pretty much the base of every newspaper and magazine style guide out there. It has rules for just about anything from how to refer to Ford Motor Co. on the second reference (“Ford” not “FMC”) to when and how what state names should be abbreviated (There are eight that are not abbreviated: the five with five or less letters and the two that are not on the continent) to punctuation rules.

The copy editor who follows AP (and most of them follow some form of it) is going to default to a hyphen because AP says to:

co- Retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives and verb that indicate occupation or status: co-worker

Like it or not, any copy editor who sees that is going to change a reference to coworking to co-working. There’s even a note that many of the “co-” words that are listed in AP are in the dictionary without a hyphen, but are given one by AP in the “interest of consistency.” So even changing the dictionary won’t help, as Alex suggested. We’ve got to get the AP to notice. And they’ve got their hands full with a failing business model to manage and a world of news to cover so it may be a long road.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and this one can be no exception. If coworking becomes well known enough by the public as opposed to co-working, media will have to change. But for now, big, old media is going to hyphenate and the smartest course of action may be to try and educate the smaller, online, and less formal media covering us.

One last word, then I’ll get off my geeky punctuation soapbox: It’s important to note that most likely, it is not the reporter’s fault if there is a hyphen. A reporter might write it without a hyphen and may even note that the word is spelled without a hyphen according to the industry, but if the copy editor decided that a hyphen is warranted, then there is nothing a beat or features reporter can do. (If someone like Thomas Friedman writes about coworking (And he should. It’s right up his alley.), he can put up a good fight with his copy editor and might get a change, so someone should pitch him on the idea.)

I took the image from a really interesting post by Jason Kintzler on FastCompany.com about the relevance of AP in the new-media/Web 2.0 world. It’s worth the read.

  

Greenwood Collective

It was an amazing weekend despite the crazy weather.  On Friday, Caroline and I went to the Greenwood Art Walk starting at The Greenwood Collective.  GC is a beautiful space and we were both very impressed.  I got to talk with Brett Schwagger, about the new expansion into the basement and how the year has been going (they opened the same time we did).    I am very excited by what they have going on over there and I will be keeping a keen eye on their event calendar.  

Saturday Arcania Wellness treated the nomads to a spa day complete with massage, facials, ionic foot baths, and energy work.  The space is so peaceful and the practitioners were so pleasant.  They fed us and took care of us all day.  I would like to extend a special thank you to Jacob Caldwell who runs the space.  It was wonderful way to spend a Saturday and I’m grateful we were invited.

When I tell people I’m a journalist for a magazine with offices in Portland and San Francisco leaving just me in Seattle, the assumption is that I work at home. I then explain Office Nomads and coworking. More and more,  people realize they’ve heard of us or at least the concept of coworking. Rarely, I think, do they really get what coworking is. If you’re involved in coworking at all, you know how badly I want the questioners to understand that coworking is more than shared office space. That it’s community, incubation, colloboration, happy hours and zombie plans (more on that later).

Patrick from The Movement in Toronto has put together a podcast that is his attempt to explain coworking to the world. Actually, through a podcast he runs called Prototype, he’s letting some of the players in the movement explain it themselves. I just listened to the first two episodes and absolutely adored it. The show is a collection of voices from across the globe (literally) explaining the different feelings, set-ups, members, designs, business plans and other features of their coworking spaces. The result is an amazing cornucopia of the coworking possibilities that are out there. As different as each space and person sounds, they also all sound alike. As Patrick says on the Prototype blog:

In speaking with a friend about the podcast, I explained the amazing lesson was that all of these people sound like they’re describing the same place. In his subtle and knowing way, he responded: What I hear is that they are the same people.

Each episode is just a collection of the voices from different spaces explaining their space seemingly without prompting. That tight juxtaposition is what makes the differences and similarities so apparent. Butted up against each other, you hear statements such as:

“It’s shared office space.”

“We have a hot-desking policy…there’s no set desks.”

“It’s like a mobile phone tariff across the month.”

“You can be a tenant here if you can tell me why you’re a social innovator.”

or

“The space is a great loft.”

“We built a board room/library/kitchen that people can get some privacy in.”

“When we moved in, it was a bad looking, 80′s sort of of office.”

“The front door and the back door are both steel doors and they are zombie safe. They’re rated up to 50 zombies. We also have a zombie attack plan.”

“We’ve got  nice open plan kitchen and just behind that we have got a library area. It’s sort of cushions. People sleep in there, meditate in there.

It’s all so different, so unique. We are, after all, hearing from Colab, Office Nomads, Citizen Space, Station-C, Workspace, The Hub, and The Center of Social Innovation. And yet, they’re all similar in a way because wherever you go, coworking is obviously needed in a variety of different formats. I’m looking forward to learning more about the other spaces around the world, and to using this podcast to help explain the varieties of coworking  when I’m asked about it again in the future.

So you want to start a business but don’t know where to, um, start? Trust me, many of us at Office Nomads have been there before. Heck, even Jacob and Susan who run the place still ask for advice and help from all sorts of people (like their own personal blogger, ahem!). Working in close proximity with a bunch of other folks who are at various stages of building their own businesses is a great reason to spend time at Office Nomads, but sometimes you need a little bit more direction than a casual chat with the person at the next desk. Thankfully Marcello at Seattle 2.0 put together The Ultimate Guide for the New Entrepreneur in Seattle, an excellent resource for anyone trying to create a business using just their wits and a great idea in the Emerald City.

Along with listing a number of great places to get work done, Marcello also identifies must-read books, some lawyers to talk to (while also explaining why you SHOULD talk to a lawyer), where to networkand who to meet. It’s a great read and should be a part of any Seattle entrepreneur’s research.

When I first came into Office Nomads a little more than a year ago, I’d been working nomadically for about six months. During that time I tried working in coffee shops and libraries in an effort to get myself out of the house and, as one of our members likes to say, “put some dam pants on already.” While the strategy gave me a reason to get dressed each day, it didn’t help me get any actual work done. As a reporter, I often have to do phone interviews. In coffee shops it’s just hard to hear and in libraries, well you can’t talk on a cell phone.

That’s why one of my biggest reasons for working out of Office Nomads is being able to talk on the phone when I need to. However, phone conversations seem to be a point of concern that potential Nomads have when they come to check out the office. I think it’s because of the very open floor plan and lack of cubes here. “How is it when people are on the phone? Is it loud? Can you get work done?” they ask.

It’s a valid concern, certainly, but in my experience, it’s not one you have to worry about for two reasons. First of all, I have a hard time myself when people are talking around me and I’m trying to get work done, and I never find myself bothered at Office Nomads. Sure, people chit-chat and talk on the phone around me, but it is certainly no more distracting than being in a busy coffee shop and if it is, I can always pop in some headphones and tune it all out. I know the same is true for others.

The other reason is that all office workers deal with the ambient noise no matter what office we’re in and Office Nomads is no different, open floor plan notwithstanding. It’s no louder here than it ever was when I worked in a cube farm at a dot com in the late 90s or in a busy non-profit in the early ’00s because people are considerate. Most calls they take are short and to the point and for long ones, we all get up and find a quiet corner or a conference room to camp in for a little bit.

In the long run,  the sound of other people getting work done isn’t distracting because being around that energy is why we’re all here. After all, as Jacob says, “It’s an office, not a library.”

The picture “”tack of Phones’” was taken by Flickr user nedrichards.