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.

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!

Office Nomads currently is the lucky “temporary home” for “The Garden of Hope,” a gorgeous piece in our main conference room by Bellingham artist Kuros Zahedi. We have been housing it for over a year now, and would love to make this amazing piece a permanent part of the office!  We need your help to do it.  Here’s the story:

“The Garden of Hope” was created as a part of Sustainable Capitol Hill‘s 2008 summer festival – Imagine Capitol Hill.  Much of the festival was planned out of Office Nomads, with weekly volunteer meetings and volunteer trainings happening in the space.  Kuros responded to an RFP we put out for the event for creative, collaborative art pieces.  For his piece, Kuros gathered a group of volunteers the day before the festival to collect trash from around an area of the neighborhood.  After it was all collected, he spent the entire day of the festival putting the trash onto these four doors with the help of any festival attendees who wanted to come.  The result was awesome!

After much time art-sitting this piece, Office Nomads would love to make The Garden of Hope a permanent installment at Office Nomads.  Not only would it be great to know it’s going to stay, but it would support the work of an artist we greatly respect (and who has been a featured artist in the space before!)  Kuros has adjusted the price significantly for our purchase of the art, as he really wants us to have it.  So, we need to raise $2500 to secure these pieces for Office Nomads’ future.

Want to chip in?

We could use the help!  Office Nomads is accepting donations (not tax-deductable, sorry!) of any amount to raise the funds to buy this gorgeous piece.  If you are a regular user of the main conference room, you know how great the panels look in there, and how they brighten the room.  They also tell a great story of the type of projects Office Nomads loves to be a part of.  We’d love to keep the story alive and collectively raise the money to purchase this piece and support an artist we adore.

If you’re interested, head over to the front desk and let us know how much you can contribute.  You can write a check, add on an amount to your monthly bill, or empty your spare change into the jar on the front desk.   Anything helps!

All the love,
Susan, Jacob, Alexandra, and the rest of the ON crew

Office Nomads started the process of removing a troublesome wall in our space. For us, this is not just the removal of a physical wall, but a social barrier that has been perplexing us for some time now. Check out the video below on the first step we took towards taking walls down in our space.

No more walls from Office Nomads on Vimeo.

Again, taking this wall down is more than just to complete another successful construction project at the office.  We’re taking this wall down because:

1. Coworking spaces are not about walls. In fact, most coworking spaces, ours included, have as few walls as possible. Walls (cubicle or otherwise) separate us from one another and create barriers to meeting each other. This wall had only served to separate some of our members from one another, so we took it down.
2. Walls = isolation. The majority of our members come to our space to get away from walls that isolate them from the rest of their community. We found that even on days where the rest of our space was brimming with coworkers, the closed-door room in our space rarely saw much traffic. No one wanted to be isolated back there, as it meant they missed out on the buzz and energy happening in the rest of the space.  Watching people sardine themselves next to one another while there was plenty of available space in the back room only encouraged us to take that sucker out.
3. Natural light is awesome! This separated room didn’t get nearly as much natural light as the rest of our office, making it a much less desirable area to work in. So we knocked that sucker down and let the light flood in!

We are only partway finished the project and are excited to take the next step (reframing, finishing, etc.).  We’ll keep you posted!

Since our inception, Office Nomads has found a fantastic partner in Biznik, the small business networking hub that was founded in Seattle by our good friends Lara and Dan. Their slogan “going it alone, together,” could double as a slogan for Office Nomads. Biznik brings independent small-shop business people together to learn, share, and network for the collective strength of the small business community. Office Nomads is a big, big fan of our friends at Biznik.

With that in mind, we’re excited to announce a new special for our Biznik friends – get 50% off your first month of Part-Time membership at Office Nomads! That’s right – if you’re a Biznik member, you get yourself a sweet deal on your first month as a member of Office Nomads. Just show us your Biznik profile and we’ll be happy to extend the special to ya.

Sound good? Get in touch with us and let us know. Better yet, swing on by the office (M-F between 8:30 and 6) and we can tell you all about it in person.

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.

December is here and you know what that means… It’s the season for giving. This year, Office Nomads is in such a giving mood that we want to give you presents and maybe even help make your holiday shopping a bit easier.

For the month of December, come check out Office Nomads and if you like what you experience, take your pick of one of two great specials:

• Now through the end of the year, new members who sign up at the Regular or Resident level can choose to pay just $100 for the first month or enjoy the third month for free!
• OR if you’re feeling like getting in on the giving too, anyone who signs up for a Basic membership in December gets a free month of basic membership to give to a friend or colleague.

