Rewarding Your Clients

A twitter post from @smaxbrown had us thinking.

He wrote: "What if we spent more time building people up?"

That was it. But we spent a good long time thinking about it.

We spent a good long time being grateful for the many ways that we do build our employees up. After all, we give them autonomy to do their work, allowing them opportunities for growth (a good number of our employees start as interns and work their ways into other, more permanent positions), and giving each other and our clients ample ways to suggest room for improvement and to thank each other.

But there's a piece of the equation that service providers sometimes ignore. In this industry, we thank our clients in many different ways. We're in touch with them every step of the way, we make sure to treat the process with respect, we ensure we do as much as we can to meet their every need and anticipate their every want. But what do we do to show them that we appreciate them? In what ways can we reward them for their business?

We decided that the best option was a reward program. Now, clients of The Hub can earn points based on the events they plan with us. And if they want, instead of spending their points on the great products we have in the gift catalog, they can also donate their points to The Hub's chosen not-for-profit, ShelterBox USA.

There are many different ways to show someone you appreciate them. But in some ways, the best way is to let them decide how they'd like to be rewarded. We want our clients to not only be compelled to work with us because we're technologically advanced, green, and eminently capable of producing great meetings. We want them to work with us because they want to. And because they feel rewarded for doing so.

For more information about the My Hub Rewards program, go to http://www.myhubrewards.com, or call 1.877.TheHub1

Our Interns Never Give Up

As we head into fall, we're reminded of one of just one of the things that makes summer so great here at The Hub: our interns.
In fact, our interns make working here great year-round, because we ensure that there's space on our team for interns year-round. Why? Well, because of interns like Rachael Pignotti, who joined us at the beginning of the summer and will be with us part-time during the fall.

Meet Rachel, one of our talented interns.

Rachael's a student at Temple University, from which she'll graduate in December. Her major, International Business and Marketing, put her on our radar, but it was her interest in sustainability in business that made us perfect matches for each other. She's an officer in a student professional organization at Temple called Students for Responsible Business, and she happens to manage green event planning for the group.
"The first thing that attracted me to The Hub is that it's LEED certified," she says, referring to our silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
But Rachael quickly learned that Hub Sales Director Stephanie Koch and CEO John New wouldn't let her work with just the aspects of business that she was familiar with. They set her to work on a critical side of business she hadn't yet been familiar with: web sites and Internet outreach for our clients. "This is such a great place to grow," she says. "I've learned so much over the past months, and these are things I was always going to have to learn anyway."
Rachael also works in an area of The Hub that's more germane to her position at SRB: marketing promotions. "I’m learning how The Hub likes to brand themselves, and I combine that with my ideas, and it’s been turning out really well," she says.
Part of that success is Rachael's dogged pursuit of sustainability in the meetings and events industry. "We're adamant about green here at The Hub, and making it a part of our company, but I'd love to see more companies be more aware of choosing places that are sustainable, like The Hub. Sooner or later, the marketing of that is going to be beneficial, if not critical," she says.
While Rachael identifies with all five of our Core Values, the one that's closest to her heart is Never Give Up. "I'm incredibly stubborn," she says, "Mostly to myself. I've had some opportunities to opt out of projects that I'm unfamiliar with, and I think it's important to just keep on working."
We agree, Rachael. We'll miss you when you graduate, but we're so happy we got to meet you.
For more information on interning at The Hub, click here.

Revolution in Philadelphia for Event Camp Twin Cities!

Mindy Holahan, our business support manager and one of the handlers of our Twitter feed, was on-deck to experience the magic of Event Camp Twin Cities' Philadelphia pod. Here's what she learned about hybrid events.

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A Revolution in the Meetings Industry? There’s a Room for That.

Two weeks ago, the meetings industry took a big leap forward. Did you feel it? That’s when the second annual Event Camp Twin Cities took place in Minneapolis. We hosted the Philadelphia pod in our Revolution room.

But wait! What's a "pod"? And how can an event in Minneapolis have anything to do with Philadephia?

A hybrid event brings off-site participants into an on-site meeting and allows them to participate in the meeting. Off-site participants gather in a pod for real-time streaming of meetings that are going on at the home site. Guests can ask questions and give immediate feedback, just as if they were at the main conference. This year’s event had pods in Philadelphia, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Silicon Valley, and Hawaii.

