Office space trends are always changing and sometimes the people who could most benefit from them are not the ones to find out about them. Since launching this blog in November of 2008, it has been our mission to not only inform followers of office space trends or the things going on at Telsec office space Toronto, but to share other business news in regards to small business. Part of this involved watching and investigating office space trends in Toronto and other small business trends from around the world. We have talked about the virtues of having a Toronto virtual office for Toronto businesses and for businesses outside Toronto or even Canada that want a Toronto business presence. We have also done blogs on ways for small businesses to save money and be more productive. In one of our early blog posts we asked what the government were or were not doing for small business when they announced economic stimulus packages for big business. We followed up on this topic this year when an article would come out of the news stating that small business is the economic backbone of this country – and that many did not need bailouts because they were prepared for an economic slowdown. One thing we have also tried to do is to give our followers and casual readers is some humour mixed in with our messages. When we wrote about Zombies Invade Toronto, Jay Leno and the late night TV fiasco or even National Popcorn Day, we wanted to keep people engaged and informed about cost saving alternatives to the tradition office space. Even during the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, we blogged about each day’s highlights and still managed to entertain and inform blog readers. Why did I write this blog today? Is today a special day? Is today an anniversary or something? I wrote this blog today, because while discussing the Telsec office space Toronto blog with an acquaintance I was asked what my favorite posting was and “are you the only writer”? Answering what was my favorite blog to write was not that hard to answer, but it made me think for a bit about some of my favorite topics I have been blogging about. It was really fun to follow the Olympics and to find ways of tying in something about office space, virtual offices, shared offices, Toronto boardrooms and meetings, team space and even day office rentals. Other themes that I have had fun writing about were The Queen and her 22nd Royal Tour. What has been and continues to be a great inside joke between my friends is when I make references to or pay homage to the movie “Office Space”. They love it when I find a way to tie in jokes between my writing about office space in Toronto. The blog entry that I am most proud of and received the most attention for writing was one that I wrote on November 4th 2009. I opened my Internet browser and the first thing I noticed was a familiar pair of orange legs making up the l’s in the Google doodle. I learned that for the next few days leading up to November 10th, all of the Google doodles would be paying tribute to the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street. I decided to challenge myself and find a way to incorporate this into my blog about Toronto office space and to wish a Happy 40th Anniversary Sesame Street and Happy Birthday Big Bird. In the days to follow, many of my friends sent me messages and told me how much they really liked that particular blog, particularly how I asked them to imagine the Count to do the “One – Two – Threes of Telsec”. As to the second question”are you the only writer”… No. There have been several blog postings that have been written by Tony Curcio and a few written by office space tenants at Telsec who chose to stay anonymous. With the help of others, this blog will continue to find important information and facts, but will also continue to find ways of keeping followers or others who are interested in Toronto business centres engaged and sometimes entertained.
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While Toronto’s Harbourfront has been developing for many years, it has only been in the past few years that developers have started looking at the Eastern Port Lands. It began when Toronto Port Lands Company (TPLC) decided to develop the first building directly on Toronto’s waterfront to achieve LEED certification. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification consists of a suite of rating systems for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighborhoods. The new building was to house the radio and television studios and office space Toronto for primary tenant Corus Entertainment.
Right next to Corus building, TPLC is constructing a new campus for George Brown College. Another Port Lands office space development is set to break ground this summer. The primary tenant has still not been announced. Most suspect that it will be a company looking for a building with not only the cool address, but a building that is state-of-the-art and green-friendly.
Some of the companies who were looking to move their Toronto offices space downtown are now looking more closely at the opportunities that the Port Lands offer. One of the biggest pluses for being south of the railroad tracks and the Gardiner Expressway, is the quick access to the highways out of downtown.
Even companies who want to be close to the Port Lands and do not want traditional office space Toronto have a great opportunity by renting Toronto serviced office space at Telsec Business Centres. Telsec’s location on the 18th floor of 1 Yonge Street offers the convenience of the Port Lands and breathtaking views of the Toronto harbour and Lake Ontario. They also offer views of the downtown core to the North, Harbourfront to the West and the Port Lands to the East. Most importantly, not only has the building been retrofitted with Green technology, but Telsec Business Centres does its part in being Green-Friendly at work.
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I got an email yesterday from a friend who moved to Michigan last year. His email asked about some website programming work we had been talking about. In his signature I noticed that he had a 416 area code phone number where he could be reached (416 is a Toronto area code). To me, this meant that his office space was in Toronto.
So instead of emailing him back, I decided to phone him at his Toronto office space and meet up for lunch. When I called the number on his email, I was standing at the elevators of my office space Toronto about to go out for lunch. The call was answered by a familiar voice and I also thought I heard that same voice answering the call not far from where I was standing… But I did not think about it.
