Now that the meetings and events industry has come up with a set of comprehensive guidelines for sustainability, there's been a lot of buzz about whether or not we should spend the time adopting those standards.
We said yes, for obvious reasons.
Here's the full post, over at Sched.org. Thanks to Marvin McTaw for encouraging us to post our experience on the green side of business.
Showing posts with label meetings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meetings. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Stay Awake and Limber: Tips from a Pro
We've all been there: cramped in a chair for hours on end, getting information we know is valuable and important. But when we get up, our bodies protest, and with good reason--we weren't made to sit for hours on end.
We all know what this feels like. Read on to see how to make it better.
Norma Jean still teaches ballet in New Jersey, where she lives with her two teenage daughters and her husband, and she's active in Pilates, yoga, and Zumba. So trust her. We do!
- Since we all hold tension in our shoulders and neck, the traditional head roll is a keeper. Drop your head down in front and roll slowly to the left and right and back.
- For shoulder and upper back: Interlock your fingers, turn your palms outward in front of you, and stretch your arms out as you round your upper back. Move gently from right to left. You can do this standing or sitting.
- While sitting, extend your legs in front of you till straight. Now flex your toes up to the ceiling. This is a great stretch for calves and hamstrings! For an extra stretch, lean your upper body forward. (Be careful not to fall off the chair!)
- If no one’s looking, touch your toes, knees, or whatever you can reach with relaxed knees (don't lock your knees, and don't bounce). Just use the weight of your upper body to get the max stretch.
What are your best tips for staying awake and limber during meetings?
Friday, July 2, 2010
Why you should leave your office
We don't mean that you should up and quit. We just think you might need a change of pace. A change of scenery, really.
Consider the traditional staff retreat. Why do companies have them? They say an off-campus retreat can build staff morale; encourage truer interactions between staff members; give everyone a little break.
We believe that. Heck, we're in the business of providing a change of scenery. Consider the following:
What's that? You say you simply must have meetings in the office? In that case, we highly recommend you take a look at this great post, from BlackRimGlasses, on how to avoid what he calls The Vampire Meeting. Yes, yes, named so because they suck the creative life out of you.
Do your meetings feel like they siphon the lifeblood from you? Maybe it's time for another way.
When you book a meeting or a room at The Hub, we provide all-inclusive options that include meals or refreshments. And hey. Did we mention that most of our rooms are designed for you to make the most of them? Did we mention that our staff is expertly trained to ensure that we deliver what you need to make yours the most productive meeting possible? Come take a look.
Consider the traditional staff retreat. Why do companies have them? They say an off-campus retreat can build staff morale; encourage truer interactions between staff members; give everyone a little break.
We believe that. Heck, we're in the business of providing a change of scenery. Consider the following:
- Your everyday office is familiar to you. And that's nice, but it can also be boring. Hardly inspiring, staring at the same old walls every day.
- Your everyday office has a ton of distractions in it: Your office mates; your telephone; your inbox.
- Planning a meeting in your office is a lot like hosting a party. There are ton of unrelated things you have to consider, often in short time-frame.
- Leave the office. Come stare at some of someone else's art, or at least at someone else's walls instead of yours.
- Leave the distractions. Work alone or have an off-site meeting (a mini staff retreat!).
- Don't work at all: Plan a day at home; take a day to rejuvenate. They're called "personal days" for a reason. Use them.
- Let someone else do the planning for you.
What's that? You say you simply must have meetings in the office? In that case, we highly recommend you take a look at this great post, from BlackRimGlasses, on how to avoid what he calls The Vampire Meeting. Yes, yes, named so because they suck the creative life out of you.
Do your meetings feel like they siphon the lifeblood from you? Maybe it's time for another way.
When you book a meeting or a room at The Hub, we provide all-inclusive options that include meals or refreshments. And hey. Did we mention that most of our rooms are designed for you to make the most of them? Did we mention that our staff is expertly trained to ensure that we deliver what you need to make yours the most productive meeting possible? Come take a look.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Eco-Monday: Car Sharing
Monday: Costco run; take the pickup
Wednesday: Farmer's market run; take the Prius
Thursday: Client meeting at The Hub Chemical Heritage Foundation site; take the Audi.
No, no, it's not the schedule of our friendly local millionaire; the guy with the twenty-car garage. It's the way our partners at PhillyCarShare envision a potential work week.
As much as we love the idea of changing cars as often as we change our shoes, we're truly enamored of car-sharing for its environmental benefits. How's that, you say? It's still a car on the road, isn't it?
Well--at face value, it is. But for those of us working and living in big cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, it makes complete and total environmental sense to just have a car when we need it. Experts at Carsharing.net, an industry resource, estimate that for every one car share, there are 15-20 fewer cars on the road.