All we needed was a steady internet connection, but we like to do things a bit fancier in the pods. Traci Browne of Red Cedar Publicity and Marketing organized the entire Philadelphia pod experience from top to bottom. Jeffrey Halligan from Dyventive made it so that the feed went both way: participants in Minneapolis could see us, as well. And we wired secondary monitors that allowed the pods to interact with each other (that led to some friendly competition, especially with the Silicon Valley pod).

Communication

Event Camp Twin Cities uses Twitter, and the hashtag “ectc11,” for better real-time discussion flow. Followers of the #ectc11 stream sent along questions and comments, and Emilie Barta, the virtual emcee, represents the off-site audience.

What makes Event Camp so special?

Event Camp Twin Cities is the first hybrid event lab—a conference specially designed for event professionals to experiment with technology and social media together, rather than risking failure with their own events. Failure was a welcome partner in the event: The motto for the event was “If we’re not breaking things, then we’re not innovating.”

In the Philly pod, we threw ourselves into the experiment. Some of the tools failed. We had some trouble connecting with the Facebook app that streamed the secondary sessions. We had moments when the incoming flow of information was more than we could handle. But overall the event was a resounding success. We learned how to better use social media to bring together people across the globe—and we formed new friendships with our pod-mates.

I missed it! Do I have to wait another year?

No! Event Camp Europe is this Friday! You can check out the full list of Event Camps here.

Yoga is for Corporate Types Too!

We've all felt the stresses of a madcap day practically ruin our evenings.
The Hub has a way of relieving that tension. For the past few weeks now, our CityView and Chemical Heritage Foundation locations have been overtaken by brilliant yogis as they work to relieve busy office workers of their everyday stresses.
That's right, our friends at Deliver Me Yoga have found a key to a happy, balanced corporate life, and they're demonstrating it at The Hub.
Co-founder Alice Dommert, who worked for many years as an architect before trying out life as a yogi, said she came to the idea that yoga is a critical part of the corporate life after seeing "too many bright people who couldn't manage their thoughts. Yoga is really about turning off the workings of the mind." Making yoga accessible to corporate types, she says, is critical, since personal responsibility for health is such a basic issue, and often gets ignored in the rush of a busy day.

Corporate serenity in our CityView location makes this the perfect place to lay out yoga mats.

With that thought, she and Sarah Hill set about finding a way to introduce corporate workers to a better way of living. Her first step was finding a space that would recall corporate life, and thus evoke a level of comfort with busy executives. The Chemical Heritage Foundation space, she says, was a ringer for its thoughtful design, and our CityView space struck a chord with her for its wide-open views. "I will only do yoga in beautiful spaces," she says. "It makes a difference when you’re trying to practice yoga, because a lot of it is about the environment."
We're happy she and Sarah found us.

Alice and Sarah, left and right, respectively, are partners in a new movement to bring yoga to all stripes.

Deliver Me Yoga holds two classes a week in our facilities. Here's the class schedule for the Hub, which runs through August 11. Drop in any time for $20.
If you can't make it to one of our classes, though, Alice has two really important tips she wants to pass on to you.

• Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, three deeps breaths. "You're not chanting, you're not using Sanskrit words," she says. "You can do this in a meeting. Just take the time, every few hours, to breathe."
• Twist. Twist to your right first, and then your left. "This is really about squeezing the internal organs, and flushing them out," says Alice. "And don't forget to breathe."

Hot summer deals--how hot are they?

Ah, summer in the city. It's one of our favorite seasons for many reasons--Center City Sips, al fresco movies, and great summer sales.
But we also love it for another more quotidian reason--we use it as a big excuse to reward our clients for being just that--great clients.
Sure, we think Christmas is great for gift-giving, and spring is the season of renaissance and flowers, but what better time to remind our clients how happy we are to have them than the season of long days, outdoor barbeques, and general good feelings?
We like incentives in our office, so to celebrate the dog days of August, we're giving an iPad to event professionals who book $6000 or more with any of our three locations. Yes, really.
And, in keeping with our commitment to corporate social responsibility, we're also offering not-for-profits a chance to discover one of our favorite Philadelphia institutions, the Chemical Heritage Foundation. For $65 per person, in the months of July and August, NFPs can get to know our facility there, and our services.
To learn more about both of these summer offers, you can call The Hub at 1.877.843.4821

How do you reward your clients?