As I was telling Rocco about the project I needed his help on, he told me that he had another call he had to take and that he would call me back at my Toronto office space in 15 minutes. So I went down to CafeOn4 to grab something for lunch and to see the smiley redheaded chef.
When I got back to my office, I had just sat down when Rocco called me back. He told me that he was still in Michigan and that his new employer had him servicing Canadian clients. They set up a Toronto Virtual office for him, with a local Toronto telephone number. His clients would call his Toronto phone number and the calls would be answered by a receptionist who would forward his calls to his Michigan cellphone.
So I asked him the name of the company and he told me the name of the company he was working for, but I wanted to know the name of the virtual office in Toronto. He told me that he did not deal with the virtual office company, but he knew that his office was on the 18th floor of 1 Yonge Street. I started to laugh and he asked me what was so funny, I told him that was the same business centre where I had my Toronto office space.
Today while I was talking to Rocco again, he mentioned that he was talking with someone from his head office in New York and they told him they had found his Toronto virtual office because of the www.telsec.net website. In fact they also found about their other virtual office locations through the Telsec website.
Rocco told me that his company wanted him to come up to Toronto for a few days to meet with some of his clients who he would normally talk to over the phone or through a video conference. His company wanted to keep up the appearance that he had an actual Toronto office space, so they got him a Toronto daily office rental at Telsec. I told him that he would be better suited to rent one of the large Toronto boardrooms that had a 50-inch LCD screen for his presentations. The bonus part was that as a virtual office client at Telsec, he would get a better rate than a non-client would get.
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For the fourth time in four years, Canada will be hosting royalty. I heard someone say with the news that this spring Prince Charles and Camilla will be visiting Toronto, that maybe it is time for the Royal Family to open an office space Toronto to co-ordinate all these frequent visits. Some even say they should have their own merchandising department in Toronto to approve and collect royalties on the various trinkets, bobbles and replica Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals that many enterprising Canadians will be selling during the Royal Visit.When Prince Charles and Camilla arrive in Toronto, they will be greeted by emergency response workers before viewing a Victoria Day weekend fireworks display over Lake Ontario. If they had a Toronto office space at Telsec, they could comfortably watch the fireworks from the 18th floor of the Toronto Star Building.
While in Toronto the Royals will be handing out the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals — awards created to commemorate six decades of Elizabeth’s reign. The Duchess will get her first chance to visit the Queen’s Own Rifles, a regiment for which she has just become colonel-in-chief. Also on Charles’ and Camilla’s itinerary in Toronto is a bicentennial commemoration of the War of 1812. With just those events alone, their staff will need a downtown Toronto office space to co-ordinate all their appearances.
News of the Royal Visit overshadowed the fact that former Canadian and Member of the House of Lords Conrad Black, may not be allowed to return to Canada. Therefore, Lord Black will have to miss the Royal Tour visit to Toronto. This is mainly due to the fact he renounced his Canadian citizenship and has since acquired a criminal record for fraud. The Canada Border Services Agency says most criminal convictions make people inadmissible to enter and stay in Canada. This is particularly true of non-citizens.
So it looks like Prisoner no. 18330-424 (as Lord Black is currently known) may get out of prison this Friday, but he may have to wait 5 years until he is able to return home to Canada or rents a Toronto office space. It seems that people with “previous criminality” need to apply for a rehabilitation before they can be admissible for permanent residency to Canada – but they have to wait five years after the completion of their sentence. I am sure that he can open a Toronto virtual office and conduct business while living in the USA or Great Britain.
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The grass is always greener when someone looks at your job and wants it. When you tell people that you are successful and make a decent living at a job you love, everyone wants it. They love that you have your own Toronto office space and you set your own hours. They become more excited to do what you do. The excitement ends when you tell them you are an entrepreneur working for yourself without a safety net. You do not have job security or a cushy pension. You are building your future on your own.
When I am asked “How do you do it?”, I often tell people that having my own business is very rewarding in many ways, but having an office space Toronto in a location that works for my clients is what keeps me busy and gainfully employed. When I was running my business out of my home, customers did not seem to take me seriously. My downtown clients wanted to meet me at my downtown office, but my office was a corner room in my suburban home.
When I first decided to take a virtual office at a downtown Toronto office space, potential clients started to pay more attention to what I had to say. When they wanted to have a meeting at my office, I was able to book a boardroom at a minimal price at the same address that appeared on my business card. No, I did not actually have an office there, but it was a place that my mail went to and my business calls were routed through. My customers and potential clients did not know this, but they were impressed by the presence I had.
Over the years, I went from having a $30 Toronto virtual office location to having a window office that overlooks the Toronto harbour. Granted, my first office space in this location was an interior office that only cost me $495 per month, but I have since moved up to where I am now.
