Working on new business cards opens up a whole can of worms. What stays? What’s going to be left off? What’s it going to look like? So many decisions – and with our business cards lasting an average of four years, it’s almost like you’ve got to grab a Flying Delorean to figure out what’ll be the norm that far in the future.

There’s a lot of cool examples for personal trainers , Google Searches , web developers , and even divorce lawyers, but what’s going to get us where we need to be? We know for sure that it isn’t going to be like this guy.

(Side Note: Isn’t it funny to think that when we were last doing this, the iPhone was just a brand new (and way expensive) toy, the new Office was just a twinkle in Microsoft’s eye, and Facebook was still only for kids in college?)
Here’s what we’re thinking:

1. No more fax – See ya, fax machine! This time around, we’re omitting the office fax number. To be honest, we barely use it. Our printer covers for it, and now, if we ever get one, it’s directly converted to a PDF and pushed to our controller. We don’t even hear the noise any more.

2. Lifestream URL – You know how people have lots of different social media accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Yelp? Well, a lifestream is an application or plugin that brings them all together. That way, people can go to one place to see all the activity you’ve been up to on the web. If you’re an employee of a bigger organization, you’d be able to choose what accounts you want to broadcast (like tweets or reviews on Steelcase Store), and turn off those that you might not want to.

Currently, creating one needs to be customized by a web developer, but we think that it’ll be user-friendly to start up soon enough. We’re planning on setting one up for each member of our team.

3. QR (quick response) Tags – You’ve probably seen these around before. They kind of look like a small, square barcode, but not quite. They do a pretty great job of transmitting information with minimal user effort. When you take a photo of one on smartphones with a QR Reader – the barcode tells your phone to do something, whether that’s store a name and phone number in your contacts, or take your phone’s web browser to a certain site. It’s really cool technology that’s much more popular in Korea and Japan right now, but should be catching on here soon (especially after you see what the growth rate for smartphone owners are!).

For our cards, we’re thinking that it’ll redirect to a special part of the home page that normal web surfers can’t navigate to, with a freebie for getting there. Kind of like a little bonus for being on the cutting edge.

What else did we miss? Should our new business cards fold out into a Leap chair ? You tell us! 2014 will be here before you know it, and we’ve got to make sure that when it comes, we’ve got cards that are looking fresh.

We’ve been talking about work being anywhere you want for some time now.

We’ve covered tips on working from home and the big positives that come from collaborating at the office, too. But what if we said that the two aren’t mutually exclusive? Thanks to coworking offices that are popping up everywhere we turn, they aren’t.

What’s coworking you ask? Well, it’s much easier to understand once you hear the mantra that started it all: people work better together than they do apart- even if they aren’t part of the same organization. The premise is simple – you pay for time in an office space with others you may or may not know, whether that’s via a pop-in or by buying an unlimited monthly membership. It’s geared mostly to the freelancing set, but we’ve seen that it’s become a stopping off point for workers who need a change of scenery, too.

Coworking offices provide that much needed “middle ground” that’s needed to be productive on your own but also touches innovation, too – facilities give patrons the ability to work out new ideas with the others around them, sometimes loudly, which isn’t always welcomed in a coffeehouse setting.

Also noted, was that a large group of “at home” workers flock to coworking facilities for a completely different reason that getting work done; they just want to meet other people.

It isn’t just a Midwest thing, either – besides the Factory in our hometown of Grand Rapids, both coasts have their share of facilities like ActivSpace in Seattle, BetaHouse in Cambridge, Shift Workspace in Birmingham, and the COOP in Chicago. Coworking’s even taking hold overseas in Shanghai!

What’s most flattering, though, is that several of these office spaces are using Turnstone products in their new set-ups. We’ve always tried to design between focus and collaboration with our workstations, and with 79% of workers worrying about missing human interaction if they were to telecommute, we think that coworking facilities might be the solution. We’re really excited that they’ve been choosing us to bridge the gap.

For a more comprehensive list of coworking facilities near you, try checking out wurkspaces.com.

I know we often feel like this, but how do we maintain a high performance work environment? Read on to find out what we found...

“You can only do so much with salary,” says global architecture and design firm Gensler, in their 2008 Workplace survey. “High-performing companies, the ones with high profits, strong brand positioning, and better employee engagement, are the ones that have the highest-performing workplaces,” the study said.