Hub Friday: Core Values

...Oh, boy. Today's Hub Friday post is going to be a doozy, and it's pretty close to home. We're going to explore another core value today. It's "Take Action." There are three core parts to this particular value. They are:

• We solve our clients’ problems before they know those problems exist.
• We never assume that something is “someone else’s responsibility.”
• Do something besides nothing when problems arise.

Why are we focusing on this core value today? Well, we noticed an anomaly in The Hub blog today: We somehow skipped EcoMonday this week. We don't know how it happened. It was just a blip, something in the scheduling or something. It might seem small, but to us here at The Hub Twoffice, where we handle such things, it seemed a big problem.
So what are we going to do? Yes, we spent a fair amount of time feeling embarrassed. And then we wondered if we could blame the operating system, or whatever. But then we realized that the solution is to put one of our core values into play.
Take action. For us that means taking responsibility. And then it means taking steps to make sure the problem doesn't happen again.
It could mean something like revisiting our responsibilities when the time comes for review, or maybe just something as simple as redrawing our priorities and carving out time check that our posts will go out on time.
Either way, one of the key parts of this core value is owning up to the mistake in the first place, and acknowledging the problem.
So we've done that. And now, we can solve the problem.
We love this value. It allows us to take responsibility for whatever comes down the pike.

You don't have to be a hero. Just take action.

What's your best tip for anticipating problems?

Hub Friday: Looking the Part

It's Friday!
In some workplaces, it's Casual Friday, but not here at the Hub. You'll see our sales staff in suits or some other business outfit (it's not unusual to see Bill and John, our president and CEO, respectively, walking around in 3-piece suits). We all wear name tags, all day.
Our service staff, who are a big part of making sure meetings and events go smoothly, follow a pretty steady dress code: We provide them with a black Hub button-down shirt, to be worn tucked in over a black T-shirt and black slacks, and with a black belt.
The whole look is topped off with a name tag and finished with closed-toe black shoes, flat-heeled, of course, because our staff needs to be able to maneuver, and stilettos do not allow for fast maneuvering.
Why have we chosen this look, and why do we not have Casual Fridays? For us, it's a simple answer. We have business people in and out of our facilities all the time, so we want to make sure they know they're in a place that takes their business seriously.
And when businesses use our facilities, we want to ensure that they know there are people around to help them make their events successful. So we give our service assistants uniforms that make them pop: their clothing says, we hope, "Hi! I'm here to help."
The name tags are around for the exact same reason.
What are your thoughts on Casual Fridays and dress codes?

EcoMonday: Giftwrapping. What to do with it?

This is going to be a short one, because we know you have a ton of stuff to do in the next FIVE DAYS before Christmas. *Shrieks.* (Have you done all your shopping? We haven't.)
Anyway. We want to take three minutes and talk to you about gift-wrapping. Do you know that, although most plain gift-wrapping paper is recyclable just in your standard curb-side recycling bin, all that fancy pretty stuff with the foil and the glitter and the flocking isn't recyclable? And neither, regrettably, is tissue paper.
That's right, it just gets lumped in with all those unrecyclable plastic adhesive bows. Never mind, it's okay. We know you already have a ton of it purchased.
But hey, there's good news. Gift wrap is totally reusable. We're not going to suggest you make beads out of it, or whatever, like some well meaning and talented people do, but we are going to suggest that you take an iron to the stuff. Yes, you can iron your gift wrap. Takes all the creases right out.

Iron your giftwrap, reuse it next year. Who knew?

As for the plastic bows, well, those are reusable too, but harder to store.
So this holiday season, don't go at your gifts like some kind of sugar-plum-crazed four-year-old. Hang onto the stuff. You'll reuse it next year, feel good about what you're doing for the environment, and hey, save yourself a little money. (We at the Hub Twoffice haven't purchased giftwrap for something like a decade!)

What's your favorite holiday earth-saving tip?

