Today marks a big day in coworking history: it’s the 5 year anniversary of coworking!

5 years ago today, Brad Neuberg sparked a movement when he coined the word “coworking” and started Spiral Muse in San Francisco. From the start, coworking was crafted as an open model, and one that required participation in order to succeed.  Since Brad’s initial start with Spiral Muse, a community of coworking advocates has grown and flourished across the globe.  Spaces have opened – each with their own identity and goals – all connecting back to one another through the open-sourced Coworking Wiki.  Theory, practice, and advice has flowed freely at the Coworking Google Group, growing from a small handful of participants to a whopping 2700 voices. Spaces across the globe connect their members by participating in the Coworking Visa Program. And we’ve only just gotten started.

There are more people than I could ever possibly list who have contributed, shared and queried the Coworking Google Group, thus creating the coworking community we now have.  They have contributed selflessly, advised wisely, and questioned thoughtfully throughout the years, enabling each of us to strengthen our work in the coworking world.

These folks have not only contributed to the growth and success of coworking overall, but to the growth and success of our coworking space here in Seattle. It has been over three years since the idea of Office Nomads hatched between Jacob Sayles and I. When we first got talking about what it is we wanted to do, it was discovering the term coworking that enabled us to clarify our goals and to feel a sense of belonging in a business venture that had previously felt uncharted. Coworking became our compass. Being able to identify as a coworking space gave us meaning, a platform to launch from, and a community to provide us with the support we needed.

During those early days of building and then opening Office Nomads, the coworking community was our sounding board, our advisers, and most importantly our great friends. There will never be enough words of thanks to each member of the coworking community.

So here’s to you, coworking. We raise our glasses in true salute. Off to another great year!

Over the years, we have heard many work-from-home stories from folks who come through our coworking space.  Many start with “I love working from home, but…” followed by a long pause.  It seems everyone has something that makes working from home not work for them.  For some it’s the isolation of being alone all day without enough human interaction. For others it’s being a work-at-home parent with a child who doesn’t understand that “mommy’s working right now.”  And others got tired of waiting for their cat to come up with their next great business idea.

For whatever the reason, many work-from-homers need a break from time to time and that’s where we’re excited to come in and help out. Whether you need to escape the drudgery of the home office once a week or full-time, Office Nomads has some great options you can mix and match to fit into your schedule and budget.  Take a look at our updated membership & pricing page, and then switch back here for an example of what we are talking about.

A real world example

So, you’ve finally got your consulting business up and running, and things are going well.  You’ve got several clients, but are still looking for more.  You started up out of your living room, and occasionally head out to the coffee shop when you want to shake things up.  You are still excited to be your own boss and yet also feel like you’ve plateaued.  While seeking something to break the stalemate you look into coworking.

You don’t need a full-time office, but dropping in a few days a month would really help revive your productivity.  You decide to give things a try and sign up for a Basic membership at Office Nomads ($50/month).  While chatting with Alexandra at the front desk, you learn about Biznik, a Seattle-based networking group for indies just like you.  You whip up your free profile, go to a few events, and soon realize the value of upgrading to a Biznik Pro membership ($10/month).  Now you are gathering clients faster than ever, and more and more people know who you are and what you’re all about.  Realizing that you might want to register your consulting business someplace other than your home, you add a Business Identity Plan to your membership at Office Nomads ($35/month).

One month later, you’ve got an impressive new office to bring your clients to, a vibrant community of coworkers to collaborate with, a wider network of independent entrepreneurs to learn from, and a professional address associated with your business, all for less than $100/month.

Sounds pretty awesome, eh?

Again, check out our updated membership and pricing page, and then mosey on over to our list of friends & partners to see what other opportunities membership at Office Nomads might bring!

Thanks to Flickr user Fayez for use of the beautiful photo above under the Creative Commons license.

The summer open house is going to ROCK! Please join us this Thursday, July 8th from 6-9pm for an evening of photography, info on sharing resources in Capitol Hill, and all the usual shenanigans you find during our quarterly celebrations. RSVP here and let us know you’re coming! Here are all the details on the fun:

• New art! We are incredibly pleased to welcome Youth In Focus to the office walls for the next several months. Youth In Focus is a fantastic Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering urban teens, through photography, to experience their world in new ways and make positive changes in their lives.  As part of the Blitz! Capitol Hill Art Walk, we’re incredibly excited to host this new round of art!  You can read more about the featured show by clicking over to our Featured Artist page.
• Zipcar in the House! We’re not the only ones in town who think that sharing resources (like offices) is a great idea. We’ve teamed up with Zipcar to offer great discounts to our members, and hope to step forward even more to inspire our Capitol Hill neighbors to share with one another. Sharing resources like cars and offices means that we can each make less of an impact on the planet as an individual. Come and chat with the good folks at Zipcar at our event to learn more about what they’re doing in Seattle and in other great cities across the country!
• Coworking Seattle Meetup! If you’re interested in joining in for a great pre-event, please join us for the Coworking Seattle July meetup. Our group will be talking about great opportunities to share marketing costs, and how our little organization can help to promote coworking throughout our great city. You can RSVP via the Facebook Event if you’re up for joining us!