My point is that business has only gotten better since I acquired a real business address in a professional business office space Toronto. The best part is that, unlike traditional office spaces, I can better budget my office expenses and not have to worry about maintaining or upgrading office equipment, they do that for me and I only pay for what I use.
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I woke up this morning to wet and dreary weather. My plan had been to take the day off and to take some photos down along the beach, but the weather was not cooperating. I considered instead that I would go into my downtown Toronto office space and get some work done that I had intended to finish on Tuesday. Then I realized that I did not need to go into the office and could probably get more work done from home working remotely on my office computer via the Internet.
A few hours into working on the redesign of a brochure for the bicycle show, I wanted to go for a bike ride (I felt like Pavlov’s dog). The rain had slowed down almost to a stop, but the roads were still wet. I got on my rain gear and decided to brave the colder weather and go for a ride anyway. My only problem was that I could not find the key for the bike lock. I must have left the key in the desk at my office space Toronto at Telsec. Determined that I was going to go for that ride, I jumped in the car for the quick ride downtown.
As I was going through my desk looking for the key to the bike lock, my cell phone went off. It was a call from the Telsec receptionist. It seems that an unannounced client had stopped by the office and wanted to know if I was in. The receptionist knew that my calls were being forwarded to my cell phone, but had noticed that I had stepped into the office. I asked the receptionist if the lobby boardroom was available and if she could have my client wait in there for a few minutes. Luckily that boardroom was available. I hurriedly took off my rain gear and went to greet this new customer.
After a twenty minute meeting with the client, I returned to my private office space and continued to look for the bike lock key. No luck, it was not in my desk. I put my rain gear in a bag and decided to have some lunch at CafeOn4 before heading home. Just as I got on the elevator, I got another call forwarded from my office phone number. This time it was a photography customer who urgently needed a product photo taken for an advertisement that was going to the printer late in the afternoon. So I had to skip lunch and head home to get my photography equipment.
So much for taking a Monday off work!
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The buzz around my Toronto office space on Thursday was how Neil Pasricha concluded his blog that was a list of 1000 things “AWESOME”. It all began on June 20, 2008, when Neil set out on a mission to write 1,000 blog posts. Each of his weekday blogs was to chronicle of one awesome thing and count down until he hit #1.
After launching “1,000 Awesome Things”, he started to get some attention from his friends and colleagues, but it really gained traction 20 posts in, when post 980 was linked to on a site called Fark.com. His blog’s popularity began to snowball further after Wired Magazine wrote about his blog and called post 980, which was titled “Old, dangerous playground equipment”. Pasricha probably had no idea when he started his blog that it would lead to three books (two of which became international best sellers) and an app for smart phones. He even won a Webby award in 2009 for Best Personal or Cultural Blog.
In hindsight it is hard to imagine that a blog about AWESOME would get over 30 million hits just for the topic of AWESOME. I am sure many other bloggers are saying that they could have done that – they could have cashed in on the keyword AWESOME and wrote three books. The fact is they did not do it, Neil Pasricha did, while still keeping his Toronto office job at Walmart.
In blog “#255 That guy who brings treats to work on Friday”, he talks about the 5 ways everyone in his Toronto office space finds out there are treats in the office. Unlike his office space, the treats in my downtown Toronto office space are not placed by a co-worker, but left out and announced by someone working for another company. When someone brings in treats they wish to share with other people who rent office space Toronto at Telsec Business Centres, they leave them in one of the two shared kitchens (where we all get our complimentary coffee, tea and filtered water) with a note telling people to share.
At my office space Toronto, there is one person who will randomly leave a fresh box of Timbits in each of the kitchens, but no one seems to know who it is and why. I have talked to the staff at the Tim Hortons on the fourth floor of the building to see who the mystery person is, but they are hush. They do not want to lose a customer. Yes, even with the AWESOME complimentary coffee and tea available in the office, some people are still drawn to get their Tim Hortons fix at the CafeOn4. I will admit that I often slip down to CafeOnF4 for lunch and sometimes I will go down there for an IceCap, when I am not in the mood for just my free Hazelnut coffee (Yes, I love my complimentary hazelnut coffee in my Toronto office space).My last comment is more of a question… How many things could people say was about their AWESOME Toronto office space? I think I could list 20 or 30 and that is not including having the AWESOME address of 1 Yonge Street.
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We have a number of photos on our website that are of our Toronto office space building and interior. Most of the photos that appear on our website have been purchased for use from the photographer or are commissioned photos that we have full rights to.
All of the interior shots of our Toronto executive offices are commissioned photos that we have paid the photographer to do. All of the photos of the Toronto waterfront that include our building have also been commissioned photos to showcase the location of our office space Toronto. There are also a few photos of the Toronto Island Airport and other aerial photos that have been purchased from stock photography agencies.
