This week, TOPP moved into additional, (maybe) temporary office space, to alleviate some of the crowding at our office in the West Village. We were looking for a place that was convenient, comfortable, and most of all, available immediately (backstory is that we've been basically sitting on top of each other at our W. 12th Street offices for the last few months, while our new space at 148 Lafayette is being renovated -- it's ridiculous, I know...) Anyway, we found a GREAT space at a new-ish office incubator in DUMBO called Green Desk. It's a renovated 6-story warehouse building right at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Each floor consists of a bunch of glassed-in offices which are home to various companies. Gothamist is on the floor right below us. Most of the folks from the Livable Streets Initiative and GothamSchools, and some of the OpenGeo team will be working from here now. I've been reading and thinking a lot about office space lately, mainly spurred by our own impending move as well as Fog Creek Software's recent move to new digs. Having read Joel Spolsky's writing about the importance of private & quiet office space, I've been getting a little concerned about the open plan of the office we're about to move into. I visited the Fog Creek offices last Friday for their new office open house, and was impressed by the combination of highly social space (kitchen, lunch tables, couches) and super-quiet workspace (private, glassed-in office for every single developer). As a result, we at TOPP have been trying to subtly improve the layout (within reason, since construction is about to start and our concerns aren't the only ones -- the space will also be the future home of
Above: Green Desk building at 155 Water Street
Above: View from the front door, facing the river and Manhattan
Above: Ben Fried blogging away for Streetsblog in one of our rooms
Above: Glassed-in offices are somewhat reminiscent of the nice, quiet offices at Fog Creek
Above: Shared reception area
Above: View from one of our rooms, facing into Brooklyn
Here at TOPP, we've been using Fresh Direct for a while now for our office groceries (even while being critical of them on one of our blogs). It's easy -- we can order online and have food delivered right to the office. However, the packaging Fresh Direct uses is really outrageous; items are delivered in cardboard boxes, and are packed as if they're traversing the Atlantic, with on or two items per box surrounded by layers upon layers of packaging and padding. No longer. This week, we switched to Max Delivery, a service that offers same day delivery of many products within Manhattan. Max Delivery is a hybrid of Fresh Direct and Urban Fetch/Kozmo -- offering a full online catalog of staples as well as select items from NYC merchants. The kicker (for us at least) is their reusable bag program. Instead of packed boxes, they deliver using reusable shopping bags, with no extra packaging. Simply pay a $1.50 deposit for each bag, and return them upon next pickup. In between deliveries, you're free to use the bags for your own shopping. To boot, the grocery prices are lower at Max Delivery than at Fresh Direct (or so I'm told).
This week, we launched the new, improved GothamSchools. GothamSchools is the latest media / advocacy initiative from The Open Planning Project, and our first foray into the world of education. We've got a great team of reporters in Philissa Cramer, Elizabeth Green, and Kelly Vaughan, and the new site website was put together by the talented Chris Abraham and Phil Ashlock. GothamSchools the news outlet is just the beginning; look for more as we build up community and tools around this initiative.
This week, TOPP moved into additional, (maybe) temporary office space, to alleviate some of the crowding at our office in the West Village. We were looking for a place that was convenient, comfortable, and most of all, available immediately (backstory is that we've been basically sitting on top of each other at our W. 12th Street offices for the last few months, while our new space at 148 Lafayette is being renovated -- it's ridiculous, I know...) Anyway, we found a GREAT space at a new-ish office incubator in DUMBO called Green Desk. It's a renovated 6-story warehouse building right at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Each floor consists of a bunch of glassed-in offices which are home to various companies. Gothamist is on the floor right below us. Most of the folks from the Livable Streets Initiative and GothamSchools, and some of the OpenGeo team will be working from here now. I've been reading and thinking a lot about office space lately, mainly spurred by our own impending move as well as Fog Creek Software's recent move to new digs. Having read Joel Spolsky's writing about the importance of private & quiet office space, I've been getting a little concerned about the open plan of the office we're about to move into. I visited the Fog Creek offices last Friday for their new office open house, and was impressed by the combination of highly social space (kitchen, lunch tables, couches) and super-quiet workspace (private, glassed-in office for every single developer). As a result, we at TOPP have been trying to subtly improve the layout (within reason, since construction is about to start and our concerns aren't the only ones -- the space will also be the future home of
Above: Green Desk building at 155 Water Street
Above: View from the front door, facing the river and Manhattan
Above: Ben Fried blogging away for Streetsblog in one of our rooms
Above: Glassed-in offices are somewhat reminiscent of the nice, quiet offices at Fog Creek
Above: Shared reception area
Above: View from one of our rooms, facing into Brooklyn
Here at TOPP, we've been using Fresh Direct for a while now for our office groceries (even while being critical of them on one of our blogs). It's easy -- we can order online and have food delivered right to the office. However, the packaging Fresh Direct uses is really outrageous; items are delivered in cardboard boxes, and are packed as if they're traversing the Atlantic, with on or two items per box surrounded by layers upon layers of packaging and padding. No longer. This week, we switched to Max Delivery, a service that offers same day delivery of many products within Manhattan. Max Delivery is a hybrid of Fresh Direct and Urban Fetch/Kozmo -- offering a full online catalog of staples as well as select items from NYC merchants. The kicker (for us at least) is their reusable bag program. Instead of packed boxes, they deliver using reusable shopping bags, with no extra packaging. Simply pay a $1.50 deposit for each bag, and return them upon next pickup. In between deliveries, you're free to use the bags for your own shopping. To boot, the grocery prices are lower at Max Delivery than at Fresh Direct (or so I'm told).
This week, we launched the new, improved GothamSchools. GothamSchools is the latest media / advocacy initiative from The Open Planning Project, and our first foray into the world of education. We've got a great team of reporters in Philissa Cramer, Elizabeth Green, and Kelly Vaughan, and the new site website was put together by the talented Chris Abraham and Phil Ashlock. GothamSchools the news outlet is just the beginning; look for more as we build up community and tools around this initiative.
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