EcoMonday: A Vacation Alternative

It's not only EcoMonday this Monday, but also Cyber Monday: deals on the Internet abound today, and that goes for travel, too.
If you're looking to book a vacation for the chilly winter months or the soggy spring, we've got an option for you. Consider voluntourism. What's that awkward mashup? It's not awkward at all, actually: It's a wonderful blend of rejuvenation and soul-filling glory.
More traditional volunteer vacations, like the Sierra Club's outings, offer you one or two free days of exploring while giving back to the National Park system. All levels of skill and strength can be accomodated, and you'll probably pick up new skills while learning to build trails, paint fences, dig postholes...the list is endless. While you're at it, you'll know that you're helping to maintain some of our most stunning natural features.
On the other end of the spectrum is a group like All Hands Disaster Relief, where you can stay as long as you like, and help with as much as humanly possible. You pay for your flight to one of Hands' existing sites, and you spend all day, every day, rebuilding communities that have been affected by disaster. (Full disclosure: Hands worked with us via ShelterBox, and we think they are the absolute bomb when it comes to disaster-relief work.) You can be on a rubble team, a children team, a hospital runner team, a shelter team...the possibilities are endless.


Somewhere in the middle is a group like Road Monkey. Founded by former New York Times reporter Paul von Zielbauer and profiled recently in no less than O magazine, Road Monkey pairs a week of adventure travel with a week of good work. A recent trip had Road Monkeys bicycling through Vietnam and then working to build a playground with the not-for-profit Catalyst Foundation, which deals with anti-trafficking and educational initiatives for children.

So go on, make this CyberMonday really count.

Hub Day: Where and Why: The Chemical Heritage Foundation

In this series, we'll explore why and how we came about our individual sites. This week we'll explore the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

We have a secret: We almost failed high school chemistry. Our teacher, one Ms. Payton, was so popular that she intimidated us. And she tried so, so hard to make chemistry fascinating. But alas, she had to count us as one of her failures.

You know what? If we'd known about the Chemical Heritage Foundation back then, things would have been mighty different.
Just look at the place! Two-story video display! Funky-cool instruments! People, standing around, looking interested! This is nothing like Chem101 at 2:10 PM, when we're in our lunchtime slump....

But we digress. The Chemical Heritage Foundation is one of our favorite places. Aside from the fact that we've chosen it as a Hub location, it is the only space we know of with spatial provenance suiting its heritage and mission. Consider: Physician Benjamin Rush, who was America's first-ever chemistry prof, lived right down the street. And Ben Franklin lived within earshot.

Imagine living between this guy...

and this guy!

And then, there's also the fact that the Chemical Heritage Foundation tries is utmost to make chemistry accessible to everyone. They host art exhibits based around chemistry, and they never balk at some of the darker things that chemistry might encompass, like the creation of the atomic bomb and poisonous gas.

CHF is also a sponsor of Science on Tap Philadelphia, a monthly gathering that puts a short lecture or presentation on science in a bar--we know for a fact that the ensuing discussion is always lively. (Seriously, did you ever think geek could be so chic?)

Their weekly Brown Bag Lectures are good food for thought, too.

But we'll be honest and say that, although we may not want to pursue chemistry as a profession any more than we did in high school, the CHF has made it ever so much more interesting. They did it because they understand that chemistry is not just about reactions and things going bang; it's about the people behind it, and what drove them to discover what they did. They get how important it is to carry that view into the future, and anyway, CHF is the only learning institution we know of to make nanotechnology make sense.

Follow the Chemical Heritage Foundation @chemheritage on Twitter. Next week, why and how we chose CHF to be a partner.

Hub Day: The Baldwin Room

Our Cira Centre location is adjacent to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. You get to it by strolling up a ramp and taking a small escalator.

It's a gorgeous space, all light and glass and with a clear view of the trainyards, so we knew we needed to pay homage to one of the men who built modern locomotion as we know it today: Matthias Baldwin.
Now, Baldwin may look like your run-of-the-mill 19th-century bloke, but he was anything but. In fact, although his name is now synonymous with steam engines, he got his start as a jeweler and a silversmith, and it was only because of his partnership with a machinist that he became interested in building stationary engines (engines that don't move, but which power objects--we think of them as modern-day generators).

A stationary engine like this one would help Baldwin in his later endeavors to produce steam locomotives.
Photo: CraftsmanshipMuseum.com

Eventually, he built a miniature locomotive, just for kicks, and it that year that the Philadelphia Museum commissioned him to build a working 4-passenger train for exhibition. Baldwin was asked that same year by the Camden and Amboy Railroad to build a short-line locomotive.

