The Collective Next office in New York City is in a collaborative working space run by WeWork. Our neighbors there do everything from making cool socks to advocating for literacy worldwide. It’s a bustling environment, and it’s great to have a place with good coffee and decent beer available anytime you want.
The office has conference rooms we can rent. As in our main office in Boston, each one is designed differently. One afternoon, Sep and I found ourselves in a room up on the quiet 26th floor. The wallpaper there was amazing and full of inspiration.
There are so many things to love about its design. Some of my favorites:
- There’s a Sharpie in there. Anyone who has seen me take notes knows that I have a strong preference for Sharpie on card stock. It helps me think bigger, make connections between ideas, and see how ideas have evolved over time by shuffling the pages.
- There’s a bike. While I’m not using my bike to commute (yet), exercise is a critical component of how I stay centered and sane. I call it “burning off fumes” and it makes a big difference if I miss a few days because of travel or injury.
- There are drinks: coffee, tea, bourbon, wine. Some of them give an edge, some of them take the edge off, but there’s something magical about partaking something delicious with a colleague or friend (or, in the case of Collective Next, people who are both).
- There are things I don’t really have a connection to. The gaming controls, the sriracha, and the tightie whities aren’t really my things. But they serve as useful reminders of the power in diversity. Not everything has to be your favorite to be valuable.
And of course, at the center of the image, “F#*! Yeah Collaboration.” Why do I love that? Because sometimes you have to just let it all go and work together to make things happen. It’s not always polite, but it’s probably going to end up being good.
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