Open Office Space

Openofficespace.com is Proud To Be A Sponsor of The Rise of The Cubicle Farmer Road Trip

 
Openofficespace.com is proud to be a sponsor of The Rise of The Cubicle Farmer Project - An epic journey to discover the changing landscape of "work".

If you're a start-up, entrepreneur or frustrated cubicle farmer and dream of making work more about what you do than where you sit, you should really follow the LaC team throughout their journey.

The Trip
11,921 Miles
1,080 Hours
55 Stories
45 Days
35 Cities
20 CoWorking Joints
1 Roadtrip

About Rise of the Cubicle Farmer
Rise of the Cubicle Farmer is a 45 day Road Trip documenting the changing landscape of the idea of “work” among entrepreneurs, small business people, and progressive corporate types.

AJ Leon and The LaC Project are traveling across the United States and Canada to meet with entrepreneurs, digital nomads, workshifters, small business people, co-working centers, founders of business web applications, executives in large corporations, authors and academics – to capture stories of people leveraging technology to create innovative businesses and empowering work environments.

We will be meeting with people about how they define their work as something they do instead of some place that they sit.  We want hear stories and understand how coworking, workshifting and modern web applications have changed how people manage their businesses and live their lives.

Who are the Crazies behind this project?
AJ and Melissa Leon are the passionate and digitally nomadic entrepreneurs behind The LaC Project.  AJ blogs about relationship marketing, social media and the experience economy over at www.ajleon.me . AJ also writes a Newsletter dedicated to helping you launch your business and social projects and act on your ideas.  Sign up and receive the Rise of the Cubicle Farmer eBook for Free!

Why are we doing this?
Our primary goal is to tell inspiring stories of small business owners and entrepreneurs using technology, web applications and modern work environments (ie coworking spaces) to run their businesses and projects in interesting ways and on their terms.  We are hoping to educate and empower aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners to follow their lead.  To show them that the tools are out there, they just have to start leveraging them.

We also want to highlight larger corporations that are leading the enterprise revolution away from the corporate cubicle farm culture by enacting workshifting and distributed workforces.

Where are we going?
Our 10,000 mile route will take us across 26 states as well as two Canadian provinces.  You can check out the entire Route here.  If you have your own story to tell about your rise from the cubicle farm culture, you can request a stop and we’ll do our best to swing by if its on our way!

Who are our sponsors and why did we approach them?
Our full sponsor list can be seen here.  Every single sponsor that we approached provides products and services that we personally use and love.  We want to make business people aware of these amazing web applications and products that are either free or ridiculously inexpensive to show how you can run a seriously robust business in an ultra lean way.

 

Tips For Entrepreneurs & Small Businesses On How To Furnish The "Optimal" Office Space For Their Company

   
  
In Part 1 of a two part interview on Officebytes TV, Jenny-Lynn Georgiades, Director of Architectural and Design Support Services at Waldners Business Environments, offers entrepreneurs & small businesses some very sound advice on choosing the right office furniture to create the optimal working environment for their company.

 

A few good quotes from the interview:  

"When and entrepreneur or a small business is planning to do a new space, I think its really important to examine closely where your company is now, and where you want to be in the future. It's important to examine your work processes..."

"Something as simple as walking through the space, and looking at some of the work arounds that people do to their environments to make it work for them. Are their pads on the chairs? Maybe they need a new chair. Are their monitors up on a bunch of books because the there not at the right height? Are their storage components empty and filled with just their shoes and their purses. These are the type of things that can help you look at how to design a new space, and to design it in a way that's functional for your employees."

"For instance, the younger generation, Generation-Y, there not going to want to work in the typical cubicle, they want to work in these different office environments, they want to work in the lounge areas in the cafes...so you want design your space accordingly if you want to attract and retain that type of employee."  

"What we're really finding is the most important workplace issue for employees these days is access. Access to people that they work with, access to technology and access to information, and that's what's really driving the trends."  