His locomotive, assembled entirely by hand (most modern machinery and tools didn't exist in the early 1800s), was called "Old Ironsides."
Baldwin's fate was sealed. He went on to found the Baldwin Locomotive Company, which would assemble over 1500 locomotive engines before his death in 1866.

Although we think the fact that Baldwin's lifework with trains is a great reason for us to name one of our rooms after him, probably the thing we like most about him is the fact that he was an inveterate philanthropist. (He was a founder of the Franklin Institute for the Betterment of Labour, demonstrating a remarkably early concern for the welfare of workers.) And his charitable donations and insistence on racial equality were a key reason for a major boycott of Baldwin engines in the south as the Civil War became a reality.

For all of these reasons, we're proud that this room, a cornerstone of our Cira Centre location, bears Matthias Baldwin's name.
You can see this statue of Matthias Baldwin in front of Philadelphia's City Hall, and you can learn more about Matthias Baldwin here.

Hub Day: Change Will Do You Good

So. We're in a bit of upheaval here at The Hub CityView. Things are all topsy-turvy.

This is our Rittenhouse room. We're tearing down the wall so we give it the option of being bigger, when it wants to. According to our operations director, Peter Chun, it's going to have a "garage-door"-like opening to it, so that if your needs dictate a larger space, well, we have the capability to make it bigger for you.
Don't get us wrong. We did love the Rittenhouse. But the reality is, in our house, our clients are of utmost importance, and we want to make sure that we serve their needs first and foremost.
"If you look at our Cira Center office," says Peter, referring to our LEED-certified location, and the one we built from scratch, "we're capable of hosting two to three hundred people in one of the rooms there. We wanted to be able to have all of our facilities be similar to each other, and this was a good place to start."
So what's going to change? Well, our cafe (pictured below) is now up against our big picture window, so you can get a little sun with your coffee and tea.
And our lobby, below, has changed quite a bit.
Okay, we admit it. We like the idea of making sure that our clients have the flexibility they need to make our meeting spaces fit their needs. And it makes us really happy that we can have a beautiful view of Philadelphia while we're sipping our coffee. But you know what's been really interesting about this whole procedure?
It's the fact that the changes are keeping us on our toes. There are a ton of studies out there that demonstrate the fact that physical change in the office keeps employees productive. Physical therapists have long advocated simple things, like wearing your watch on your *other* wrist every once in awhile, just to keep yourself guessing.
So yeah, we like the changes. Just, maybe not for the most obvious reasons.
What are your favorite tips for keeping yourself sharp? We like Freestyle Mind's 30 tips, for starters.

Hub Day: Superfoods!

...What's that, you say? What is that peculiar sound? It's you, falling asleep on your desk just before your two o'clock meeting.
We know. It happens to us a lot. We used to fix the problem with a steadily percolating pot of coffee.
But then we figured that standing around jittery all the time was probably just as bad as falling asleep in meetings, so we went for another option, one that we think visitors to The Hub like just as much as we do: Our Superfood Shelf.

(Norma Jean, one of our key salespeople, tests out our most recent addition)

What *is* that, you want to know? We like to think of it as a little afternoon rejuvenation, a little pep up for your taste buds, and a better way for you to maintain good energy through the day. We stock our Superfood Shelf with all kinds of goodies: dried nuts and fruit, dark chocolate, and some other goodies, like yogurt-covered berries, that make sure we're happy and energized for the afternoon slump.
What's on your Superfood Shelf? We think every office should have one, but then again, we're biased.
Web MD's terrific list of Superfoods is here: Go on, stock up!

EcoMonday: Wind Energy

The other day we told some friends of ours that The Hub's policy is to buy wind energy credits to offset our traditional energy usage.

There was an awkward joke about paying for hot air, and then we had to sit down and tell them exactly what wind energy credits are, and how we use them.

First, how does wind energy work? Most electricity is generated by turbines, which are powered by steam, which is created by burning fossil fuels, or nuclear energy. Wind energy eliminates the fossil fuel or nuclear part of that equation, substituting wind for fossil fuel or nuclear energy.

Second, how is the wind turned into energy? There are several wind farms around the world, which allows the production not only of electricity, which can be purchased outright by municipalities neighboring the wind farm.

