Sunday Jacob and I got our first chance to take Office Nomads out for a spin in the world of sustainability. And what a day it was! As part of Sustainable Capitol Hill, we’ve been spending a lot of time recently helping to plan “Imagine Capitol Hill.” The day could not have been better – incredible weather, fun participants, and a bustling farmer’s market to join in made the day a smashing success. The day was filled with cooking demonstrations from local chefs, live local music, recycled art projects, and incredible learning experiences with local environmental- and community-minded organizations. This festival was built to be different than traditional sustainability festivals. We wanted more than just another pamphlet shuffling event. Building a sustainable community means more than just recycling and walking more. It is about creating a supportive community that collaborates together to make meaningful change. So what better way to get the community out and about interacting together than inviting them to eat together, learn together, and even dance together? (the photo above shows free salsa lessons from the amazing folks at Century Ballroom)

Office Nomads was psyched to demonstrate how we contribute to building a local community of independent workers, this time with a focus on how it all connects to sustainability. So much of what ON is about is allowing people to have all of the advantages of working closer to home (as part of a more sustainable lifestyle – kicking their commute goodbye, having more time to do things they’d prefer to do, etc.), but to not have to go it alone while doing so. As part of a wider picture of workplace sustainability, coworking offers a way to make environmentally friendly choices a bit more appealing than they have been in the past. We’re excited to be a part of the movement.

Instead of waxing poetically forever about what an incredible day it was (HUGE thanks to our incredible team of volunteers and organizers…what a crew!), I’ll let some of our booth visitors speak for me. Here are just a few little snippets of what people suggested they’d do with their time if they didn’t have to commute:

• “Eat breakfast at home, not on the run!”
• “Meet friends for dinner.”
• “Spend more time with my daughter.”
• “Drink more beer!

What a great way to make some fantastic connections between what we do at Office Nomads and the greater conversation about sustainability in our neighborhood. Thanks to the great team at SCH for a wonderful day! If you’d like to read more, you can check out the P-I article that came out about the event on Monday.

It’s Friday and folks are starting to get a bit nuts here at Office Nomads. Enough so that Susan is emailing Ellen DeGeneres and watching clips of her show. Not sure what Susan is emailing Ellen about, but the video she’s watching is hilarious. For your Friday pleasure, I’ll share it here. Enjoy.

Yay for Friday afternoons! It’s always been my favorite time of the work week because whether or not things are done, people start wrapping things up in neat little bows and a sense of relief starts to wash over me.

As I write this, the mood at Office Nomads (normally a light one) is starting to lift. Erik and I just exchanged words over who should replace the beer he drank from the fridge (which he bought in the first place). I bowed out when I realized I could just knock back some whiskey while I put this post together instead. Ah life in an office without HR, rules!

• I stumbled upon Luck of Seven a bit late as the project is coming to an end, but thanks to the wonders of the internets, I can catch up on the adventures of this “open-source journey documenting free culture, social innovators and global change.”
• I don’t play Second Life, but this came through on my “co-working” Google Alert and I think it means that coworking is going to take place in Second Life. Weird.
• This has nothing to do with anything but it’s cool nonetheless: ImprovEverywhere froze life in the busiest train station in the world for five minutes. Completely cool!
• Not to belabor a point, but being alone affects
  you.(via)
• Failure Now an Option.

Have a great weekend!

Not a super week for links this week, but that’s because I was working on lots of other things, so didn’t have time to spend surfing the Web. If you’ve got something cool we should check out and share, leave it in the comments.

• # 7 on this list is my favorite. But there’s so much more to this list that is fascinating. Predictions 1, 2 and 3 are spot on. One of my non-Office-Nomads gigs is writing for a very behind-the-times publishing company that I’ve been trying for four years now to stop from sending their weekly flagship publication as a PDF… but they’re all old and stuck in their ways. Their time will come.
• I have to admit, I am a bit surprised that for the second week in a row, the Smal Biz Resource blog is on my links of the week, but it’s actually an interesting read. This week, it’s results of a study about the effects of telecommuting on those stuck in the office. Not surprisingly, those left behind don’t like it.
• Laura, a friend of Susan’s (who, incidentally introduced Jacob and Susan) posted an awesome picture taken in the space this week. I had to share.

Welcome to Office Nomads’ first Links of the Week post. We’ll plan on putting these up on Fridays. They’ll include a collection of links from around the Web (where else would they come from?) that we found interesting but didn’t write a full post about or other items we feel you should notice.

• From Mbites comes a post on coworking flash-mob style. We love the concept because it brings folks to work together in a communal setting but gives it a catch-as-catch-can quality that appeals to our wild side. Anyone who wants to try and flash-mob a work day here at ON is more than welcome!
• That CNNMoney article continues to bring us some wonderful attention. This time from the Small Biz Resources Blog where Gayle Kesten notes that while freelancers are happy to see the kids back in school after the holidays because of the silence it brings to home offices, that silence quickly becomes deafening. Coworking to the rescue!
• Jacob decided that along with starting the coolest coworking space in Seattle, he’d try and earn some life points for doing it too. Go vote for him at RealityAllStarz.com. Let us know in the comments if you’ve got a project you want points for too.
• Blog pimpin’. It’s gotta be done or no one is ever going to know about the joy of Office Nomads’ blog. So we added the blog to Technorati. You should go there and give us a little boost. We’ll throw a vote right back at ya if you ask us to.
• Finally this week, we found a great list of useful web apps over on Lifehacker we decided to share. Hopefully something on this list will make your days go a bit more smoothly.

That’s it for this week. Hope you had a great and productive week. Enjoy the weekend!

Photo is courtesy Laenulfean at Flickr. Thanks!