Private Chef Antoinette caters healthy, mostly organic food (no junk) to different families in West Seattle. She does dinner parties in her beautiful backyard during summer and cooks in private homes all year. For her winter residence she tries out the Office Junction. Our nice open kitchen provides everything a nice private dinner party should offer without all the work for the host. Our space is bright, nice and clean and Antoinette plans your menu, goes shopping, preps, cooks and serves. She even picks the perfect wine pairing for her dishes. 


Sunday Night we had a couple of things to celebrate and invited Antoinette to cook for us. Antoinette planned an all gluten free 3 course dinner for us.

We started out the night with a glass of bubbly. Chatting and watching an amazing sunset over Puget Sound in the big window over California Ave. As we settled for our first course, we were served a bed of hand picked greens with 2 nice sized goat cheese and rice cakes. The cakes were crisp, fluffy and had a perfect brown crust and our prosecco went perfect with it.

We chatted a little more about life, odd hobbies and favorite books while watching the sky turn from purple to dark blue.

We were served a nice mango curry with rice and shrimps. It has some fire to it and was nicely paired with a Chenin Blanc & Viognier balancing the spicy dish with the sweet in the wine.

Kelly shared a little about her work life organizing Open Space or Unconference Conferences and the set of basic roles that come with it. 
1) The people who come are the best people who could have come.
2) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
3) It starts when it starts.
4) It's over when it's over.
5) The Law of Two Feet meaning if you are not learning or contributing to a talk or presentation or discussion it is your responsibility to find somewhere where you can contribute or learn.

We then went on to a wonderful chocolate torte with pumpkin creme. It was rich and yummy.

Stefan shared a little bit about his weekend working through "7 Habits" in a yurt and having a weekend of parties. Antoinette told us about her experience as private chef and healthy school lunches and we ended the wonderful evening at 8.30 pm.

Seasonal Menu
Appetizer
Brown rice & goat cheese cakes served over salad greens
paired with Zonin Doc Prosecco

Main course
Jamaican mango curry with shrimp served over brown rice
paired with Pin Ridge Chenin Blanc & Viognier

Dessert
Pumpkin-chocolate torte with pumpkin whipped cream 
paired with Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet

Celebrate with your friends or employees in a nice, private setting for 4 to 8.
Dinner dates with Chef Antoinette and menus (gluten free/seasonal)
available upon request for $55-85 per person, childcare available.

We have really nice family friendly events in West Seattle. One of these my kids love is Treat or Treat in the Junction. We especially like it as a family now that streets a closed and it's combined with the Farmers Market. To use this occasion and also advertise for our young business I put our sandwich board on a cart and dressed up the cart and myself with many, many hats. 


A line read "Wearing many hats? Come work with us at the Office Junction!". This line really speaks to me as a business owner, mother, entrepreneur, PTA member and active community members. Wearing many hats is what many of my friends are doing all day. And what we business owners just do day to day.

We immediately ran into some friends of my kids, from school, soccer, ballet, preschool. We also ran into our member Sarah dressed up as Snow White with one of her cute little boys dressed as one of the dwarfs. 

While candy collecting many Junction visitors eyed our sandwich board and one man commented on how great the Coworking concept is and that we are way ahead and that Coworking will be a big thing in the future. Word. Word. He was excited to grab on of our flyers.

We made it all the way up and down the Junction, stopped at the Community School camp to pet a goat and a chicken and to say 'Hi' to my kids former teachers and director Sarah. My kids also enjoyed free ice cream from Huskies and my husband was very happy to also find some 'candy' (lamb breast and leek) for himself at the Farmers Market.

On the way back to the Office Junction a lady called out of her car she loved how creative the sandwich board on the cart is. Sometimes it might seem a little out there to wear company colors and shout out to the world what you have to offer, but I am really proud of what we offer at the OJ, wholeheartedly stand behind everything we do and would like lots of more people in West Seattle to benefit from it. And many still haven't heard of us. 


I also like involving my kids in my business. My mom ran her business, a toy store, out of our house and there were always many jobs for me. I felt proud and this is probably also how I caught the Entrepreneur bug from my mom. Now my daughter is excited about my business and always wants to help out. It's not the easiest to come up with the ideal jobs for a 5 year old but I am excited she want to help and learn. So, our family outing was also a free course in business promotion. ;-)

Attended by Ryan, Jenny, Kerrie, Kristy, Krystal and Christine.

Jenny started the round by talking about her MamaNeedsARefill Mini Retreats. She asked for help with her branding, doing multiple projects. Krystal recommended her moo cards. Nice quality, affordable business cards you can choose different back side layouts to make them more specialized.