Third, what does it mean that we purchase wind energy credits? The energy produced at the wind farm can also be purchased in the form of Renewable Energy Credits, or RECs. Each REC accounts for 1000 Kwh worth of energy. Essentially, The Hub offsets all of the electricity that we do use by putting our earnings and monies behind wind energy.

It's true. We are paying for a bunch of hot air. But in this case, it's a good thing.

(Other methods of clean energy include solar energy and wave energy.)


For measure, an average American residential customer consumes about 800 Kwh per month.

Hub Day: A Light Bulb Goes Off Over Our Heads

Every once in awhile, we like to let you into our house. Today, we welcome you to the Edison Room, named for Thomas Edison, natch.
Bright colors! Nuts and bolts! Directional signs! (Some pointing in conflicting directions, but that's okay!) What does it all mean? And why did we go this route?
The answer is Edison himself. Nearly all of his inventions had to do with communication: The carbon microphone he invented was in use in telephones until the mid-1980s, and his phonograph put him on the map. His Kinetoscope allowed people to watch short films, and although he didn't invent the telegraph, his vast improvements to it made for far better communication, and allegedly netted Edison himself a $10,000 advance from Western Union. Edison is so ingrained in the public consciousness that everyone thinks he invented the lightbulb, when really, he just made vast improvements to it.

And the whole electricity thing? Well, Edison's invention, Direct Current, or DC, is much less efficient than Nikola Tesla's Alternating Current (AC), but that didn't stop Edison from waging full-out war on AC, painting its higher voltage capacity as a surefire method of accidents and death.
So why name a room after such a polarizing figure? We know that Edison's a risky choice, and we think that's the reason we chose him. Let's break it down:

• Communications: As a young telegraph operator, Edison knew the value of human communications, and leveraged that.
• Competition: Although Edison may not have always played fair, he kept well abreast of his competitors and businessfolk who might well be in need of his inventions. He and Henry Ford were friends to the end.
• Sheer grit: Edison was rumored to have said that an experiment that failed 10,000 times it did not discourage him, because it brought him closer to a solution.
• Controversy: You can't please everyone. Edison knew that.
• Improvements as inventions: Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, but he made it so much better: as it was, the existing bulb may have petered out of existence if not for Edison's work.
  

We love our Edison room: It's colorful and efficient, and we like its urban aesthetics, a nod to the time and effort Edison put into modernizing some of the nation's most important cities. But we also love it for its contrast: opposite of the color and exposed piping in our Edison room, you'll also find a soothing view of Philadelphia, from high above the city.
Who are your role models? Tell us in the comments below.

Hub Day: Social Media and The Hub

We think we're a pretty social office. Heck, we like each other: We go to Center City Sips together; we celebrate our successes and our mis-steps together; we play and we work hard together.
But the social media thing was a whole new quandary. We thought to ourselves, Gosh. We're already social. Do we really need to embark on social media?

Our office social committee is all of us, and we have better ideas than this.
(Webcomic via Shane Johnson.)

And then someone told us that being involved in social media was like having 500 sales calls all at once, and that made us think about it again.

See, here's the thing. For us, it's not the idea of boosting sales that got us into this social media game in the first place. And it's not the idea of having the most friends, or whatever, on Facebook. Honestly, it had mostly to do with the fact that we wanted really good, meaningful interactions with everyone who could potentially mean something to us.

We wanted an exchange of ideas. We wanted them to know what we knew, and we wanted to learn what they know about their businesses. There are meeting planning groups all over the nation. We were dying to find out how they plan meetings in Australia. We wanted to know if they were as serious about green in British meetings as we are at The Hub. We wanted to know how Japanese meeting planners think, and what people learned at MPI conferences that are too far away for us to get to.

We want to share our clients' successes. You don't always get to yell about the cool things your clients are doing. Social media--and we mean everything from the web 1.0-world of blogs and egroups to the current world of Gowalla and 4sq--lets your clients, past, current, and potential, know that you are proud of having them on your list.

We wanted our voice to be heard. Social media isn't the company newsletter, that carefully planned and worded medium of yesteryear. Social media gives your company a voice, an identity beyond its stock symbol and logo. We happen to think our employees are fun and frisky, so our voice is a little uppity. Sometimes weird things happen on our Twitter feed, but that's directly because sometimes weird things happen in our office. That's OK. It's real life at The Hub offices.