About Waldners Waldner’s Business Environments Inc. markets office furniture of brands such as OFS, Metro, Kimball, Steelcase, KI, and Hon. The company also offers furniture storage and refurbishing services. Its clientele include SAP, Ernst & Young, PrimeMedia, Readers’ Digest, MTV, HomeLoanBank, PepsiCo. Random House, GE Capital, Canon, and Sony. The company has strategic alliances with Adden, Buro, Falcon, Golden Oak, ISE, Jofcon, Lucia Group, and Vitra. Waldner’s Business Environments was founded in 1939 and is based in New York City.

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Small Biz/Entrepreneurs - Estimating The Right Amount of Office Space For Your Company

 

If you or your company has a knowledge that would help entrepreneurs or small businesses to improve the quality of their workplace, openofficespace.com would love to interview you.

 

Topics might include:

- Commercial Real Estate Expertise

- Workplace Wellness

- How To...(any topic related to improving the workplace)

- Creating an Eco-Friendly Office

- Office Products and Office Furniture

- Workplace Interior Design

- Streamlining Office Expenses

- Property Marketing Solutions  

How Do You Encourage Collaboration in Your Shared Office/Coworking Space?

    
The following is a re-post from an article I came across a few weeks ago on Fastcompany.com entitled: 11 Ways You Can Make Your Space as Collaborative as the Stanford d.school. The article gives some very good suggestions for creating a collaborative workspace within an organization. (all 11 suggestions are below)

But what about environments such as coworking spaces or shared office spaces where many different companies are residing in the same space?  As we continue to tour/interview founders and residents of coworking/shared office spaces, here are a few of the questions we will consistently seek answers to.

Is collaboration actively encouraged or does it happen naturally on its own? 

Was the layout of your space specifically designed to encourage collaboration?

Have you made changes to the original design of your space to improve the interaction between your residents?

Does your space offer any special type of furniture/equipment that has increased the collaboration within your space?

We will compile all of our findings and release them as part of a future article as well as a new section on our interactive guide to leasing office space for entrepreneurs and startups. If have founded or worked in a coworking/shared office space, and can speak on behalf of the questions above, please email us: info at openofficespace.com . Of course we will give full credit for any participation. 

Later this week we will be interviewing one of the top office furniture dealers on the east coast to discuss (affordable) new advances in workstation design, specifically as they pertain to maximizing interaction/collaboration in the office.

Here are the 11 suggestions from the Fast Company article:

1. Start with what you have. "We started in a trailer," Kembel points out, "with the 'd.school' as a sign on the table." Kembel's advice: Claim a space and label it.

2. Go to the people who are interested first. Form a crack team of true believers to spearhead your campaign. Revolutions start from the bottom up.

3. Empower your team to change their space. Somebody high enough up the food chain needs to defend this activity against facilities managers who may not be amused. Then, be willing to keep changing things. Try out different ways to configure space to see what works best.

4. Watch the behavior of the group and take notes. Have somebody in your band of innovators own this task. What's working, what isn't? "Try, reflect, modify," says Kembel.

5. Develop group-sized artifacts. Whaa? In short, forget the spreadsheets with the tiny type. "Get your ideas up in big enough form so that others can see and add to them."

6. Keep any prototypes, sketches, or idea-jam artifacts low-rez and not precious. "Don't get too formal too fast," says Kembel. Making things precious locks them in too soon, short-circuiting potential improvements.

7. Show your work in progress. "Put your underwear up on the line and let people comment. But keep it safe," Kembel says. No rude comments allowed.

8. Do something simple to surprise people. At the d.school, they painted the women's restroom lipstick pink, and hung disco balls. "That makes people realize that somebody cares about your experience," Kembel says.

9. Invest more in "we" spaces than in "I" spaces. Cozy nooks for teams, not plush corner offices for the alpha dogs.

10. Mix up seating options. Take the table out of the room and sit on the floor. Vary seat heights. Change customary positions at meetings. For example, put the group leader in the middle, instead of at the head of the table. Try holding a meeting where only standing is allowed. In general, work to lower status markers.