Kerrie shared some bits out of the editor world and tries to figure out if she wants to go wide or better serve a niche. Some of us recommended she could do both and try it out with different business cards and profiles.

Ryan was thinking about offering his marketing services for smaller businesses. 

Kristy is in the means of starting a web design business working on her design degree while working with different designers and programmers. She is project managing and also knows about design. 

Krystal was very excited her Art Childrens Book was in the last stages of finishing and was gonna be published the next day.

Christine shared a little about the Office Junction and ask the group for a brainstorm about how to reach all the homeoffice workers in West Seattle.

Our monthly Entrepreneur Meetup is today, Tuesday 10/22 from 12 to 1 pm.
Bring your lunch or a snack to share and find new ideas how to improve your business, bounce ideas and support each other.

Our next free Coworking Day is on Tuesday, 11/5 from 10 to 5 pm.

If you are interest in participating in our next Krypton course, please let us know. Stefan and Ryan will offer another 4 week series in November.

Urbansitter will host a Babysitter Meet & Greet at the Office Junction on Wednesday 10/23 from 6 to 7.30 pm. RVSP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8696977895

Mark your calendar for our next Art Walk. Stefan is preparing some fun Improv Games for us. You don't want to miss this.

We look forward to seeing you at the Office Junction,
Christine & Stefan

Every so often I lose my motivation.  Sometimes I am burned out, sometimes I am bored, sometimes I am scared to take the next step.  Sometimes I don’t even know what the next step is.

Fortunately, just when I need it an opportunity usually comes along where I get to challenge my own fears, broaden my ideas of what is, and find the support I need to chart a new course. 

Ryan Breske from Zeitgeist/33 Marketing brought me just such an opportunity a few weeks ago and asked if he could share it with the Office Junction.  An hour later, Christine, Ryan and I agreed to make it available to anyone who could dare to commit to four Mondays from Noon to 1:30 at the Office Junction.  Best of all Ryan offered to lead the class!

Krypton Community College is the brain child of marketing pioneer Seth Godin.  It is a series of free workshops designed to enable groups of people to come together for brief, powerful, in-person learning experiences. The idea is that when we learn together, we push ourselves, discover real insights and most of all, dance with the discomfort that’s essential to turn education into learning.  If that all sounds like Blah-blah-blah; how about this: it is FUN.

The first four week course being offered at the Office Junction is called “Go: How to Overcome Fear, Pick Yourself, & Start a Project that Matters”. In the first class we analyzed what creates “failures” and the fears we share around failing.  Then we explored how much more rewarding our professional lives could be if we shifted from fearing the fail, to embracing and learning from the fail such that the fail is not really a fail but an opportunity.  

In the second class we explored what it is like to really stretch our imaginations to solve a problem.  How do you defy convention and consider the outrageous as a way of seeing what else is possible.

Our next class is on Monday and the focus will be to explore ideas for projects and the reasons we want to do them.  I think we will be testing ourselves to see how genuine our intentions will be… Because you know, pure intent is different than a story you made up.  The funny thing is I know too many people who unknowingly operate from in-genuine intentions.  I believe that to be happy in what they do, you have to be willing to consider the possibility that you may have been fooling yourself.  If that means anything to you, you might want to sign up for the next class.

Or- you can just come for the fun of it.    

Click here to learn how.

Stefan

Stefan, Clark, Jana, her business partner, Gabriel, Eric, Christine, Eric's business partner, Deborah, Kristy, Raeann and our first member Eric joined us for our Anniversary Meetup at Uptown Espresso.

Eric started introducing his startup team working on a maker space for West Seattle. The concept is rather new but is making big waves. It is more commonly discussed in relation with '3D printing'. We learnt a lot what might be coming next. Gabriel enlightened us what he experienced in Barcelona and how he wants to bring the movement to Seattle. It was very inspiring.

We went around the table to learn about each others projects and shared work challenges and needs in following fields: retirement coaching, website development, writer in transition, graphic design, construction, running equipment sales. We had a wonderful time. Thanks everyone for coming!

Come join us for the next meetup on Wednesday, November 6th.

In spring 2012 I was ready for a change. I worked on a couple of projects from my little home office while my kids were at preschool. I had a really hard time focusing on my work as a self employed part timer and felt lonely. I always had a lot of fun with my coworkers and working by myself with no one to laugh, go for lunch or brainstorm an idea felt really wrong. What do to?

I crafted a little business plan about a space I could go to, to meet with other people that don't like working from home. A space with a childcare in one wing of the building, a sewing workshop, a fitness room, a kitchen, an art studio and a nice backyard with benches, a little garden and a playground.  I knew this is what I wanted if I could have it all. I met with a couple of Mom friends for walks and on playgrounds to talk over my idea and got some great feedback and support. I entered in a business competition to win some money for my vision and also to get some advice on how to do this. I was on a roll.