Recently, our staff photographer did a specialized web search of where our photos were being used and found that other websites are indeed using photos of our office space Toronto and claiming them as photos of their own space. As comical as this may sound, they are lying to their potential clients who are looking for Toronto office space. It would be a disappointment to show up at an office space location and not see an office that resembles the one in the photo. With Telsec, when you see an office space photo or a view from an office, it is what you see. Our photos are often updated when the view from that particular office changes. We want you to see what you are getting and not what we think you want to see.
Speaking of updated photos, this past fall our lobby area was renovated and we updated the reception photos. When our boardrooms were updated with new flat screens a few months ago, we made sure we updated the photos of our Toronto Boardrooms for rent photos.
Most often the newer photos we get of our Toronto office space will appear first in our blog or tweets before making their way to the www.telsec.net web page.
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Yesterday I received a very odd piece of mail at my Toronto office space. There was no return address on the envelope only an Initech logo (yes the fictitious software company in the movie “Office Space”). What made the envelope weirder was that it was stapled shut.When I finally opened the envelope, I found a pink slip of paper that had been purposely wrinkled to look like it had been scrunched up and thrown away. It had my name on it and it was a notice to inform me that my services at Initech would no longer be needed. Stapled to the pink slip was a letter.
The letter explained that it was an invitation to an “Office Space” themed party sometime in mid April. I was impressed that the pink slip had been personalized by inserting my name; I was even more impressed that the letter was quite personalized. It explained that the reason I was being invited was because the party organizer was a follower of my blogs (http://telsec.net/blog/), tweets @TelsecDotNet (https://twitter.com/#!/TelsecDotNet) and facebook (https://www.facebook.com/OfficeSpaceToronto) postings. They especially liked that I had written a lot of humour connecting or disconnecting Office Space Toronto from the movie “Office Space”.
The letter further explained that the company hosting the party was updating a bunch of equipment, so they decided to have an “Office Space” themed party and smash all the old stuff behind their warehouse. Unlike the printer smashing in the movie, all of the parts and pieces would be separated and recycled appropriately.
Unfortunately, the location of this “Office Space” party is in Vancouver (Washington) and my schedule with customer meetings at my downtown Toronto office space does not let me leave in April. I sent my regrets and asked if they would mind me trying to organize a similar style “Office Space Toronto” party complete with pink slip invitations. They replied that they would be honoured to see a similarly inspired party.
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As I was driving into my Toronto office space this morning, I heard a radio announcer trying to say Kung hei fat choi, but his pronunciation sounded a little off, it sounded like he was saying “Gung Hei Fat Choy “. So I asked one of the Mandarin speaking office space Toronto clients what the proper pronunciation was. He told me that neither was the Mandarin way of saying Happy New Year (not an exact translation). It seems that “Xin Nien Kwai Le” is the Mandarin way. He went on to tell me that his wife is from the Philipines and her family is from the Fujian province of China, where they speak a Chinese-Filipinos dialect called Hokkien. The Chinese-Filipinos say Kiong Hee Huat Tsai.
He also informed me that much to many North Americans’ dismay, Kung hei fat choi (in Cantonese), Xin Nien Kwai Le (in Mandarin), and Kiong Hee Huat Tsai (in Hokkien [Chinese-Filipinos dialect from Fujian province]), do not mean “Happy New Year”. But instead, they all refer to the same set of 4 Chinese characters (农历新年) that literally means “Congratulations and wishing you prosperity!”
The client had to leave for a meeting, so our conversation was left at that. I decided to do some more research. I found out that Cantonese is one of the 9 other groups of dialects in China and is most commonly spoken in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Macau, but Mandarin is the most largely spoken dialect in mainland China. What was more interesting is that regardless of the dialect spoken there are two written forms of Chinese – Traditional and Simplified characters.
This got me to thinking, how would one say office space Toronto in Chinese? So, I turned to the internet to find some answers. As it turns out, Simplified Chinese characters were more commonly used in business on the Internet. A quick translation from Google let me know that “office space Toronto” translated to 多伦多办公室空间 in simplified Chinese characters.
When I mentioned the research I had done to one of the Telsec staff, she told me that Telsec actually had a few Toronto virtual office clients that were located in Hong Kong. So I went back to Google to find out what the simplified Chinese characters were for virtual office Toronto. I found out that the translation was多伦多的虚拟办公室.This did not look the same as my previous translation, so I tried translating Toronto virtual office and found that the Simplified Chinese characters 多伦多 turned out to be Toronto. Regardless of the order I asked for the words to translate, Toronto seemed to be the first. I had to find out more, so I asked Google to translate “downtown Toronto office space” and got 多伦多市中心的办公空间 , the characters多伦多 were still the leading characters. One last experiment, what if I left off the capital letter T in Toronto? Turns out is still put those same three characters at the beginning.
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