11. Make idea generation and capture easy. Any non-porous surface can be a whiteboard, says Kembel. Buy a sheet of sheer acrylic at Home Depot and mount it on a wall as a writing space. Keep markers handy. Put prototyping tools out where people can grab them when an idea strikes.

"Creativity follows context," says Kembel. The main idea, he says, is not to segregate creativity from other activities. "You don't need to be fancy to do it," he says.

Content Source: Fast Company

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An Inspirational Story + Why Entrepreneurs MUST Bring Health and Fitness Into Their Office

Officebytes TV had the pleasure of interviewing Rahsheen Slaugter and Greg Kalafatic of Breakthroughs to Fitness, a successful personal training company located in Long Island, New York.

Rahsheen Slaughter shares the inspirational story of how he "never let his disability become a liability" on the road to becoming a college All American freestyle wrestler, and eventually founding Breakthroughs To Fitness.  (Rahsheen was born without a quadricep or hamstring on his right leg) 

During the interview, Rahsheen and Greg also give some VERY good reasons why entrepreneurs MUST adopt health and fitness as part of their business/life plan.   

A few good quotes from the interview:

"The #1 excuse entrepreneurs will tell me is that they do not have enough time to workout."

"Stress is something we all encounter, especially for entrepreneurs. You need a way for you body to cope and deal with this stress."

"Some of my best ideas come from when I am just spacing out on the treadmill, elliptical or I just get into a real deep metabolic training session. After I'm done with that, I can go on and solve the problems or challenges I am having in my business that day."

"You have to make sure that you have those 5-6 meals, spread throughout the day so that you do not have those energy woes."

"Can you honestly say that you are in better shape today than 6 weeks ago? How about 6 months ago? How about an entire year? If you can't raise your hand and say yes I am, then your health is on a decline."

About Breakthroughs To Fitness   Breakthroughs to Fitness provides a unique collaborative relationship that provides structure, accountability, and inspiration to enable clients to reach their goals.

The B2F health coaches guide, motivate, provide customized fitness programs, and assist each client to set achievable and challenging goals. They will not diagnose, prescribe, or come up with answers to your challenges but they will facilitate and guide you in the right direction to create the outcome you deserve.

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Entrepreneurs - 10 Reasons Why You MUST Bring "Health and Fitness" Into Your Office

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If you or your company has a knowledge that would help entrepreneurs or small businesses to improve the quality of their workplace, openofficespace.com would love to interview you.

 

Topics might include:

- Commercial Real Estate Expertise

- Workplace Wellness

- How To...(any topic related to improving the workplace)

- Creating an Eco-Friendly Office

- Office Products and Office Furniture

- Workplace Interior Design

- Streamlining Office Expenses

- Property Marketing Solutions

iPad = A Great Weapon For Real Estate Agents To Put In Their Holster

 
When I first launched my other company, 3Dwalkthroughs.com, I spent a lot of time presenting my company's capabilities on my laptop. While I was extremely confident in my product offering, I was anything but confident in my ability to present it.

3Dwalkthroughs.com specialized in producing several types of 3D assets: 3D renderings, 3D walkthroughs, 3D floor plans, 3D interactive tools and even the type of 3D technology used in the movie Avatar. Depending on our clients needs, the end product was always rendered in a variety of different formats. (jpeg, mov, mpeg, swf, wmv, and more)

...and therein lied the problem.

While I tried my best to prepare samples based on the client I was pitching, they often requested to see examples of projects that were not included in my presentation. Clicking in and out of folders, opening various types of media players and launching different browsers was often a pain-stakingly slow process. (more than once my computer froze altogether) Needless to say, delays in my ability to show our "stuff" probably prevented me from closing a lot more projects than I should have.

Enter the Ipad.

