For a long while now I’ve been a proponent of ‘Bedouin’ working, which is known a little more in the mainstream as ‘co-working’. Whereas co-working speaks to me of a common, shared space for individuals to work, Bedouin speaks of multiple spaces, some of them dedicated and some of them ad-hoc where individuals can work. Same meme I think, different implementation.
Loic Le Meur adds another definition into the mix: The Moving Circus.
I’m going to modify his list in terms of the parts that I find especially relevant to my own ideas about mobil/bedouin working and co-working. In doing so I’ve nibbled it down to 10 of Loic’s points which I find are more relevant than the others (and removed some specific product references). Some of the characterisations of the Moving Circus are:
- no office
- This is best expressed as either being completely bedouin (I work where I please and yesterday I networked with a teacher, a lawyer and a homemaker.) or not having a ‘private’ office (I co-work with ten other individuals in different industries and we regularly kick around ideas at the water cooler).
- no boss (self employed)
- I’m not going to criticise being an employee or being a non-founder because I’ve enjoyed being both a founder and a non-founder. The best thing about being your own boss is that you understand the reasons for the stupid mistakes your boss makes. Following a boss who is, frankly, stupid is career suicide.
- no tie, no suit: casual all the time
- It’s 2008. Any institution that requires developers to wear a suit or business casual is archaic. Sure – customer facing there may be a role for it (though what’s wrong with a black turtleneck and jeans?)
- no monopoly, no center, everything decentralized
- Too many companies, especially small businesses with 3-10 employees, put everything they own onto one server – using a Microsoft Small Business Server – on their ADSL line in their office. That’s just bad juju. Keep your files in the cloud. Back them up to a local store. Back them up to somewhere else in the cloud. Use lightweight applications (No, you don’t need Word) which can be easily replaced. Standardise on file formats that are well-supported in a lot of software and not proprietary files which need an expensive reader.
- in sync: no email, no phone, just IM, twitter, social software…
- To me there is a place for email. It’s for time-independent messaging. Instant messaging is obvious too. And the phone? With a handsfree kit it’s what you use when driving. An important point is not to lock your staff behind an ultra-restrictive firewall. Don’t block their email hosts. Happy workers can check their banks, pick up emails from friends, shop on eBay for that knick-knack for their spouse. If you don’t trust them to get the job done, what are you paying them for?
- no off-line: everything online
- A little short-sighted because networking is not yet ubiquitous. I have ‘desire’ for offline storage and processing because of this. The lack of storage for files other than music and movies is a real bugbear on the iPhone.
- no distance: it does not matter where you are
- This could not be truer. I had a brief twitter conversation this week regarding location. If housing is expensive where you are, move. You do not need to be in the city. I moved to a nice house 5 minutes walk from a beach and I do not regret it at all.
- no fear of embarrassment or of failure: the “always beta” culture
- I think it’s great there’s no fear of failure or there’s acknowledgment of mistakes and a desire to do better in an honest and transparent way. But the ‘always beta’ thing bothers me as it often means that it’s okay to be crap because it’s not finished. Or that support is withheld because it’s unfinished. Being unfinished is a journey not an excuse.
- entrepreneurial or self employed
- Sometimes I do feel like I was born twenty years too late. To be 18 years old now, with the possibilities laid out for you and with some sense of entrepreneurial spirit would be a wonderful thing. But I’m an old fogey. Oh well.
- ideas over systems
- Every conversation should start with “Wouldn’t it be cool if….” and then after that you worry how to build it (and ideally the person saying it has some appreciation of the challenges involved).
The gist of the Moving Circus is also that at the various conferences/unconferences you go to, you see a lot of the same faces. If you go to OpenIsland, BarCampBelfast, NiMUG, OpenCoffee, BLUG, Cocoaheads or any of the other ‘techie’ things in the province it’s the same people. I’ve not been to Apple Expo in a couple of years now but there was a small group of UK people who would always find each other at the Expo. I think this would be even more prevalent these days with more social networking apps like FaceBook, Twitter.
Is this a good trend? Maybe there needs to be more of an ‘advertisement’ telling others that there are events going on. Some, like NiMUG and Cocoaheads, are pretty specific to a subgroup who use the Mac. BLUG, similarly is for people who want to group together because of Linux. But there’s more than this and it should be open to more than just technologists – there’s a lot of potential for leftbrain and rightbrain types to mingle.