EchoDitto

The new New York office is a dream. An Ikea-furnished dream. Gisele mentioned that we went to Ikea, but I have to elaborate.

We drove to Ikea on Friday morning at 11 am. Traffic was light, Gisele was an excellent driver, I navigated as only a girl from New Jersey can, and Harish made back-to-back calls from the back seat. I did a little pre-gaming with the team regarding decisions that needed to be made, an overview of the trip, and areas of the store we would avoid.

Despite my schedule and lists, Gisele and Harish got overwhelmed at the top of the first escalator. “We should have hired a consultant to help us furnish the office at Ikea...” Harish said mournfully. “Wait” I replied. “I am a consultant helping you to furnish your office at Ikea. In fact, I’m your consultant. You pay me to consult.” Thus was born EchoOffice.

EchoOffice will be available for all of your office furnishing services, including online and offline strategy, on-the-ground engagements, and strategic communication. Whether you need a cute couch, or have to furnish an entire office, we will serve as your guide and coach. Until we get staffed up and off the ground, let me be your virtual consultant for making your next Ikea shopping trip the best it can be:

1. Do preliminary research. Although I find the Ikea site to be incredibly hard to navigate and not intuitive, spend a little time researching the items you are interested in. You might want to also check some similarly-priced competitors: cb2, west elm, and maybe pottery barn. Make a spreadsheet that includes photos, prices, and colors. Pages has an excellent template for just this sort of thing. Note: if you are really set on an item, save yourself some heartache--search to see if it’s available in your local store.

1. Plan your space. Draw out a sketch of the room (bonus points if it’s to scale) and approximately where you want everything to go. Before you leave the house measure anything that looks handy and mark it on your map: windows, walls, doors, closets. I promise this will come in handy when you are staring at 6 different lengths and widths of curtains.
2. Make a plan of attack and a list. Ikea is overwhelming, and people who don’t have a clear plan or goals tend to start snapping at each other around the paper-napkin area (overheard in Ikea: “fine, I don’t really care. Pick whatever you want. You never listen to my opinions anyway.”) Don’t let this happen to you. Decide what you want to focus on, which decisions you need to make during this trip, and which items you really need. Sure, you’re going to leave with some random wrapping paper, and a sheepskin rug that you couldn’t resist, but at least make sure you get what you came for.
3. Bring provisions. About half to two-thirds of the way through Ikea, just as you are starting to hit your stride, you will become famished and parched. Sneak a little snack into your bag and you will be much happier.
4. Ask for help. Don’t throw your back out trying to lift that giant BIlly bookshelf alone, ask an employee. Don’t wander back through 17 living rooms looking for the desks, ask someone for a shortcut. The Ikea workers are generally helpful and kind, so don’t hesitate.
5. Enjoy yourself. If you get tired, kick back in the living room, or try to sneak a nap on one of the beds. Harish took a conference call from the puffy, floral couch. I pretended the 612-square-foot apartment was my apartment. I think I saw Gisele squeezing a plush cat toy. Ikea is fun.

I'm thrilled to report that EchoDitto New York has officially moved to our new Canal Street office! We're so excited to have our very own space, with a real conference room, two private offices, plenty of open space, a lovely kitchen sink and our own bathroom. The furniture is being assembled as we speak, and Anne and I are finally not sitting on the floor anymore. Some highlights of the past few days include:

• A fascinating trip to Ikea last Friday (my first time ever!) with Anne and Harish. I loved the almond torte in the cafeteria, but next time, I say we order it all online. Also, we're convinced they do something to the air to dehydrate customers so they buy more Lingenberry Juice.

OK people, relax, we made it to Tribeca in one piece. We squeezed all of our stuff into an SUV (carbon offset of course) and cruised down Broadway to the new location. Highlights thus far:

• We've already stuffed ourselves with Indian food from Salaam Bombay. Harish noted that it was 'the best Indian buffet he's had in New York to date'.
• I was witness to the setup for a movie being filmed on our street. We share office space with the movie's production company. (No famous people sightings yet.)
• Per the photo above, Gisele has joined us in the bull pen. Lots of fun for us developers. Probably a mild hinderance to her productivity.

So far so good. Updates in real time as they happen. -yovanoff out.

EchoDitto New York is on the move, heading over to 81 Franklin Street in Tribeca tomorrow. And while it might just be a few short blocks from our current Soho office at 116 West Houston Street, it's still a world of change. So in honor of our move, I thought I'd share a few things we're going to miss about our old digs, and some things we're looking forward to at our new place.

Leaving 116 West Houston (sad):

1. More than anything, we will miss the proximity to Mamoun's. Home of the $2 falafel sandwich, Mamoun's was lunch at least three times a week for most of us EDNYers. Harish and Jason took me there for my birthday last year (special baklava treat for dessert!), and it's a rite of passage for our DC coworkers paying us a visit in NYC. And yes, it is possible to eat falafel every day. I swear, you don't get sick of it.

As much as I love computers, and the internet, and our ever-impressive technologies (as you may have deduced from my last post), I’m actually more of a nature-loving hippie than you’d think (and no, the two are definitely not incompatible). A few years ago I spent two consecutive summers at Tanager Lodge Summer Camp – a wilderness camp for children ages 5-15 – where your living quarters are tents, your shower is the lake, and your entertainment revolves around the natural surroundings. We canoed, hiked, went fishing, cooked outdoors, chased after chipmunks, and so on. Now of course it wasn’t all fun and games. As a counselor I was in charge of certain activities as well as taking charge of my tent group -- 4 twelve-year-old girls. But the essence of the camp, the reason we were all there, was to learn more about nature, to learn to live with it, and to gain an even greater respect for our environment.

Well, we're in. As usual, we hit the ground running -- unpacking, finding stuff we forgot we had -- and figuring out what (and who) goes where. Of course, the internet was the first thing we got up and running. But, despite the mesmerizing orange walls were, and the fun we had playing with the talking elevator (yes, we have a talking elevator), we quickly got back down to business.

In honor of our first week in the new location, here's one more video of our first day in the new place. Notice how it looks like we unpacked the toys first?

We live online, most of the time. Yet sooner or later even we have to tear ourselves away from our keyboards and monitors to eat. Sure,we can order pizza online easily enough. But that means we need a place to put the leftovers. We needed a fridge, but the new office didn't come with one. So Mike donated one wasn't using, and a few Dittos were dispatched to bring it in. 

Moving has a way of shaking things loose, and you end up finding stuff you didn't know you had; stuff that you should throw out, excep that you can think of better things to do with it. Little did we know, while the rest of us were in the throes of moving, a few Dittos took off for the rooftop of the old office building for a little experiment with some Mentos & Diet Coke c/o Joshua (or at least c/o Joshua's old desk).

The results? Well.

Via Jumpcut, the first of a series (more or less) on our move to the new office space.

Wondering where we are? Well, we do live online, but there are some things that can only be done offline. For example, moving to a new server can totally be done online. Moving to a new office, however, requires being offline. Fortunately, we're so busy that it'll be late in the day before we really start to notice the withdrawal symptoms.

For example: