Top 10 Ways to Give Your Office a Web 2.0 Makeover

Posted by Kevin on December 21st, 2007 10 Comments

People who visit our office frequently remark on its awesomeness. It is a cool space with plenty of color and character - fitting given the characters who work here. Showing up to work in a downtown, urban environment that reflects a creative culture instead of trudging to a dull suburban corporate office park can be a great advantage for a company trying to get the best talent. But say you do work in the traditional corporate office setting and want to make your space over into a Web 2.0 think-tank. Just follow these ten quick tips to free the 2.0-ness within your company walls:

10 - Disassemble the cubes
Nothing deadens an office vibe quicker than consigning employees to cubes. No one in wants to work in a cube! If an employee professes to like working in a cube, fire them and let them take their cube with them. Topple the cube walls and you’ll immediately create relationships between people who’ve maybe never even met. Here at Wetpaint, everyone sits out on the floor together. We have a couple of offices but we’ve converted those into meeting rooms. No cubes and no offices makes for a much more collaborative environment.

No Cubes

9 - Pillage the fallen for cheap furniture
Gone are the halcyon days of pre-bubble office environs, when every fresh-faced startup employee’s birthright seemed to be receiving their own custom Herman Miller Aeron chair. And while companies come and go, office furniture has an indestructible, cockroach-like permanence. Embrace this! There is an entire industry built around reselling used office furniture (who knew!?). So check those outlets for deals, or better yet, troll the business section for signs of distressed or relocating companies and give them a call. Get to them before other furniture vultures and you’ll walk away with a steal. So your chairs and tables don’t match - who cares? Plus, it’s so company 2.0 to recycle!

Pillaged Furniture

8 - Blacket the walls with white boards
White board brainstorms are the adult version of finger painting. Grown professionals can’t help but unleash their inner artist in the presence of white boards. The shiest person in the room will be mocking up ideas (or doodling Futurama) in no time if given a blank slate to write upon. Warning - dry erase markers can cause a wicked buzz if overused. We have one conference room that is covered top to bottom in white board. It’s amazing. You order it from MyWhiteboard.com and apply it just like wall paper. It is simply awesome.

Whiteboard

7 - Your company logo in the entryway
Distract them with corporate bling as they walk in the doorway and folks won’t look as closely at the cheap office space and all the wonky furniture you’ve assembled. Take the added measure of applying your logo to some cool, cheap swag and visitors will leave happy every time.

Logo in the Hallway

6 - Nerf balls
Nothing says “I love you!” like a Nerf missile to the side of the head. And nothing breaks up the routine of the day like a spontaneous game of office catch, PIG, or tag. Fair warning…hitting unsuspecting folks with Nerf balls can lead to some healthy discussion and interaction.

Nerf Hoop

5 - Wii away
There comes a time in every day when you need to beat your co-worker. Since that is frowned upon, the next best thing is Wii boxing. We’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the Wii. We put the system in a conference room where folks can gather and virtually fight each other until their hearts content. Wii takes seconds to learn and games are over in three or four minutes. So it’s a great break that lets everyone get involved - gamers and non-games alike. To really pimp out the game room, project via LCD onto the big ass white board you’ve installed or on a flat screen TV you bought from a defunct company.

Wetpaint Wii

4 - Circus Cookies & Diet Dr. Pepper
Never let the kids go hungry. Bottomless snacks are an absolute must in a Web 2.0 office - frozen frosted circus cookies are the brain fuel of choice among the Ajax set.

Circus Cookies

3 - Miles of disorganized wires
Data cables snaking all over the place say to anyone from the outside that this place is high tech. Sure, no one may know what even half those wires do but their appearance communicates a forceful company motto: give me power or give me death!

Miles of Wires

2 - Turbo coffee machine with never ending bean supply
The single best investment we ever made was the coffee robot. All that is good that has ever come from inside these office walls traces its origins back in part to the life-enhancing properties of our ultra-slick Starbucks individual-cup-making coffee machine. It makes angry people mellow and tired people tireless. If the building were ever to catch fire, the coffee machine would be the first thing everyone would rush to save.

Coffee Machine

1 - Headphones…Lots of Headphones
Many of us working here wish we could screen for musical tastes during the hiring process. Alas, musical tastes tend to diverge, and when agreement can’t be reached on who gets to control the office space soundtrack, opt for headphones. And when the headphones are on, you know not to come a knocking because the code is a rocking!

Headphones

So there you have it…quick tips on how to turn your office into a sexy Web 2.0 space. Have other suggestions or things that have worked for you? Drop a comment.

Keyword Tags: Web 2.0, Wetpaint, Fun

Comments

Wow, Wetpaint sounds like a fun, purpose-driven environment. Do you guys offer summer internships?

By Andrew Pennebaker on December 21st, 2007 at 6:23 pm

[…] fine folks at Wetpaint have created a list of techniques to "Web 2.0" an office. Wetpaint makes Wiki tools so they probably share everything at […]

By Ten Tips To Web 2.0 Your Office »TechAddress on December 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm

Very nice list. I can’t wait for some new startup to hire you as their interior office decorator.

By Shamim on December 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 pm

One of those wires looks like a Cell Charger, one looks like an Ethernet, maybe a Printer, and a few Computers, and connecting other Power Strips. Am I Right?

By Josh Budde on January 6th, 2008 at 7:45 am

Ha ha, nice. You guys have got a fun place… nice Wii

By Madusha on January 7th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

We share many of the same concepts here at myYearbook. Our logo is above the door, not in any kind of entry way. As I’m typing this, one of our developers is having a NERF gun war (as is typical at least a few times a week) with one of our designers. My desk is flooded with many different toys, candy; and we all have headphones (mine are wireless, for rocking even when I’m not at the desk). Instead of just the normal, standard PCs, our developers and designers are given the option of a PC, or a Mac (which a few developers, and our CTO use). Our walls aren’t fully white-board, but we do have white boards all over the place, some are filled with useful information and/or ideas, some are drawings. And how could I forget, what other company had strange things like monkeys running around outside behind the office (on a leash, of course).

By Dallas Gutauckis on January 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

My brother drew that Bender after the holiday party!

So glad to see it immortalized!

By Katherine on February 14th, 2008 at 11:42 am

[…] eu, que acha que todo modismo (por melhor que seja), tem um limite, vale a pena dar uma conferida nesse post do blog Freshcoats, com um roteiro de dez passos, simples, baratos (e bem sarcásticos) de como levar sua empresa a era […]

By ResultsON : Guia do escritório 2.0 on March 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

[…] ways to improve an office space. The folks at Wetpaint.com have come come up with a top ten list (Top 10 Ways to Give Your Office a Web 2.0 Makeover) that, based on my calculations, would cost you about 1400 […]

By Office Space 2.0 on July 15th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

My office does 8 out of these 10 things - we have foosball instead of a Wii and whiteboards in each office (but not encompassing entire walls).

Nonetheless, it was like looking into a mirror.

By mst3krulz on August 6th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

freshcoats, the wetpaint blog

Top 10 Ways to Give Your Office a Web 2.0 Makeover

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