A new season is here and at Office Nomads that means two things: Chris cleans his desk and we throw an open house. A clean desk for Chris is big enough news for those of us that work here already, but it’s the open house on Oct. 16 from 6 pm to 9 pm that really gets our juices flowing (and that gets Chris to clean his desk). It’s just such a great opportunity to invite our friends and family (that’s you!) to come check out and enjoy the space with us.

This open house, we have some extra added special reasons to celebrate. Along with opening up the space and expounding on the joys of coworking, we’re also hosting the launch party for a great new book called “My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire.” This extremely well-written and enjoyable book is written by our friend Michelle Goodman. In it she offers practical and actionable advice to women who know they are meant for more than a standard day job and may or may not know what they actually want to do instead. I;ve seen an advance copy, and I’ll tell you, truth be told, I think it’s a book anyone–woman or man–is going to get something valuable from, in large part because it is so enjoyable to read.

As if celebrating such a book that will help you start a career that will start you on a path to working independently isn’t enough to get you out this week, we’ve got another reason to come down to the open house: It’s our first anniversary! That’s right, just about one year ago Jacob and Susan threw open the doors to Office Nomads and started welcoming their first members. Since then, they’ve added so much to the space and brought so many cool people into the community that you’ll hardly recognize the place if you haven’t been in since we first opened.

So please join us sometime between 6 pm and 9 pm on Oct. 16 to celebrate, eat, drink, and enjoy each other’s company. We’ll see you then!

In my other life, I’m a reporter for a magazine called Sustainable Industries. It’s a magazine about, you guessed it, the business of sustainability. I get to learn about and report on tons of cool things, some of which relates to Office Nomads. For instance, in the next issue, I have a story coming out about smart development of dense communities where people are encouraged to live and work in the same neighborhood. Sound familiar? One of the most salient items I learned about is a small piece of software that I hope coworkers (and others) the world over download and try out: GreenPrint.

GreenPrint is a small, free software program that eliminates one of the most annoying and wasteful aspects of doing business in the digital age. It cuts down on the number of unneeded pages that get printed when you need to commit a Web page to paper. You know the problem: You go to print a page from the Web, say a map with directions, and there’s that second page with nothing but the URL and a line of text that says “Back to Top.” Totally frustrating. GreenPrint gets rid of those pages and allows the user to make a multitude of adjustments to the program to eliminate as many of those pages as possible. It can also provide a preview of all Web pages you want to print so you can be sure it’s not cutting anything important.

And, for the enviro-geeky among you, it keeps track of all the pages, trees and pounds of CO2 you’ve saved. Which will be a lot. Check out these facts from GreenPrint (they have more environmental facts available, if you’re interested).

• Average cost of a wasted page $0.06²
• Average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day, that’s 1,410 wasted pages per year!³
• The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year³
• While 3 out of 4 office workers print from the Internet, 90% of people with a printer at home print Internet content⁴
• 56% of people ages 45-54 print pages from the Internet for their archives, and only 33% of people ages 18-34 do the same4

So take a a few minutes on this Friday afternoon and download GreenPrint. You won’t be sorry you did. And neither will the rest of us!

Alright ladies and gentleman, you’ve been waiting.  Ever since we dropped our first post about the Office Nomads Top 5 (well, originally it was supposed to be a Top 10, but we got a bit choosy there at the end), many of you have logged your votes, argued for your favorites, and debated well to create the first ever Office Nomads Top 5.

Top 5 what you might ask?  Well, it’s a bit unclear, but the general idea is the Top 5 things we love about Office Nomads.

Here they are, in order of number of votes received:

[drumroll, please...]

1. Stella and Cortez! (we’ll assume people also dig Henrik & Ryan, their respective owners…)
2. Beer (who’s surprised there?)
3. Daily Firings (Charlie officially gets the most of those)
4. Zombie Proof (techically tied for third with Daily Firings)
5. Sarah/Jason/Derek (Susan, Jacob & Eric’s super alter-egos - keep posted for the coming comic strip)

Well, everyone, you done us all proud.  Can’t wait to see what the next round of voting looks like.

The photo above is of the original round of voting.  Personally, I was sad for several items who lost out, such as “80’s dance party,” “composting,” and “nerf gun.” But hey, that’s the thing with voting - I can’t win every time…

Happy Friday, y’all.