On Friday I finally had an opportunity to spend a few hours test driving the iPad. In my humble opinion - the iPad will be a game changer for entrepreneurs, real estate agents or any other business professional that needs to pitch their goods, services or listings while they're on the go...it certainly would have helped me pitch 3Dwalkthroughs.com more effectively.

The quality of the display coupled with the ability to quickly open and navigate through photos and videos makes the Ipad the perfect device for real estate agents to WOW their clients. Being able to flip through photos, videos and property information as well as tap into the internet to get local statistics and other information will offer real estate agents an ability to provide a new level of service to their clients.

I also believe the touch screen technology will make reviewing listings on real estate sites a much more palatable experience for those who prefer to do a little searching on their own before speaking with an agent.

The one small (probably short term) issue I noticed is the iPad currently does not play Flash. Many virtual tour platforms as well as many video platforms utilize Flash as their core technology. Just yesterday though I read an article about a company that developed some sort of plug-in to get around this issue and I am sure this is just the first of many.  

Here are a few good articles I came across that describe in more detail some specific ways that the Ipad can be utilized by real estate agents. 

Just A Few Ways To Use The iPad For Real Estate - Geek Estate Blog

Apple’s iPad means big changes ahead for real estate - 1000 Watt Blog

More iPad for Real Estate - Property Flyer in Pages - About.com

The Apple iPad for Real Estate Agents - Real Estate Express.com

5 Ways iPad Will Reinvent Real Estate for Agents in the Next 5 Years - The Exit Pro

Apple iPad Real Estate Apps Are Here! - Housing Watch

If you are a real estate agent and are currently utilizing the iPad as a tool in your arsenal, openofficespace.com would love to interview you on Officebytes TV. Please DM us @openofficespace or reach out to us via email info at openofficespace.com.

The Eco-Friendly Workplace | 10 Suggestions + A 3D Office

Regardless whether you are a company of one or one thousand, you can make a positive impact on the environment by adopting a few simple, but effective changes in your workplace.

The following 10 eco-friendly suggestions will not only help to preserve the environment, they can also save your company money and contribute to a healthier/more productive office.

    
  
1) Printing

Eliminate unnecessary printing. (waste of paper and ink)

Consider printing non sharable documents on both sides.

Use recycled paper.

Encourage a paper recycling initiative within your office.

Recycle empty ink toner cartridges.

Use re-filled ink toner cartridges as opposed to new ones.

Use email for internal memos.

2) Coffee Cups, Plastic Cutlery and Other Kitchen Supplies

Encourage employees to use coffee mugs which can be washed and reused.

Prohibit the use of Styrofoam cups, wood and plastic stir sticks, plastic cutlery and paper plates.

3) Eco-Friendly Office Furniture

Purchase office furniture made of recycled materials.

Purchase office furniture that is recyclable when it is no longer of use.

4) Eco-Friendly Flooring  

Consider purchasing flooring made of material that is comprised of recycled content.

Consider purchasing flooring that is recyclable when it is no longer of use.

5) Electricity

Turn off and unplug computers, monitors, lights or any other electrical equipment that’s not in use when you leave the office.

Use shading devices for windows to keep the heat load out and minimize air-conditioning usage.

6) Eco-Friendly Paint

Consider using eco-friendly “Green Paints.” Green paints are defined by their lack or low levels of VOC’s (volatile organic compounds). VOC’s are the toxic fumes emitted from most synthetic-based paints and can have negative effects to people and the environment.

7) Eco-Friendly Water Cooler

Consider using an eco-friendly water cooler. Eco-friendly water coolers do not use plastic water bottles and eliminate the environmental impact resulting from regular water bottle deliveries.

8) Eco-Friendly Lighting

Use natural lighting whenever possible. Open the blinds or even add skylights in your space.

Purchase energy efficient bulbs. They tend to use less energy, release less heat and last longer.

Purchase lamps or lighting fixtures that are made with natural, recycled, or reused materials.

eliminate the environmental impact resulting from regular water bottle deliveries.

