Cold Drinks, originally uploaded by matrixmeridian.
Hey! We haven’t seen you for a while…
Besides our world famous espresso and drip coffee, our fridge is now stocked up with ice cold drinks for the summer. Yes, this is wishful thinking, but nonetheless.
Stop in for a chat and a drink…and let us know what you’ve been up to. We’re looking forward to it!
Illustration by Bell Mello
The premise is that:
“The fact that people are no longer tied to specific places for functions such as studying or learning, says Mr Mitchell, means that there is “a huge drop in demand for traditional, private, enclosed spaces” such as offices or classrooms, and simultaneously “a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces”. This shift, he thinks, amounts to the biggest change in architecture in this century. In the 20th century architecture was about specialised structures—offices for working, cafeterias for eating, and so forth. This was necessary because workers needed to be near things such as landline phones, fax machines and filing cabinets, and because the economics of building materials favoured repetitive and simple structures, such as grid patterns for cubicles.”
This may be otherwise know and the re-emergence of “Third Places” as Sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls it in his 1989 book, “The Great, Good Place”.
What we’re finding is that this is definitely the case. The widespread use of laptops by our consultants, ubiquitous wireless technology, the use of Instant Messaging and VoIP has changed our physical office. “The Office” has evolved from a place where everyone came to work everyday, to a multi-use space that is split between formal/casual work and private/meeting spaces. So, on some days, there is hardly anyone here. Other days, it is packed to the gills for client meetings and team reviews.
The point here is choice. While we understand the value of face time with each other and our clients, we often have a choice of working where it is the most comfortable and productive. The choice of work location is sometimes determined by the nature of the work being performed, and at other times by how the individual prefers to work.
What this has also done is let us use less space to get more work done without affecting productivity. That’s good for the environment and also keeps our overhead to a reasonable level while expanding the scope and size of our businesses.
What do you think? It works for us, does it work for you?
We’d like to take this opportunity to wish all our old and new friends/clients a happy holiday! May you spend it in the company of your loved ones…
Our office will be closed from Friday December 21, 2007 and will be reopening on Monday Janurary 7, 2008.
Thank you all for your support in the past year. You mean the world to us. Here’s wishing you and yours all the best for the coming year!
P.S. In case you ever doubted that we were geeks, the image is of Open Cluster NGC 2264…otherwise known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster” (it looks right-side up in a Newtonian telescope) Check it out here.
It is embarrassing that it has taken so long, but we’re finally done moving. The last bits of Ikea furniture have been put together for storage; extra tools and gear have been put into storage; and the office has been cleaned by a professional cleaner. Yeaaaa!
The reason it has taken so long is that, well, we’ve been busy working hard for our clients. These little details always seem to get pushed to the back burner. Sorry for all those that had to endure the messy office, but we’ll try and keep it up to at least a livable standard. So, don’t call Health and Safety on us! 
Here’s some snaps of the new place. If you haven’t been by yet, come by for a coffee…
Yes, moving is a drag, but we’re almost done. Just a few more boxes to move followed by a quick cleaning of the old place and tidying of the new place.
The only snag so far is that the air conditioning at the new office didn’t work over the last few days. Of course it broke down when it was HOT HOT HOT! The ceiling fans that we had installed prior to moving in saved us. We didn’t expire from the heat, but it wasn’t pleasant either. For now, the ancient air conditioner is fixed. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way.
We’ll post some photos of the new place soon so that you can take a look around. Even better yet, come by for a visit!
After 7 years on Richmond St. E at Church, we’re moving across town to the Garment District!
We’re in the final stages of formalizing our new lease, but the new address will be 20 Maud Street.
From the landlord’s website:
20-30 Maud Street is located in the heart of Downtown West in the King-Spadina area. Maud is a two way street connecting Adelaide and Richmond Streets, west of Spadina Avenue with easy access to the Gardiner Expressway, the Spadina and Harbourfront LRT system and to the Downtown Financial Core. In the immediate area is a mix of new condominium residential and entertainment development with the historic commercial and industrial properties. Queen Street West provides a lively commercial thoroughfare. Attracted to the area are growing creative businesses such as design, communications, software, film and TV production, as well as the more traditional fashion sales, showrooms, printing and import-export.
The new space is in an older converted brick building. The main building is mill construction featuring wooden beams, columns and floor joists with hardwood floors throughout.
The new landlord is working on our new space now. The floors have been refinished and they will be painting and working on the electrical next. We’re installing new lighting and fans to move some air around.
We’re excited about our new neighbourhood and exploring its many cool stores, restaurants and cafes (very important feature even though we have backup machines to the backup expresso machine…)
The lease officially started June 1, and we’ll be renovating the new space and moving our stuff across town througout the month. We’ll be fully installed as of July 1st. Come for a visit and visit your favourite geeks! 
The Matrix Meridian website has been stagnant for years. While we admire great design, it is time for a fresh start and for now we’re putting substance ahead of style.
For a quick and dirty site that’s easy to maintain, we’ve chosen Wordpress. We’ve recommended this course of action to some of our clients as well and everyone is happy with the recommendation.
Wordpress is a very nicely put together blogging engine and works well as a basic content management system (CMS) as well. The combination of blogging engine and easy to use CMS means that this web will be updated much more frequently than in the past.
As you may imagine, it is the typical story of the cobbler’s children not having shoes of their own. Being a small firm, we’re so busy making our clients look good that we’ve neglected to maintain our own web.
So, this is to make amends. The site will get prettier as time goes on, but for now, the basics will have to do…
What do you think?