We want to have lots of conversations, with lots of people. That's it, really. Social media lets us do that. Why are you using social media in your business interactions?

Don't forget to come on over to our page and fan us on Facebook. We know, we said we didn't care how many friends we had, but it's nice to be liked.

EcoMonday: EnergyStar, demystified

You hear it bandied about all the time: "Get an Energy Star appliance, it'll help." But what does that mean? Is it just a case of green-washing, another gimmick for companies to push more goods under the guise of environmentalism?

Is this an Energy Star Appliance? If so, what does that mean? Read on to find out more.

Well, Energy Star really does exist. It's backed by the U.S. Government and by the EPA, and serves as an international standard for energy-efficient appliances. It was created in 1992, under the Clinton administration, and originally was meant to just cover computers. Since then, though, it's been expanded (we're now in Energy Star version 5.0 for computers, by the way), and now the guidelines comprise everything from refrigerators to windows and doors, which can contribute to energy loss by not sealing efficiently, or letting in too much heat or cold.
Really quickly, here's some information about what that means for your office:

• Energy Star retrofitted and built-to-specification vending machines can save 50% more energy than models that haven't been built to Energy Star standards.
• Energy Star water coolers can save up to 45% more energy than standard units.
• Energy Star computers use between 30 and 60% less energy than non-Energy Star units.

You can also apply to be an Energy Star office (The Hub is LEED Silver certified, which we believe encompasses a larger set of standards, but Energy Star is a great place to start. Energy Star building information can be found here.)

At The Hub, everything from our servers to our dishwasher has the Energy Star stamp of approval on it. We don't purchase appliances that don't carry some kind of efficiency standard. And, because of the recent March controversy over Energy Star, during which 10 of 15 bogus items were passed through Energy Star standards, we try to do a little back-checking, using the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy web site as a backstop.

Heck, a little research never hurt anyone, and we'll do it in the name of fiscal and environmental responsibility.

EcoMonday: Flor-ing it to a greener workspace

We've already told you a little bit about some of the steps that we take to make our workspace more sustainable. Turns out, one of the biggest answers is right under our feet.

Pop quiz: Which one of the items in the this photo contributes most to our sense of CSR? It's not what you think.

We use Flor carpeting in our facilities, and we'd like to tell you why: We do it because Flor not only looks great, it's also part of one of the most forward-thinking sustainability movements around. While some major corporations are just now getting behind corporate social responsibility, Flor's parent company, Interface Global, has been doing it for over a decade now, starting with CEO Ray Anderson's (pictured below) 1994 promise to take nothing from the planet that can't be replaced by the planet.

Photo via Interface

That sounds pretty lofty, and the goal that Anderson has set for Interface matches that expectations: Anderson wants Interface to be a zero-impact company by the year 2020. (In March of this year, the company launched a year-long metrics measuring program, so it could better gauge how it's doing in its quest. You can read those results here.)


Okay. Now you know a little bit more about Interface, and why we chose Flor. But realistically, what does that mean for a sustainable office? It all breaks down to the steps that Flor's taken.

• Work with the best: Flor only works with sources that share its vision of sustainability. To that end, it also is constantly on the lookout for new materials that will break down, or recycle into new carpet tiles.
• Reduce, reuse, renew: Flor's manufacturing system is tight. There's very little waste. All Flor tiles can be returned to Flor for breakdown into new carpet tiles. Its modular system (you buy batches of Flor tiles to make up a wall-to-wall carpet, or a rug) means that if you spill something on a tile, you just replace that one section of the carpet or rug.
• Closed-loop sustainability: From beginning to end, the entire Interface company works to reduce its impact. Everything is as locally sourced as possible, and employees even participate in sponsoring the planting of nearly 100,000 trees in order to offset the carbon footprint of things like air travel and commuting.

We like what we see at Flor, and we think it's a pretty good model to use. In the end, what it says to us is that the most quotidian of things can be sustainable, and that sustainability can be a great business model.

Interface's project is called Mission to Zero, and you can take a look around at its drive to get consumers to participate here. For more on sourcing low-VOC carpet, you can visit the Carpet and Rug Institute here.