That’s about it!  If you’d like to join us, you can RSVP to let us know you’re coming (and help us determine how big the keg will be!).  All are most welcome, so bring a few friends along and make us a part of your summer Thursday night.

**Important PS: We’ve got A/C, so if you’re out there sweltering in the new-found Seattle heat, come on in for some relief and a cool refreshing drink.

Jacob and I spent the morning today at the WBR Business Transportation Forum, put on by the Seattle Climate Partnership and several other transportation-related organizations. We heard from various business as to what they were doing to improve their transportation-related carbon footprints, as well as Mayor Mike McGinn, who wanted to talk about a new city initiative called Walk Bike Ride. We were there because we believe that coworking is a 21st century solution to addressing climate change in our city.

Really? Coworking and climate change? Allow me to start from the top: the Seattle City Council recently announced that it is working towards becoming a carbon neutral city. In order to do this, the city is going to have to address every aspect of how the city runs day to day. Transportation is the single largest contributor to Seattle’s carbon footprint and as such is the logical first place to get started on the grand path of carbon neutrality.

Making a dent in carbon emissions when it comes to transportation requires an incredible toolbox of solutions – from improving public transportation to making our urban neighborhoods pedestrian friendly to enforcing strong emissions standard, and more. The list is endless. There is a lot of work to do, and with a truly strapped city budget, the work gets tougher and tougher each year.

What is the role of coworking in this scenario? Coworking is one tool in the toolbox of solutions to transportation issues. Coworking spaces are neighborhood-based, intentional workspaces (in contrast to workspaces like coffee shops) that enable local workers to work closer to home. Whether that means they trade their longer commute for a walk to the coworking space once a week or ditch their commute completely to become 100% remote, coworking spaces allow modern workers to work closer to home without having to face the isolation, distractions, and productivity challenges of working from home.

Here at Office Nomads we know that 40% of our current members come directly from our neighborhood (Capitol Hill Seattle).  Extend that radius to 3 miles from our office, and you capture 61% of our members. Because of the close proximity of our space for most of our members, that means they tend to arrive at our space by either walking, biking, or taking the bus (we’re currently working on gathering more data on that point – stay tuned). Today’s technology allows these individuals to work for clients from all over the world, but stay in their own neighborhoods while they do it. This method of working keeps local dollars local and builds healthier communities.

Office Nomads believes that coworking enables independent workers to make their work experience better.  Beyond the work environment, we also believe that if the majority of individuals using coworking spaces are doing so because there is a coworking space convenient to where they live, more coworking spaces would allow more workers throughout the city to stay in their neighborhoods to work. That is one of the reasons we started Coworking Seattle, and why we continue to encourage the growth of more coworking spaces in our city. More individuals choosing to telecommute or work within their own neighborhoods means less time wasted commuting (the average American spends 61 minutes behind the wheel each day according to Transporation Choices Coalition), and more productive time working, living, and contributing to local commerce.

So, consider coworking a tool.  Not a one-stop solution, but a great tool to use in the journey to make an impact on our city’s carbon footprint.  Interested in helping out?  Join in the conversations happening at Coworking Seattle via our Google Group.  We’d love to talk to you!

Thanks to flickr user Robert S. Donovan for use of the above photo under the Creative Commons License.

Office Nomads is proud to announce a new partnership with Zipcar, providers of shared vehicles to the masses. We are always excited to forge partnerships with fantastic services for our members, and this one gets us particularly stoked. Talk about a fantastic nomadic package – get a shared office space and along with it comes sweet deals on shared vehicles. Now you can kick your work-at-home habit goodbye AND ditch your car payment, all in one fell swoop. How great is that?

So here’s the deal: Office Nomads members (folks on one of our monthly plans) can now join the Office Nomads affiliate program. This gets members access to discounted annual rates, lower hourly Zipcar rates during the work week, and more.  It’s a fantastic offering for our members that helps to round out great access to shared transportation options.  Now you can walk, bike, take the bus, or grab a Zipcar to get yourself to and fro Office Nomads. As soon as the light rail gets here, we’re going to be unstoppable!