So, what exactly does a high-performing business workplace look like? Steelcase researchers agree that Generation-Y workers seem to know, as do Baby Boomers, who are slowly picking up their values from the younger set, this kind of business setting allows for four basic elements to come together and happen at any time:

1. Focus – Concentrating on “head down” work.
2. Collaboration – Working with other people to achieve a goal.
3. Learning – Building knowledge through education or experience.
4. Socialization – Interacting interpersonally with others.

What’s being seen is that the importance placed on a company’s size, brand image, and history is shifting to how well the business can support a worker’s preferred working style, how much they can learn, and how well it supports work/life integration. In other words, a business’ physical workplace has to get better at allowing the people in it to learn, create, and innovate.

How does that happen? We’ve found that a range of work settings is key. The ones that are the most effective support all of the four personal work modes above. Some ideas might be as easy as installing outlets around the office with seating to allow employees to plug in their computers and congregate, or by using Media:Scape technology in your conference rooms.

Skeptics may say that a changing business’ office characteristics isn’t the only way to building a high-performance company, but we feel that it’s certainly key to surmounting the challenge, which is why we’ve made a range of products such as cobi, i2i, and c:scape that attempt to do just that.

Backed up by data that you can find on our Come Together website, we’ve seen that the environmental aspects of work reinforces a company’s values – by paying attention to how you’re communicating access, openness, and free communication to your employees, you’ll be well on your way to enhanced performance.

So, are you a filer or a piler? Steelcase researchers have found that nearly half of the US workforce falls into one of those two groups, in a semi-annual workplace survey. The rest? Call them neat freaks, pack rats, or (gasp) slobs.

Over the course of the survey, it was found that women fall more toward the upper extreme, with 40% considering themselves neat freaks. There was evidence that lent credibility to why 75% of men weren’t; lack of elbow room might play a role in why workplace organization has become a challenge.

Researchers discovered that while team meeting spaces have increased in size (great for collaboration), individual work spaces have decreased (not so good for “head-down” work). Other take-aways from the study showed that younger workers considered themselves neater – 18 to 34 year olds ranked themselves 40%, with 55 and older at 37%.

What kind of organization type to you think you are? What about your office? Is your space clean and spartan like Facebook, or do you lean more toward organized chaos like Al Gore?

Show us! Upload photos of your work space!

Working from home can be a blessing and a curse. In some, a change of scenery helps them concentrate better, get more work done, and boost their creativity. On the other hand, others that we’ve talked to say that it does the exact opposite.

Whatever side of the coin you’re on, a good time management plan really minimizes the negatives and amplifies the positives of working from home. Here are ten of our favorite tips paraphrased from ZenHabits.com:

1. Set a morning routine – shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, or do it all in reverse, it’s the structure that helps get you going for the day.

2. Put together a daily work schedule – try to check and respond to emails at the same time and try to be “working” during the same time period each day (even if you’re watching
Good Morning America) – this will allow coworkers to get in contact with you, and help you to not miss anything!

3. At the end of the day, clean up! – There’s nothing worse then feeling like you should be doing more work when the work day’s over with. Plus, it’ll help you to feel fresh the next morning, too.

4. Go outside for a bit – Take in a little bit of the “secret life of daytime” that you’ve been missing by toiling in the office! It’ll keep you happy and refreshed.

5. No friends during work time – Having visitors is really sweet, but sometimes you just need to crank some work out, and they end up being a distraction. We think that time you set aside for work is perfect for just that, so no friends (unless they’re delivering a pizza).

6. Dress up a little – Pajamas are great and comfortable, but let’s be honest- have you ever felt like doing anything besides sleeping and watching the Price is Right while wearing them? Me either.

7. Music, or none, matters – Whatever you’re listening to, whether it’s NPR, Britney Spears, or Depeche Mode, influences your mood – make sure that you’re putting yourself in a great frame of mind for whatever the job is that you’re doing.

8. TV will screw you up – A little bit of TV is great, especially if you’re waiting to catch the highlights of the Yankee game, but if you’re not careful, you’ll end up watching the Orioles, Red Sox, Tigers, and Mike Tyson fight, too.

9. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow – Fleetwood Mac jokes aside, having a to-do list for the next day with three things you need to do and three things that aren’t essential but need to be done will help you clear things up before you quit working for the day.

10. Coffee, yes please! – Make sure to use all the conveniences of home to your advantage. It’s relaxing, and you’ll be able to rub it in to your office coworkers that you made yourself some fresh juice or a double mocha latte, too!

Don’t count out the advantages of having a good ergonomic office chair either- our Cobi or Amia would fit perfectly in any home office!