Remember, everyone who works at Office Nomads gets

• High-speed 10Mbps internet access
• Wireless (wifi) or wired networking
• Use of three conference rooms
• Basic print/fax/scan
• Coffee/tea
• Free notary services
• Great company!

And membership at any one of our levels brings even more benefits including access to exclusive members-only events at Office Nomads.

So if you’ve been thinking that working at home just isn’t working for you, this is a great time of year to try out coworking at Office Nomads!

For more information, drop on by the office or send us an e-mail at info@officenomads.com.

(Thanks to flickr user fazen for use of this photo under the Creative Commons license.)

…and you’re invited!

It’s officially time to celebrate Office Nomads turning two! That’s right, we’ll be crossing into our third year coworking in Seattle, and want to throw a party to celebrate.  Here are the important details:

Office Nomads Turns TWO!
Thursday, October 8
6-10pm
@OfficeNomads – 1617 Boylston Ave., Second Floor

As usual, there will be drinks, food, and great people.  We’ll also be featuring new art from Kuros Zahedi, who’s beautiful piece “Garden of Hope” has been living in our main conference room for almost a year now.  More of his art will be out and about throughout the space, and it is not to be missed!  This date syncs up with the Blitz! Capitol Hill Art Walk – so if you’re planning on attending the art walk, make Office Nomads a stop for sure!

Come on by, meet the awesome members of Office Nomads, and raise a glass with us as we celebrate our first two years.

Want to RSVP to let us know you’re coming?  Here are some of the spots you can find the event online (because everyone has their favorite…):

Facebook
Twitvite
Upcoming

We can’t wait to see you!

It’s time for a new membership level at Office Nomads!  We’ve heard from several of you that you’d love to see a basic membership that brings you closer into the community even if you are unable to be a Regular or Resident member.  Well wait no more, Basic Membership is here!  Here are the details, as pulled from our Membership & Pricing page:

Basic Member – $50/month

You want to be hooked into the Office Nomads community but know that you are not able to be in the office enough days to be a Regular or Resident Member.  You want to drop in from time to time, stay connected with the coworkers you met in the space, and be in the loop when it comes to events and goings-on in the office.  Get a Basic Membership and enjoy 3 drop-in days/month, with drop-ins thereafter at only $20/visit. You’ll have access to the space Monday-Friday between 8:30 AM and 6 PM.

Today marked the fourth official time Office Nomads has been fortunate enough to have Karen Lindenberg of Phyzz Yoga come in and teach those of us who are interested an hour-long session of yoga.

After today’s session, I have a confession to make: until today, I doubted that we could ever regularly host yoga sessions in the office.  Why, you ask? I am a big believer in the value of a separation between work and “home” (or gym, yoga, art) spaces. Well, today I realized that it was time for me to bend that guideline a little bit more than usual. Because yoga in the office ROCKS.

Our hour-long break with Karen each Wednesday is officially my new favorite thing about Office Nomads.  Yoga at the office is providing me (and my fellow Nomads) with a great break from sitting diligently at our desks, a time to get our eyes away from our screens, and to enjoy putting our bodies through the paces that Karen leads us through each week. Coworkers stretch alongside one another, laughing in the moments when we all struggle to hit a pose or letting out a big collective sigh when we all get to relax on our mats. It’s awesome. And I’m coming to believe that it is a key part of an effective workday, even when it happens at the office.

As coworking spaces and other “alternative office spaces” emerge around the world, I imagine there will be a constant balancing out of the desire for office spaces to put in as much “fun” as possible in the interest of retaining members or employees (this idea reminds me of an old article I read in Utne, titled “Are We Having Fun Yet? The infantilization of corporate America” – the description of working at Aquascape was particularly wild to me) without overly complicating what they’re trying to do. You can overdo office “extras,” but with the right balance between productive work time and goofing-off time, it actually becomes easier to focus and the day becomes much more productive.

At Office Nomads we have a simple goal: to be a home for 40 independent professionals who are looking for a great place to work.  But we don’t just want to be a place to work, we want to be a place where people & businesses grow, valuable conversations are had, connections are made.  This means that (even if it blurrs my clearly defined lines between work and home), we get beers together, we go out to lunch together and yes, we do yoga together.  And we’re all the better for it.

Namaste, baby.