Hub Day: Meds and Eds

We love our city. Philadelphia is architecturally gorgeous, has beautiful green spaces, terrific eateries, and flat-out amazing history.
But there's even more to it than just what meets the eye: It's by far the most impressive gathering place for folks in both the medical and academic professions.
One organization, the Meds and Eds Alliance, is giving back to our great city by paying direct attention to the workers who make up the two largest industries in Philadelphia. "We have 92 colleges and universities in the greater Philadelphia area," said Kate Bay, Director of Member Services for the Meds and Eds Alliance, "and 75% of the world's pharmaceuticals are manufactured within a 50-mile radius of here."
The alliance is one of The Hub's newest clients, and their mission to establish a strong membership organization for the workers who make up so much of what Philadelphia's about is going strong.
Members of the group, who must all be professionals in academia or medicine, can learn from each other and from the resources and events the alliance gathers and creates for them. It's the first support network of its type.



Bay says that its best asset is its members. "No generalists are allowed to join," she said, "and all of the events are driven by members. They're living in this world every day, so it makes sense for them to be creating the content of the events."
So how exactly do the arguably different worlds of academia and medicine meshing? The question's a moot one, since both academics and medical practitioners are constantly learning. And the Meds and Eds Alliance will ensure that both fields are tied together with one simple step. "The moderators for each event are college professors," Bay said. "They're speaking to highly educated audiences. Professors are educated enough to drive discussion, and eloquent, and they know which questions to ask."
So what's on deck for Meds and Eds? A meet-and-greet happy hour for nurses August 11 is a good example of one way the alliance brings professionals together. And Meds and Eds will be making a concerted push to address the needs of health information management professionals, too. The alliance is also establishing a foundation that will aim to provide scholarships for those in the medical and academic professions; the first scholarship will be announced for 2012.
And as part of its ongoing effort to shore up both professions, Meds and Eds is planning on a mentorship program that will help young medical practitioners and academics to navigate their professions.
The Alliance's ongoing relationship with The Hub means that it will always have a good place to hold its events, whether they're continuing-education classes or social mixers, in any of the three Hub's three conveniently located centers.
"The idea is to go nationwide," said Bay. We can easily see cities all over the country getting behind this effort.
We're happy and proud to work with Meds and Eds. What better gift than academic brotherhood to give the city of brotherly love?
Click here to learn how to join the Meds and Eds Alliance.

EcoMonday: The facts about paper

Paper recycling and conservation has been around for so long that most people and offices do it just out of habit. In fact, we did a small survey around The Hub's twoffice, and we discovered that the most common answer people gave when asked why they recycle paper or conserve it, was a quick shrug of the shoulders and an easy, "I'm saving trees!"

That's nice. It really, really is. But the average office worker uses something like 10,000 sheets of copy paper alone per year,* so we'd like to think that keeping all that paper out of the stream might be doing more than just saving trees. There are a few more benefits to recycling or saving paper, some of which stem from the act of saving trees, some of which don't. Let's take a look.

1. Paper has many lives
Recycled paper doesn't just end up being made into post-consumer recycled office paper. In fact, the more paper gets recycled, the shorter its fibers get. At the end of its life span, paper fibers might be not be long enough to be suitable for office use, but shorter fibers are suitable to make everything from egg cartons to newsprint.

After recycled paper becomes egg cartons, we've seen them repurposed yet again. Image via Craft Elf.

2. The carbon cycle
Saving trees comes a flip side: Although many forestry companies say they plant trees to make up for the ones they've cut down, they're neglecting one critical part of the equation: Each tree that's cut down releases carbon dioxide back into the air through the natural process of decomposition. So if we can reuse paper that's already out there, we can prevent more carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

3. Quite simply, a more cost-efficient office
In many cases, we use our shredded documents as packing materials instead of purchasing packing peanuts or bubble-wrap. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it does add up.

It's not quite like this, but you get the idea. (Photo: ThisisBase.com)

4. Saving Landfill Space
Paper takes up quite a bit of landfill space. Imagine 4 million tons of office paper. That's what the EPA says we use on average in American offices each year. That's a lot of land area. And since paper takes about a month to break down in a natural, aerated environment, you can imagine how long it'll take to break down in a non-aerated landfill surrounded by other garbage.

For all these reasons and more, we recycle and try to keep virgin paper out of our office. We're curious: What other items do you recycle in your offices?

*Source: EPA Recycling Paper FAQ.