Natural Affinities: Thinking Outside the Cubicle

Express calls Affinity Lab “the office for cool kids,” a place where enthusiastic and hungry entrepreneurs come together to achieve their dreams. “Affinity’s designed to help a start-up or small business, by encouraging its members to connect and grow, together.” The article celebrates the Lab’s unique working culture and suggests that our language, our way of starting and growing businesses, “is about to become part of the D.C. vernacular.” We couldn’t agree more. To read the article, please see the link below.

The Affinity Lab and its member organizations all got together and created Diwali Cards for the Dungra Village Childcare Center in Rajasthan, India. This was a special event put together by two membership organizations: 1Well and Joint Concepts.

The Affinity Lab Inaugural Happy Hour, presented by Articulated Impact, The Clearing, Design Symphony, Joint Concepts, Maga Design, and Massy Media was a complete success and a total blast. 200 were in attendance and funds were raised for Project One Vote.
Thanks to everyone.

The Lab is proud to welcome two new members:
-Translation Creation, a web based translation service
-Linked Senior, bringing entertainment to senior communities

Celebrating his business' third year anniversary, Marcos turned the Lab into a live band party on Saturday, October 11, as the band Freezepop performed synth pop tunes that stirred the crowd into mass hugging, jumping, break dancing, and group singing (to Europe's The Final Countdown and Journey's Don't Stop Believin').

About the show, MC Massey had this to say: Trips around France to have given me a chance to paint "en plein aire" as did the French impressionists. Wind in the face, canvas blowing like a sail, I worked on the beach at Roscoff, an ancient port town on the far northwest coast of France, very near to England. I used a painting knife because of the need for simplicity of technique.

Affinity Lab member NucleationSites has just helped launch a new website for the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University. This project was managed and designed by lab alumnus BlueCadet Interactive, and is a great example of how individuals and member organizations continue to interact and collaborate, even after they graduate to their own dedicated offices.

The mission of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University is to prepare new generations of critical thinkers for effective and ethical leadership, ready to act as global citizens in addressing the world’s most pressing problems.

The Washington Post ran a Sunday front page story, Online, A Community Gathers to Concoct a Restaurant, featuring Lab member CoolTown Beta Communities.

The story focuses on the crowdsourcing of Elements, a local independent restaurant (that will stay that way because that's what the people want), which has progressed into a green, vegetarian, community and education-oriented third place.

Of course, the monthly beta community meetings are held at the Lab.

Lab Member Dan Morrison and his firm 3rd Point International recently launched 1 Well, an initiative that connects individuals and organizations interested in supporting life saving infrastructure projects with qualified villages and communities throughout the developing world. 1 Well was launched as a collaborative effort of many, including Lab members Design Symphony and Joint Concepts, who supported the effort with brand experience consulting, design and web site development.

About two hundred people celebrated 1 Well’s launch at the Gibson showroom in Washington DC with a performance by No Second Troy and a video presentation that documented the successful completion of 1 Well’s first project – the digging of a new well in remote village in India which was collaboratively funded by friends and family of Dan Morrison within just a few weeks.

Lab alumni Rosalyn Lemieux and a small army of dedicated volunteers had a lot to celebrate at the Learnapalooza after party held at Local 16 on Saturday night. In only its second year, Learnapalooza had increased the number of classes and students who had participated in one of the nation’s most unique community festivities.

Community members taught 74 classes ranging from 'Everything You Wanted to Know about Giant Pandas' to 'Fix Your Cars Brakes' to 'Learn to Shoot Pool'. Affinity Lab members and Alumni taught several classes throughout the day:

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