9) Energy Efficient Equipment

Purchase energy efficient copiers, computers, fax machines, printers, monitors, scanners, microwaves and air-conditioners.

Consider using laptops as opposed to desktops as they require much less energy to operate.

10) Eco-Friendly Janitorial Supplies

Consider using eco-friendly janitorial supplies. These supplies feature environmentally conscious attributes such as being recyclable, eco-responsible packaging and/or being made of all-natural materials, etc.

Demand your outside janitorial services use eco-friendly supplies.

BTW - Another great way of helping the environment is sharing your workplace with a startup, small business or entrepreneur that is looking for a small office space. Sharing office space can go a long way to conserve energy while also helping to reduce waste.

Over the next few months, openofficespace.com will be conducting interviews with companies that are sharing office space and learn what they are doing to promote an eco-friendly workplace.

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Virtual Office Staging - Make Your Unused Office Space Stand Out From The Crowd

 
Perhaps you recently downsized your staff leaving you with 4 large, but empty office spaces.

Or

Maybe you signed a long term lease right before the economy went south for the winter. As a result, you overestimated the amount of space you needed for your business.

Either way, you have been left with the burden of carrying the costs of this unused office space and all the expenses that go along with it.

The good news (from a psychological standpoint) you are not alone. The bad news...you are not alone.

An increased number of companies are realizing they can use sites like openofficespace.com to find sub-tenants for their unused office space and help ease this financial burden.

The challenge however is that with an increased number of companies competing for the eyeballs of potential sub-tenants, how can you make your property stand out from the rest? To make matters worse, most unused office space is completely empty or the existing furniture/furnishings are in bad shape. And lets face it, not everyone is blessed with the wonderful power of a vivid imagination. 

Why not take a page from playbook from the residential real estate market and stage your commercial property?

Instead of posting washed out pictures of a boring empty office space or trying to populate the space with furniture from other rooms, how about Virtually Staging that bad boy? Using advanced 3D rendering technology, a photo can be taken of your empty office and then virtually staged, so that it looks like a million bucks.

A staged home typically sells more quickly and for a higher price...why not a commercial space? Granted we are talking about sales vs. rentals but it's still about standing out from the crowd if you hope to attract qualified leads.

Below is an sample of this technology utilized for promoting an empty residential property.

 
  

 
  
Disclaimer: Whenever a staged image is used, it needs to be clear that the image is an artists representation of the property and not the actual condition the property will be delivered to the sub-tenant.

If this is something you might be interested in, we recommend contacting Real Tour Vision. RTV boasts the largest network of independent virtual tour providers and can easily dispatch a photographer to help you out with this affordable and cost effective way of making your unused office space stand out from the crowd.

Openofficespace.com is on a mission to identify the coolest and most effective technologies to help our users promote their properties. If you have one up your sleeve, please share.

Image & Content Source: Real Tour Vision

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Feature Update: Improved Commercial Property (Office) Search

Today's feature update comes as a result of a phone call from one of our users which actually made me laugh. It was either laugh or cry, I chose the former.

The user pointed out that when she did a search for office space and typed in Boston, Massachusetts, it returned a certain number of results, whereas when she typed in Boston, MA, the site returned quite a different number of results. In other words, if someone abbreviated a state or entered just a zip code, the search feature was not effectively capturing all the properties in our database for that given location.

All together now..."Hey, that sucks!"

To overcome this issue the "brains" at openofficespace.com have built a new and improved "smart search" feature. The smart search will auto-suggest a location as a user begins to enter a city or zip code, ensuring that all relevant properties for that location (in our database) will be returned. 

As part of this upgrade we have also applied this technology to assist users that are POSTING unused office space. To maintain consistency I think we will call it our new "smart post" technology.  

Similar to the smart search feature, the smart post will auto-suggest a location as a user begins to enter a city or zip code. If for some reason that location is not already part of the database, it will automatically be added and shown on future results.