How's it work? Well, take PhillyCarShare for example. When staff at The Hub have to go between sites, we make a reservation at PhillyCarShare.org. We go to pick up the car at one of PhillyCarShare's many convenient parking spaces, and drop it off later.
In the end, we're keeping cars off the road by borrowing from a pool of cars that already exist. We're living healthier lives, because we've gotten used to walking or bicycling places that we might have just previously driven to out of sheer laziness.
And although the environmental benefits of car-sharing might be long-term, the economical value of our arrangement with PhillyCarShare is really quite immediate: We don't have to buy a fleet of Hub vehicles. And that makes car sharing a smart business decision, at the very least.
Wednesday: Farmer's market run; take the Prius
Thursday: Client meeting at The Hub Chemical Heritage Foundation site; take the Audi.
No, no, it's not the schedule of our friendly local millionaire; the guy with the twenty-car garage. It's the way our partners at PhillyCarShare envision a potential work week.
Goodness! So many cars to choose from!
As much as we love the idea of changing cars as often as we change our shoes, we're truly enamored of car-sharing for its environmental benefits. How's that, you say? It's still a car on the road, isn't it?
Well--at face value, it is. But for those of us working and living in big cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, it makes complete and total environmental sense to just have a car when we need it. Experts at Carsharing.net, an industry resource, estimate that for every one car share, there are 15-20 fewer cars on the road.
How's it work? Well, take PhillyCarShare for example. When staff at The Hub have to go between sites, we make a reservation at PhillyCarShare.org. We go to pick up the car at one of PhillyCarShare's many convenient parking spaces, and drop it off later.
Philly Car Share locations are convenient and plentiful.
In the end, we're keeping cars off the road by borrowing from a pool of cars that already exist. We're living healthier lives, because we've gotten used to walking or bicycling places that we might have just previously driven to out of sheer laziness.
And although the environmental benefits of car-sharing might be long-term, the economical value of our arrangement with PhillyCarShare is really quite immediate: We don't have to buy a fleet of Hub vehicles. And that makes car sharing a smart business decision, at the very least.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Friday is Hub Day
We know, it sounds suspiciously like Hump Day. But it's not. See, Hump Day is Wednesday. Hub Day is Friday. Got it now?
No, we're kidding. That's not the only difference. Every Hub Day from here on in, we'll post something here that rotates around our core values. We want you to get to know us, and we want to get to know you. Please, feel free to post comments.
Today, we'll tell you a little bit about some of the art in our space.
At our CityView offices, we're very fond of our Calder room, which we'll focus on today.
There were three generations of Calders, all with ties to Philadelphia, but probably the best known was the youngest of the Calders, Alexander, also known as Sandy. He confined himself not to working in one medium, like his father and grandfather before him, but stretched his limits to work both in two-dimensional and three-dimensional art.
In fact, Calder is the inventor of the mobile. You know, that thing that hangs over a baby's crib? It got its start as a piece of high-concept art.
Not this...
...but this!
In the Calder room, which seats 10-12 people, you'll be greeted by two works of Calder art.
Red Moon, Black Sun (1968) is a lithograph. We like it for many reasons, but we like to think of a young Calder in one of his first jobs out of college as a fireman on a boat. One morning, he woke up on the deck of the ship, which was docked just off the Guatamalan coast, and saw both the full moon and the rising sun. It was a motif that would inform much of his art.
"Our Unfinished Revolution" is from 1975, and is actually a cover from Calder's book of the same name.
Calder's life was peripatetic. He went from Philadelphia to Roxbury, CT; from there to Paris; from Paris to New York. His artwork meandered, as well; from paints to steel to wire and into the realm of jewelry. He is by far one of the most versatile artists we know of.
Perhaps it's for this reason that we chose Calder for this room. When you're here, we want you to think in terms that are as varied, as wide-ranging, as Calder was. We want you to feel energized, to come up with solutions and ideas that are innovative and creative. And although we don't guarantee that result in the Calder room, we think you'll feel just as inspired by his work as we were.
One more thing: Calder was also a huge fan of the circus. That could be part of the reason that much of his work was so playful-looking. We encourage that, too: Approach your work with as much enthusiasm as you would play, and that, we think, will have a terrific effect on your meeting.
To take a virtual tour of our Calder Room, click here. To find out more about Alexander Calder, visit the Calder Foundation on the web.
No, we're kidding. That's not the only difference. Every Hub Day from here on in, we'll post something here that rotates around our core values. We want you to get to know us, and we want to get to know you. Please, feel free to post comments.
Today, we'll tell you a little bit about some of the art in our space.
At our CityView offices, we're very fond of our Calder room, which we'll focus on today.