Thanks to Zipcar for sweetening membership at Office Nomads for us. Here’s to true nomadic joy!

That right there deserves a starfish high-five.

Well, everyone – it’s been a pretty darned significant week here at Office Nomads, as well as in the coworking world in general.  A few exciting things to note:

1. The acquisition of coworking.com by the coworking community. The coworking community received a great opportunity this week to collectively purchase the coworking.com domain to utilize as a tool for the coworking community. This has been a truly inspiring experience that both Jacob and I are honored to be a part of. The domain purchase has also kicked-off a continuing conversation on the future of coworking and how the larger community’s needs can be met.  Read a nice long post on the matter by Alex Hillman of IndyHall in Philadelphia. See the initial website by visiting http://coworking.com. If you’re into coworking and want to see the overall conversation about the site and what it means for our community, check out the Coworking Google Group and hop into the conversation.
2. Great response to our new membership rates! After only two weeks of our new Office Nomads membership rates, we’ve seen 11 new members at one of the new Part-Time rates. Whoa!  We’re taking that to mean that y’all dig the new rates, so we’ll keep ‘em around. As always, if you’ve been meaning to come on by and check out what’s happening at Office Nomads, now’s the time to take us up on that free trial day.  The office is full and brimming, even on a sunny Seattle Friday!

Jacob and I have also been brainstorming away with how to help coworking grow and thrive in Seattle.  If you’d like to join in the conversation, please join us at the next Coworking Seattle meetup on Thursday, February 25 at Indie Ballard.

Have a great weekend everyone. I can’t wait to see what happens next week!!

Thanks to flickr user digicla for use of the starfish photo above under the creative common’s license.

After receiving helpful feedback from our members and wider community, Office Nomads is proud to introduce some new membership levels! You can see full descriptions on our updated Memberships and Pricing page! Quickly, here’s what monthly membership now looks like at ON:

• Basic: 3 days/month – $50
• Part-Time: 5-15 days/month – $75-225
• Resident: 24/7 access – $475 + deposit

We hope that these new levels allow even more flexibility to potential members who are looking to be in the office on a regular basis.  As always, we know there is incredible value in a space that keeps its focus on the people, not on the pricing plans. We try to keep our membership plans simple, and designed to keep you focused on getting work done, not on whether you can afford to have another cup of coffee.

If you’ve been meaning to swing by and check out the office, now’s a great time!  Come on in for a tour of the space and we can chat you up about the new price points!

Wow! The January Open House was a great time!  Thanks to everyone who stopped by.  It was great to see everyone and catch up.

For those of you who missed out, I understand the weather was rather terrible that evening.  But, you missed out on some pretty spectacular fun.  Josh, from Bluebird Ice Cream, scooped out some incredible ice cream for everyone to try.  He very quickly ran out of the vegan coconut mint chocolate chip and there was a good reason why.  I had no idea vegan ice cream could be so fantastic!  The Stumptown ice cream and the snickerdoodle were also really delicious and it was all finished off by the time the night came to a close.    Mychal Richardson’s photography was a great conversation piece and had many people quietly going from one photo to the next reading about how each individual pictured fought for their rights.  I think we all came away inspired.  See more of his work on his website or stop by and check them out!

A big thanks must also go to Andy Aupperlee of Explosion 5000.  He took over the Green Room and shot portraits of our Open House attendees and their New Years Resolutions.  The results are rather amazing and you should make sure to read about it on his website and look at his Flickr page.

A big thanks to all of you who could come out.  Hopefully see you all at our next Open House!

Thanks to Flickr user Sukanto Debnath for use of the above photo through the Creative Commons License

Coworking continues growing in popularity, and demonstrates it’s “darlingness” in the press this past week with some great national coverage!  Coworking hit the big time in the Wall Street Journal as well as on NPR this week, featuring several spaces throughout the country.  Check out some of these excerpts and click on the links for full articles:

From the Wall Street Journal, New Year’s Eve Edition (with one minor error included – we do not have closed-door offices available):

For those who lack a conventional office, shared, or “coworking,” spaces promise to solve some of the dilemmas of working alone. These facilities provide environments where professional nomads can work in relative quiet and even socialize around the coffee pot, or copier.

…Both coworking spaces we tried in the techie Northwest were bigger. Seattle’s Office Nomads, located in youthful and artistic Capitol Hill, can accommodate several dozen workers with its mix of closed-door offices, open desks and lounge areas. Office Nomads didn’t require a reservation and won’t charge for the first visit. Office Nomads was well-lit, with abundant plugs and desk options.