At one workshop I shared my idea with the participants and ended up with an email address on a napkin by the end of the day. This contact led me to Jessie from Ellie's (Works Progress) opening a Coworking space with childcare in the North of Seattle. We kept contact and after the summer she connected me with someone she met in her space who wanted to open a work space in West Seattle. I was very curious and met with Stefan at Uptown Espresso early October 2012. 

We shared our ideas, talked about all the options, our motivation, personal goals, frustration about working in a home office and agreed to look into some properties and to visit a Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance meeting together. We wrote our mission statement and skipped the childcare idea, as it was too challenging to start out with. We also knew from Susan and Jacob from Office Nomads we would have to start looking for people interested in sharing a work space first and met with Tracy from the West Seattle Blog. She wrote a nice blog post about our idea. The ball started rolling.

We met with about 30 people during our 4 different meetups at Uptown Espresso in the week after the blog post went online. We felt really optimistic about the interest in our wonderful community and met weekly at Uptown while Stefan and I looked at about 35 properties to find a fitting home for our work community. Desperate to find a space we connected with Krystal from Mind Unwind and arranged Coworking sessions for 2 days a week at her gallery in February. A temporary space for our idea was way better than no space.

In Mid-March we finally found a great new space in a great location on California Ave that was beautiful, light, professional and homey with a great roof deck and kitchen. We were very excited to get started with an idea that was just a theory for so long. We invited everyone for a tour, followed by a work party to assembly IKEA desks, followed by a free Coworking week before opening our door to West Seattle's First Coworking space on April 1st.

For the last 7 month we met lots very friendly, compassionate people that all shared the need to connect to others. We held many fun events to create a supportive work community and a space where people meet and collaborate. We started with a Wine Tasting, a work party at the Bee Garden, our obligatory Coworking Meetups, Art Walk, Cooking classes, Night Out, Entrepreneur & Women Networking, PTA meetings, Fundraiser, Board Game Night, Open House, Chamber After Hour, Krypton, Nutrition class, Board Meeting and Whiskey Night. We facilitated a lot of conversations about work, life, goals, projects, ideas, theories and tried to fix many challenges together (the latest on how to fix the West Seattle Bridge). We are very happy about all the connections that formed in our wonderful space. 

Starting with our 2nd year, we will work even harder to get the word out about Coworking and the Office Junction as a great event space. We have some fun events lined up, like a Non-Profit Mixer, Sushi Making, a Map Jam, Cheese Night, a Obama Care Info event, Improv Night, Private Chef Dinner Parties, Business Speed Dating and hope to make the space profitable soon, so we can keep up our mission to bring the West Seattle community closer together. We have already seen how many great things can happen if magic falls into place.

Please help us spread the word for the Office Junction!
Christine

I was very curious who would come to our Krypton workshop. Shortly after noon we had the room filled with 8 people. We reviewed the articles we read at home and deconstructed different forms of failures.

Mistakes! A series of failures as you follow a path of persistent long-term effort characterized by ongoing learning and a reputation that improves over time.

The giant flame out
Giving up in the dip
Shortcuts
Not starting
The critic, on the sidelines
Empty hype
The scam, the short-sighted selfish pitch

Ryan shared a little bit about his interview, and we all shared how we experiences different versions of failures in our lives. Everyone could relate to failing and had ideas on how to cope with it and move on.

Christine

Everyone in the course gets a PDF document with links to articles, podcasts, etc. Participants then come together to discuss and figure out how to push each other to dive deeper into the work and learn together.

Our first Krypton Week started with homework on 'Failure'. How to fail, why to fail, when to fail, how to do it better, different forms of failure and how the master himself fails and how to pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. I wasn't able to do one assignment which was an interview with someone who created something meaningful and new, but I thought about it for a while.

The homework piece was quite enlightening and I was eager to discuss my new views with the group - not knowing who exactly will be there the next day. 

Christine

This great meetup was joined by Jana, Ryan, Stefan Rob, Deborah and Christine.
After a round of introductions we discussed how more and more people change their 'world view' from success in career to personal fulfillment. 

Our topic was personal goals. Here are a few of our goals for your inspiration:
- having more fun
- assigning time for fun experiences
- financial independence
- booking the next vacation
- running a Marathon
- to stay present
- to battle media addiction
- to go with no/minimal planning
- Meditation
- owning life
- deep breathing
- to make lunch
- creating more tangible goals

We also learnt from Ryan how to tie your shoe laces the right way (vs. the wrong way) which he shared with us. He learnt it from a TED Talk.

And the next time someone asks 'Did you do something fun today?' we all want to be able to say 'YES!'.