Tacking Our Ship: How We Sail Through the Winds of Change

"DSC04125" by Felix Dance is licensed under CC BY 2.0

2020 says: we’re officially in uncharted territory.

(Yep, I’ll be making lots of sailing references in this important update from Office Nomads.)

COVID-19 has brought with it the winds of change. Instead of letting them blow us off course, the Office Nomads community is tacking into the wind to ensure we can continue to sail onward.

As this global pandemic has settled in as a long-term reality in all of our communities, the question “how do we make it through this?” has been top of mind for everyone, including those of us at the helm at Office Nomads.

We have made a very simple and honest conclusion: we will get through this by focusing our efforts on what we can do instead of trying to nibble around the edges of what we can’t do.

What does that mean for our coworking community?

What we can’t do right now is to operate an in-person shared workspace. For the safety of our members, their families, and their loved ones, we know it is best to close our physical operation until the time comes when we can safely open an office again. One of the central components of that decision was in reviewing the guidelines of the phased re-opening here in WA: the overarching guidance still says “if you can work from home, you should work from home.”

We take those guidelines at their word. We need to give each other a wide berth. If there’s one thing that all of our members share, it is that they have the ability to work from anywhere. Our members just prefer to work alongside one another. But right now our preferences aren’t nearly as important as the safety of our communities.

Office Nomads will be closing our physical space at 1617 Boylston Ave. at the end of July.

It should go without saying that decision brings us deep sadness. For 13 years we have been working hard to help our members create something better together. So much of that work has centered around our physical location in Capitol Hill. We liked it best when it was full to the gunwales. We will miss our home deeply and are laying the groundwork for our return as soon as it is safe to do so.

Now, what can we do?

We can tack through the winds of change.

Office Nomads is tacking through the winds of change by going fully remote. This will not be just a plug-and-play replace-IRL-with-Zoom scenario (though like so many, it certainly started that way). We are adapting our systems to stay hard and fast to our values and our mission. Membership engagement will look a little bit different, but we hope it feels familiar.

Online membership to Office Nomads includes access to our digital community of Nomads, online events, and the opportunity to gather in-person for unique events once we are safely able to do so. So far we’ve learned that staying connected to each other is what is making having to stay apart more tolerable. So we’ll continue to connect, in small, important ways.

We hope you’ll join us if you haven’t already. Because this adventure is only just underway.

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P.S. I want to thank Captain Amanda for her nautical term guidance and inspiration for this post. It made a very hard thing to write a little less hard, and a little fun.

P.P.S. Did you know that Mark Twain is actually a nautical term?!? Thanks James for that one.