Get Creative! Making Team Meetings More Powerful with White boards…

I love a good brainstorming session.

Something about taking a group of smart people and throwing ideas on the wall. Be they good, bad, or otherwise — it’s a great way to get all the options & all the issues up in your face.

I recently toured some facilities with white board walls all around and realized that was something we wanted more of at our Akron Office Space Coworking facility.

So this weekend, we completed the first installation of white boards in our Conference Room ‘A’ — nice, big 4 x 8 dry erase boards ready for members to get together and go nuts.

Over the coming weeks we’ll complete installation of additional boards for all four of our conference / team rooms. In fact, the team rooms will feature entire walls covered with the dry erase boards. Each of which can be booked online by members for client meetings, off-site team meetings, training & education & product brainstorming sessions.

Ahhh but before you get started – here’s a great article with detailed guidelines for running a successful creative brainstorming session.

An outline of these guidelines includes:

• Suspend judgment
• Think freely
• Improve, modify, build on the ideas of others.
• Concentrate on generating a large stock of ideas

And the article goes on to explain the practical methodology for running the session — including making sure you have an official recorder, keeping the session relaxed & playful, & organizing the chaos.

Anyway – I encourage you to read the full article at Virtual Salt and to plan your next brainstorming session at Office Space Coworking in Akron or Cuyahoga Falls.

Making the ‘Go’ Decision

I’ve worked out of my home for the past 5 years.

While it’s been great on many fronts, I have to admit I get a little stir crazy. Sometimes I’ll just grab my laptop and go work at my local Starbucks, Panera or pub.

I enjoy it because it gets me out in front of people, but if I had to make a phone call or print something up — I’d have to head home again. I love getting out but these places just are NOT conducive to a productive work environment.

So I started looking around a bit and discovered the whole world of Co-Working.

And MAN – I was INSTANTLY in love. I was craving for something like this to open locally but alas no one has made the move in NEO.

What really got a fire in my belly about it was an interview I did with Susan Evans, Co-Founder of Office Nomads on my other blog, Small Business Guru.

After talking with her, I was SOLD.

So seeing a need and sensing a business opportunity, I started researching it more actively. So much so my wife & I found ourselves writing a business plan, scouting locations, and chatting up investors and our local chambers of commerce to get this off the ground.

So here I am, writing about this exciting endeavor and looking for local cohorts.

I’ll be documenting our progress, what we’ve learned, and what we’re doing to make this happen. Hopefully we’ll gain enough local interest to make our final ‘go’ decision.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy following along and look forward to hearing from you if you’d like to be a part of the process.