I wanted to share some good news with my fellow Leftbankers:

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week (December 2nd, 3rd and 4th) the Leftbank Cafe will be open all day until 8pm with HAPPY HOUR from 5 - 8pm - so come down and join us for some happiness!

We will have an assortment of beer (and Upright, of course) and local wines - with pairing suggestions to go with our wonderful soups.  There will also be a very tasty charcuterie plate that can be paired with just about anything.

And, of course, being as this is happy hour - the prices will make you happy too.

Hi Leftbankers!

I just wanted to take a moment to remind you that we have our very own yoga class happening behind the Hive, on Tuesday mornings from 8am-9am. The cost is only $6 a class. You would be hard-pressed to find a better deal than that!  (I know, because I have looked) more

There was fun and frivolity at the launch preview party of  VOISbox (aka the ballroom in the Leftbank building).  VOIS (Voice of Oregon Innovation and Sustainability) is an alliance of sustainable Oregon businesses and other like-minded organizations working together to promote sustainability culture-wide.  Its mission is to support sustainable, forward thinking business leaders through advocacy, education, leadership cultivation, civic interaction and community building.  There were certainly several leaders in attendance at the launch - our very own Leftbank neighbor, Bill Bradbury, was there, as were Rex Burkholder and Jeff Cogen to name but a few.  The Stump made its first appearance and there was no shortage of people to take their place upon its lofty heights.

Bon Appetit outdid themselves with the wonderful sustainable food they supplied and this was confirmed by the sizeable line leading up to the food - which remained sizeable for much of the evening.

Congrats to VOIS for a successful pre-launch!

As I am sure most of you know by now, Al Gore will be here at Leftbank tomorrow morning to join Bill Bradbury for a discussion about Oregon’s New Frontier of Green Jobs.

If you are interested in joining in this discussion, there are still some tickets available here.  Here is some more information from Bill Bradbury’s website:

Over 150 people attended the Nov. 12 open house at Strategies 360 here at Leftbank.

It was a politico-packed event with U.S. Congressman David Wu, State Senate Majority Leader Richard Devlin, State House Majority Leader Mary Nolan, Senator Mark Hass, Rep. Mitch Greenlick and Rep. Chris Garrett in attendance.

If you get a moment, stop down and welcome S360’s Margi Hoffmann and Colin Cochran!

Thank you to all who were able to make it to the dc202 Open House on October 22!

We really appreciate the continued support of our families, clients, and friends, and are excited to be part of the growing connectedness and cameraderie that we’re finding here in the Leftbank Community.

I’ve been a brown bag girl for more than a decade.  Lucky enough to have a partner with mad skills in the kitchen, for years I’ve had gourmet leftovers every day at lunch.  And for years coworkers have jealously eyed my lunch while sitting across the table - peanut butter sandwiches in hand.

The lunch tables have turned.  more

You have seen the Devil’s Ivy gang,  they are located in their nested space under the stairway, at the main entrance of the Leftbank. Golden Pothos plants, commonly known as devil’s ivy, have finally been replanted. They have reflected on their re-potting experience: “We are excited about the rearrangement of our tenant space. Our new pots are a bit taller now, so we can see better, and our new soil is nutritious, and there is more of it too. We are planning on giving lots of new growth here in a near future. We even got a shot of B1, which is a plant booster (i believe it was a french vanilla flavor!). This is great, we are planning on having a little party here”.

Devil’s ivy also expressed their gratitude towards having all of the leased space to themselves, rather than sharing it with Bromeliad Rana (commonly know as Guzmania). “Those guzmanians were so grumpy all the time. We are glad they have moved into the Hive. At least we don’t hear them as much now. They seem to be happy there too, they even have new friends”.

From the FMYI blog:

One of the goals I had when creating FMYI was to grow the business while offering worklife balance for our team members. This seems paradoxical and insane. But if you think about what a startup is all about, it’s putting ideas into practice. And the only way to come up with ideas or think strategically is to make sure your brain isn’t fatigued. Worklife isn’t just a nice to have, it’s essential to coming up with new ideas and tackling all the challenges that come your way. You need to be able to take a step back constantly to evaluate where the startup is headed in order to make needed course corrections along the way.

The irony of this blog post is I put it off in order to spend time with my family. Our second child was born a week before our FMYI 6.0 release, which presented some challenges. I touched on this topic briefly in the The Oregonian recently. I want to live a full life with family and friends, while contributing to the economy by helping to create jobs in a sustainable way. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, but it is a challenge to balance them.

So how do you enable worklife balance in a fast paced startup environment? Fortunately, technology makes so much possible these days. A lot of attention is on real time tools like live videoconferencing, but most of your day isn’t meetings (and if it is, maybe it’s time to work somewhere else =) ). It’s emails and “water-cooler” chats. This allows you to reflect on what’s being said, rather than the immediate reaction required at meetings. Most of the FMYI team members were telecommuters in the early days and many still are telecommuters, and we rely heavily on our own collaboration system to make everything run smoothly. Similar to the phenomenon of Facebook where you can stay up to date with what your old friends are doing in between phone calls and seeing each other face to face, browsing your FMYI site keeps you up to date on what’s going on — but at work.

In the end, it’s all about the quality of your work, not how many hours you’re investing, and whether you’re in the office or not. This applies to startups and big organizations (definitely check out Best Buy’s successes with results-oriented work). We’ve found that offering your team worklife options like telecommuting, flexible schedules, fewer meetings, family leaves, and involving friends and families with events and work opportunities can help. Of course, there are times when balance is difficult due to new projects. But it’s the new projects that enable you to grow and provide worklife benefits.

Next up in my series on starting a business: leveraging technology and social media. In the meantime, have fun enjoying your own worklife balance with friends and family!
-Justin

Ten days ago I bought a baggie of raffle tickets at the Portland Farmers’ Market fundraiser here in the Leftbank building. For those of you who don’t know, each bag of ten tickets ($10 each) includes an instant prize (from $15 value up to a case of wine). My prize was dinner at Ten 01 - sweet!!

The Big Raffle is taking place this weekend at the Saturday Market. The Grand Prize is a PFM Shopping Spree - $50 a week for 40 weeks (or, $2000 clams!). First Prize is a “Market to Table Tour” with Chef Cathy Whims of Nostrana Restaurant. You and 5 friends get to shop the market with Chef Whims, then prepare a meal together at Nostrana. Second prize is a one night stay at the Nines Hotel plus a $100.00 gift certificate to Urban Farmer Restaurant.. .   . and the list goes on.

So just a reminder that you all have the rest of the week to buy tickets (again, $10 each - a bargain and support for a great group) - check in with the folks at the PFM office or click here.

Happy Raffling!