If you are posting or searching for unused office space in Canada, simply click the international link and select Canada from the dropdown. This will automatically change the data of the "smart search" and "smart post"  to reflect locations in Canada.

Check back in the next few days as we will be launching another new feature that will be very helpful to commercial real estate brokers, executive suite operators or any other spaceholder with multiple properties.

Please continue to give us feedback, good or bad, and we will do our best to accommodate your suggestions.

Here are a few screenshots of this new feature:

SMART SEARCH

SMART POST

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Feature Update: The Commercial Real Estate Broker Business Card

Feature Update: The Commercial Real Estate Broker Business Card

You're talking and we're listening.

Over the next several weeks openofficespace.com will be rolling out a host of new features on our site. Most of these new features were developed as a result of constructive feedback and suggestions we received from visitors to our site.

As of this morning, commercial real estate brokers can now add a virtual broker business card to their property listings...a great way to promote themselves to small businesses and entrepreneurs in addition to promoting their listings. The virtual business card can include the broker's photo, name, title, email, phone number, office address and their company name and website.

In addition, if a broker has multiple properties listed on openofficespace.com, a link will appear below their business card encouraging users to visit the other properties they have listed on the site. 

The process to add a broker business card is simple:

Step 1: Click The I HAVE SPACE button on the homepage.

 
  
Step 2: Select broker on the space holder section and the fields to create the broker business card will appear. Once you fill out this information along with the rest of your property details, just click save and you are good to go.

The Finished Product: Your broker business card will appear on the bottom right of your property details page.

FYI- You do not need to fill out this information every time you post a new property. While you can edit your broker business card at any time, your most recent version will automatically appear on every one of your property listings.

Openofficespace.com welcomes any comments or suggestions regarding how we can improve this new feature as well as the site in general. Please feel free to shoot us an email at [email protected] or via comment on our blog.

Cool Huh? pick of the week (chargepod mobile charger) Don't Lose Your Work Like I Did

This weeks Open Office Space Cool Huh? pick is a day late and also the reason for our selection.

Our featured subject for (Friday) Thursday August 27th - the chargepod mobile charger by callpod 

Description: The Chargepod by callpod could have come in most handy yesterday when my laptop battery died, erasing all my work.

The Chargepod is a 6-way charging device that allows you to charge multiple cell phones, PDAs, headsets, and most other mobile electronics with a single power cord. Just pick out the manufacturer-specific adapters for your devices and throw away the dozens of power cords and wall warts that are cluttering your office and home. Chargepod uses voltage regulator technology and interchangeable power adapters to safely charge all of your mobile devices regardless of manufacturer or model.

Features:

• Charges up to 6 devices at the same time
• Small, portable and lightweight
• Eliminates the clutter from having multiple chargers
• Compatible with thousands of mobile devices such as iPods, cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, PDAs, digital cameras, navigation units, mp3 players, digital readers and portable gaming systems
• Chargepod is compatible with all foreign 120/240 V adapter wall plugs; no additional power supply is necessary

Why we chose the callpod as this weeks subject: Currently I am on a houseboat in the middle of Lake Powell, AZ. In an effort to stay as productive as possible I brought along my laptop, blackberry, ipod and a few other mobile devices.

Yesterday while multi-tasking, I looked down and realized that I was about to lose power on my laptop. I quickly tried to save my work but unfortunately for me it was too late. The laptop died and I lost about 4 hours worth of work. With limited available outlets, and what seems to be an unlimited amount of devices that need to be charged, I guess something had to give.

Vowing that this would not happen to me again I searched for a device that could charge multiple devices at the same time, all from one outlet.

Today's entrepreneur relies on multiple mobile devices to stay productive while they are on the go. Hotel rooms, offices, coffee shops, and as I found out firsthand, even houseboats, often have limited electrical outlets.

Perhaps the chargepod can keep prevent another embarassing episode of a grown man yelling expletives at a beautiful lake with a bunch of people standing around...jaws a dropping.

Content and Image Source: callpod website

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