There were three generations of Calders, all with ties to Philadelphia, but probably the best known was the youngest of the Calders, Alexander, also known as Sandy. He confined himself not to working in one medium, like his father and grandfather before him, but stretched his limits to work both in two-dimensional and three-dimensional art.
In fact, Calder is the inventor of the mobile. You know, that thing that hangs over a baby's crib? It got its start as a piece of high-concept art.
Not this...
...but this!
In the Calder room, which seats 10-12 people, you'll be greeted by two works of Calder art.
Red Moon, Black Sun (1968) is a lithograph. We like it for many reasons, but we like to think of a young Calder in one of his first jobs out of college as a fireman on a boat. One morning, he woke up on the deck of the ship, which was docked just off the Guatamalan coast, and saw both the full moon and the rising sun. It was a motif that would inform much of his art.
"Our Unfinished Revolution" is from 1975, and is actually a cover from Calder's book of the same name.
Calder's life was peripatetic. He went from Philadelphia to Roxbury, CT; from there to Paris; from Paris to New York. His artwork meandered, as well; from paints to steel to wire and into the realm of jewelry. He is by far one of the most versatile artists we know of.Perhaps it's for this reason that we chose Calder for this room. When you're here, we want you to think in terms that are as varied, as wide-ranging, as Calder was. We want you to feel energized, to come up with solutions and ideas that are innovative and creative. And although we don't guarantee that result in the Calder room, we think you'll feel just as inspired by his work as we were.
One more thing: Calder was also a huge fan of the circus. That could be part of the reason that much of his work was so playful-looking. We encourage that, too: Approach your work with as much enthusiasm as you would play, and that, we think, will have a terrific effect on your meeting.
To take a virtual tour of our Calder Room, click here. To find out more about Alexander Calder, visit the Calder Foundation on the web.
Monday, June 14, 2010
EcoMonday: Think Globally, Act Locally
Good morning! And thanks for visiting. We're excited to introduce our twice-weekly blog, in which we endeavor to let you know what's on our minds, in the hopes that it'll help you to be the most productive you can possibly be. And yes, OK, we'd like for you to get to know The Hub, as well.
Mondays at The Hub's blog are dedicated to something super close to our hearts: The environment. We take stewardship of our environment just as seriously as we take your productivity and the planning of your meetings.
This week, we'll explore local sourcing and how it helps us to maintain our standards.
The Hub purchases locally as much as we can. To quote from our environmental sourcing edict, we buy from sources within 500 miles of our offices.
We do this for a number of different reasons. First, we want to support our neighbors and the companies that boost our local economy. We're a local business too, although we cater to many national companies. Buying locally means that our local employment rate stays healthy, that there's plenty of choice and diversity in our local economy, and that the money that's made in Philadelphia stays here.
Second, we want to limit our carbon footprint. (This is something we'll explore in-depth in a later post.) Essentially, it means that we want to make sure that as little fossil fuel as possible is spilled over getting our goods to us.
Third, we want to make sure we know our community and support it. It's a bit of a nebulous concept, but think of it this way: We'd like to think that every one of our local vendors knows who we are, and that they can depend on us. We hope they feel the same.
Here's a brief list of some of the companies we work with. They're all local, or have local warehouses or distribution points (denoted by an asterisk).
La Colombe Torrefaction coffee
W.B. Mason Office Supplies*
Chaddsford Winery
Sysco Food Distribution*
STARR Restaurants
Big, warm thanks to our partners. We're proud to work with you!
Mondays at The Hub's blog are dedicated to something super close to our hearts: The environment. We take stewardship of our environment just as seriously as we take your productivity and the planning of your meetings.
This week, we'll explore local sourcing and how it helps us to maintain our standards.
The Hub purchases locally as much as we can. To quote from our environmental sourcing edict, we buy from sources within 500 miles of our offices.
We do this for a number of different reasons. First, we want to support our neighbors and the companies that boost our local economy. We're a local business too, although we cater to many national companies. Buying locally means that our local employment rate stays healthy, that there's plenty of choice and diversity in our local economy, and that the money that's made in Philadelphia stays here.
Second, we want to limit our carbon footprint. (This is something we'll explore in-depth in a later post.) Essentially, it means that we want to make sure that as little fossil fuel as possible is spilled over getting our goods to us.
Third, we want to make sure we know our community and support it. It's a bit of a nebulous concept, but think of it this way: We'd like to think that every one of our local vendors knows who we are, and that they can depend on us. We hope they feel the same.
Here's a brief list of some of the companies we work with. They're all local, or have local warehouses or distribution points (denoted by an asterisk).
La Colombe Torrefaction coffee
W.B. Mason Office Supplies*
Chaddsford Winery
Sysco Food Distribution*
STARR Restaurants
Big, warm thanks to our partners. We're proud to work with you!
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