I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now, but what better time to do it than Super Bowl week!

This is a Super Bowl commercial from a few years ago, put on by Reebok. It’s the story of a CEO of a company hiring an ‘office linebacker’ (Terry Tate) to scare employees into being prodcutive and doing the right thing.

Personally, my favorite part  is when the guy is intimidated (mind games) into throwing the the can into the recycling bin. Luckily, we dont have to police that much around here though. We got some pretty responsible ‘greenies’ in the Atlanta office.

There are more than just this one, see them all HERE. …

As part of HOK’s annual Go Barefoot Day event to celebrate Earth Day and move our firm towards carbon neutral operations, all HOK offices were asked to complete a waste audit. Trash, recylables and compost were all weighed separately during a secret audit performed before Go Barefoot Day.  The same calculations were then completed on a day when all employees were informed to make conscious decisions about their personal trach and recycling. The results were very telling and HOK Chicago showed a significant reduction in the amount of overall waste that we produced in one day by making conscious decisions about our purchases throughout the day. The numbers were great and can be found below, but the real fun came when …

Certain HOK-ers (ahem, John Gilmore ) have been bragging about HOK’s very cool new collaboration technology: the Advanced Collaboration Room, which combines Cisco Telepresence Technology and Polyvision Thunder Express.  Well, John, you are no longer the only cool kid in town!  The WDC office became the fourth HOK office to open it’s ACR for business.  St. Louis, San Francisco, and Toronto already had them…next on the list are Houston, Los Angeles, and London.

After a few solid weeks of construction, the ACR was ready for …

It’s fair to say RecycOlympics was a huge success in HOK St. Louis, as it came to a close in the final medal rounds.

You’ll see in the “podium” photo above, some participants walked away with quite a bit of bling.

From top left: Rocco Danna, Gold – Coffee Cup Marathon, Silver – Paper Airplane Javelin, Silver – Business Card Tower Building, Silver – Recycling Bin Basketball, Bronze – Rubberband Archery; Michelle Pinkston, Gold – Business Card Tower Building; Eric Romano, Gold -Rubberband Archery, Gold – Airplane Javelin, Silver – Coffee Cup Marathon, Silver – Business Card Tower Building; Jeff York, …

Yesterday as I was getting ready to leave the office, I heard some faint music playing. As I walked toward the rear exit, it got louder and louder…what did I find? None other than my friends in the HOK Planning Group watching videos on YouTube (don’t fret, it was WELL after normal business hours ).  I’ve seen the Filipino prisoners dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and YouTube videos of late night dance parties in university libraries, but this one was new.  The particular video they were watching was of a flash mob performing a beautifully choreographed performance of “Doe, a Deer” from the Sound of Music. 

It got me thinking….is there a fun way to use flash mobs …

Matt Snelling from the Planning Group is the office’s resident Scorsese. His latest creation? Not The Godfather: Part IV, but a very cool video for the Opening Ceremony of the first-ever HOK RecycOlympics, a Sustainability Awareness Month fundraising, IOC-sanctioned event with proceeds going to EarthShare. RecycOlympics events highlight the office’s efforts to reduce waste and are inspired by last year’s Wii bowling tournament and The Office television show. The preliminaries will go down during lunchtime on April 10, with the final eight competitors vying for Gold on April 16. Ready steady go!

http://www.vimeo.com/3979866 
Cast: Matt Snelling, Julie Hick, Barry Sutherland, Chris Trowbridge, George Clooney
…

As a DC/mid-Atlantic native, I was sure happy to get the heck out of town in the middle of January…temperatures here have been pretty frigid (despite that this happens pretty much every year, I’m always shocked at just how cold it gets). Anyway, I had the opportunity to head off to the lovely town of San Francisco (in the 70s during the day) for a meeting and a day of work in the HOK SF office. 

I was definitely disappointed to miss the inauguration and associated events (especially the free concert), but I did see some great stuff in San Francisco, beginning with my airplane ride (not nearly as interesting …