#1 - Our same stuff in a different office doesn’t look all that different than our last place.

#2 - We didn’t think of storage as much as we thought we did.

#3 - Having everyone against a wall in the winter makes for a room full of cold people.

#4 - We need more white-board/collaboration space.

So it was back to our old friend Google SketchUp for some playing-around!

This time around, we weren’t going to forget a few things that we wanted originally like a UPS for each employee, better lighting, and a LOT of whiteboard space. Here is the idea that we came up with for these changes.

First, we’re going to move everyone to the middle of the room. This is going to make for a more ‘cubicle’ looking area, but it we do it right, will look REAL cool. We’re also going to add a ledge to put stuff on. This will wrap around the entire are, and provide a place to put markers, small plants, and other pieces of ‘flair’. The 4′ above that ledge is going to be a whiteboard that can be used to collaborate on projects. This will give about 480 sq-ft of whiteboard to the group.

INSIDE that ledge, we’ll hide UPS units that will have extension cords to each of their areas. Since we wired the place so everyone has their own 20A circuit, this will offer plenty of juice to everyone. We’re thinking we could build a 6′, 8-outlet strip in each of the dividers for everyone to use.  Just throwing ideas out there at this point.

Here is what we’ll need to build on the perimeter. (We’ll use metal studs when we do it…I used wood to plan it though.)

Looks like we’ll be able to use the desks we have now, add 3 more, and have enough  room for 8 people in our main pit. We can build another half-pod over on the other side of the conf room in the near future if we need to…right now, I just want to get this area set up and looking nice. We’re going to be in the public eye a lot in the next few months, so we need to get this done ASAP.

In THEORY, this is what it should look like after we’re done…

But as you know…anything can happen.

The white band throught the middle of the office is going to be a large whiteboard. We found that the center table just ends up getting cluttered with stuff, so  it’s not doing what we intended originally where it would be a collaboration area.

Here’s where we’re at right now…a little messy, but you get the idea of how the space is.

Thoughts?

Our first thought, was to link it to an iCal ics file to get it’s data. This way, the administrators have the ability to change it, and it’s “pushed” to the server, which happens to be the computer that this runs off of.

A PHP script re-loads every minute that gets the current data from the file. So if I add a meeting, it’s on the board one minute later. The script posts someone’s name 20min before the meeting starts, and takes it off 10min after the meeting is scheduled to end.

The way we did this is by making the event name the Company that the person is from. That way, we can add 4-5 attendees and have it still show one company logo. If we don’t have their logo in the system, it ignores that part and loads nothing. Here’s an example of what it looks like when “Joe Cool” from Microsoft has a meeting scheduled.

But when there is no meeting scheduled….

It politely tells the managery of solicitors  we were seeing “No Solicitors - Seriously, we’re quite busy and nobody wants you here.” No joke…we were seeing 2 a day, and now it’s 1-2 a week. Evidently they can read!

We also added Cleveland Weather, and a running total of transactions we’ve processed this year. It’s fun for the employees to see as we’re walking by, and the clients get a kick out of it too.

We needed to first replicate the size/shape of the wall on the ground so we could figure out how to lat them all out. Because we had so many different shapes/sizes, it was pretty difficult to NOT get a pattern, and keep it looking random, while having enough space in between to show some green.

First step was to re-create the wall shape on the ground. We don’t have the lounge built yet, so we have plenty of space for this. We used tape on the ground and started placing them. The LCD panel will eventually welcome people to the office.

Next step was getting the boards to ‘float’ off of the wall an inch. For this, I bought 50′ of “Ice Maker” tube for a refrigerator. I cut it into 1″ pieces, and we used that to keep a consistent depth off of the wall. (Pretty smart, eh?)

We realized that the patterning was going to be an issue, so we seperated the boards into different size groups and just started “going for it”. The idea was to keep the top-line of all the boards even, and a consistent 2″ between them. This made it pretty easy to install after we had a plan.

The end result was just about EXACTLY what we were going for. We still need to get in there and finish cutting some of the boards at an angle to fill in those holes. Truthfully, we’ve been pretty busy lately and don’t have time.

The kitchen cabinets are in, and we’ve decided on which walls will be “SparkBase Green” after all is said and done.

Things are shaping up. Only a matter of time now!

I’m not the best narrator, but you get the idea of what it’ll look like when it’s all done.

We handed the prints over to the GC and he got to work.

Turned out exactly how we’d planned, but we’ll be making a few small changes after we get everything up and installed. We’ll round the outer edge slightly so it’s not TOO sharp.

The issue we’re going to run into is the location of the HVAC duct-work. We’ve had to re-locate them to the closet, so we’re loosing some closet-space, but gaining more storage above the bathrooms. Maybe we can get one of those cool ladders like they have in the library!