Coworkers—as well as the site’s founders—introduced themselves and offered help. We weren’t sure if we visited on a particularly friendly day or if this was the norm. Office Nomads appeared to place an emphasis on creating a community for its members; there was a “State of the Nomads” monthly meeting at midday. A bulletin board listed in-house social options as well as visiting speakers slated to appear, and also featured quirky photos and fun facts about members. Office Nomads also offered the most extensive weekday hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

And today, our friends at New Work City were featured on NPR’s Morning Edition!

New Work City is part of a trend that started a handful of years ago on the West Coast. Newly mobile tech workers with laptops liked their freedom but still missed the human interaction they got from going to an office. So they formed meet-up groups: casual, once-a-week deals at different locations — sometimes even people’s living rooms. Today, Bacigalupo says more and more people are working independently — either by choice, a layoff or both.

“The same way that [during] the last century work shifted from blue collar to white collar,” Bacigalupo says, “I think we’ll be seeing in this century, we’re going to be moving away from the idea of a centralized Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 workplace, and we’ll be moving much more in this direction. People will work when they want where they want.”

All in all, quite a week for coworking.  As usual, if you’ve been meaning to get yourself out to a coworking space but somehow haven’t managed to, there has never been a better time than the present.  Make yourself a 2010 resolution to get more work done and have a better time doing it and get out to your local coworking space.  Find the one near you at the Coworking Wiki.

Office Nomads is in the midst of some end-of-the-year reviewing, plotting and planning. Part of the process this year included our first-ever Member Survey. After two years of coworking in Seattle, we’ve had a lot of informal feedback and have drawn some basic conclusions about what our members like and dislike. But we decided it was about time to ask them for their suggestions.  Their rants and raves.  In their words.

The results were fantastic. Our members  provided us with some excellent hard data on what makes our coworking space work, as well as some great feedback on what we can be doing better. Here are three big takeaways:

• We’ve said it before, but now we have some data to back it up: it’s all about the people.  When asked about the thing that members appreciate most about being at Office Nomads, they replied nearly in unison that it is the people that make it great. We can now say things like “the proof’s in the pudding.”  Well, maybe we can’t.  I’m not really sure what that means, actually.
• Our members are interested in figuring out even more ways to share resources (including people-powered resources such as bookkeepers and admin assistants), and pass business to one another.  From recommendations of even more way to highlight what it is that each of our members do, the Nomads spoke out loud and clear that they want to help one another out as much as possible.
• Working in community means being human.  When asked what our members would like to see improved, several of the responses revolved around typical shared space gripes: being mindful of one another when on long (and loud) phone conversations, remembering to do the dishes, cleaning up after one’s self.  These frustrations came as no surprise; we all take turns being more of a distraction than we normally are, forget to do a dish now and again, and decide to not replace the toilet paper roll when it runs out.  We’re all human. These challenges (while very real and requiring quick and responses by us as business owners) demonstrate another part of being in a community with one another.  It is about our members working towards the best way to work successfully with one another.

Our members continue to humble us with their thoughtfulness, willingness to help us make the business better, and spectacular senses of humor.  So with that, here are some of our favorite quotes from members:

“I feel like Office Nomads is saving my business. The isolation was killing my attitude and creativity. Thanks to Office Nomads I am not confusing my clients with my social opportunities (not as chatty, not as ‘charitable’ with my billing ), I have closer ties with downtown clients. I am quite productive at Office Nomads because everyone is there to get things done, not socialize all the time. A+ guys, really.”

“There is a lot of small business know-how which could be shared more.  The brown bags are a good start.  And the email list is good for the occasional recommendation query.
Maybe we could occasionally collect and share links to public stuff people are working on?  Blogs, artwork, trip photos, …  I feel like there’s a lot of creative work going on but I’m missing a lot of it because I can’t get to happy hour due to other commitments.  Maybe a “shameless self promotion” email list?”

“I just sat here for five minutes trying to think of something which I’d like to change which I actually want you to take on.  There are big “nice to haves” like more light in the cafe area, but I actually don’t want you to busy yourselves with big projects which I don’t think are worth the effort when things are running smoothly.
So, I guess if I have to choose then I’d like everyone to have free ponies.  With wings.”

Wow.  Thanks everyone.  We hear you!  Thanks for helping us continue to breathe new life into the business.

(In case you were wondering,  I used Google Forms to complete our survey, which was an absolute breath of fresh air after struggling with Survey Monkey. Thank goodness for Google’s helpful new tools, which bring together Google’s simplicity and exciting analysis capabilities. It saved me time, effort, and endless frustration.

In total, we had 22 members fill our our survey, representing several membership types including Basics, Residents, and those who have been Pink Slip Scholarship recipients.)

Thanks to Flickr user tonamel for use of the photo above under the Creative Commons license.