CoWorking – Page 6

Working conditions

â€œself-funded small business that encourages people to stay away from the VCs, says you donâ€™t need to live in San Francisco to be successful, suggests that charging for your products is a good thing, espouses the advantages of small teams, applauds shorter work weeks with more reasonable hours, rejects the notion of traditional â€˜seriousness business … Continue reading “Working conditions”

â€œself-funded small business that encourages people to stay away from the VCs, says you donâ€™t need to live in San Francisco to be successful, suggests that charging for your products is a good thing, espouses the advantages of small teams, applauds shorter work weeks with more reasonable hours, rejects the notion of traditional â€˜seriousness business stuff,â€™ and believes keeping it simple is the way to success.â€

Yup

Jason Calacanis was hounded a little last week with his comments about workaholics but it’s worth looking at what he said rather than the rants about how people interpreted them.

when you don’t love what you do it sucks.

I can totally empathise with this as I keep working on trying to do the switch again? Explain? Okay. I will, but not here.

Jason also says
Very much paraphrased here…and removing some points which I don’t feel can apply universally.

Buy Macs. They’ll save you money in the long run
Buy an extra monitor for everyone. Makes people happy and productive
Buy lunch. Often.
Find a good accountant to handle tax and wages

This, the Jason Calacanis/37Signals model is the model I already run with for the most part, but there are limits, e.g.

I think most customers would prefer that Mac-Sys was open 6 days a week rather than 5 (but that limitation comes from the Enterprise Park and not from us). We have campaigned repeatedly to get this changed…
The hosting company needs to be available 7 days a week. That’s just a reality. Nothing can be done about that and it’s up there with my own expectations.
Infurious could get away with a 4 day week, probably less considering everyone is working at it part time at the moment anyway.

but the issue with all of this is in terms of equality. Rolling out something to one group and not another isn’t egalitarian and therefore I’m not willing to consider it. It’s not an issue at the moment because the hosting company and Infurious are both still in startup mode. Working conditions are not bad at all – it’s not a stressed environment, they get to work with interesting people every day, they do stuff they enjoy and the only aggro was who gets to play their music on the Airport Express. But it’s not perfect, we’re starting to get tight on space and I’m feeling more and more that a city centre location (or one walkable to from the major bus and train stops) would be better for everyone.

I think 2008 will be a time for me to work on improving the working conditions for everyone.

Workplace Experiments

37Signals are one of those companies that you either love or hate, I guess. I like them a lot, with their cheeky, no-nonsense approach to things. It’s true that a lot of problems come down to doing the right thing so you have to ask – what are the barriers to doing the right thing? … Continue reading “Workplace Experiments”

Here’s an example

At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.

They’ve implemented the following so far:

Shorter Work Weeks
Funding People’s Passions
Discretionary Spending Accounts

Love them or hate them you have to admit it’s pretty forward thinking. Some people will dislike the environment in a 4 day week and you could follow the pattern recursively until down to a 0-day week and then they’d be happy. You’d be out of business soon after and then they’d be sad. But they’d blame you.

The last two points deal with money and my opinion is that if it can reasonably be counted as a work expense then it probably should be one. For example, woodworking and pilots lessons would not, but driving lessons might, as should cooking, because really, everyone benefits from cooking lessons.

I think that it should be standard practise for a technology company that is established to have some sort of account with O’Reilly or one of the other book vendors so that the staff can get reasonable access to decent materials like these. If there’s an IT conference, let them go. (in comparison, getting just paid leave to go an IT conference is difficult in $BIG_CORP even if you’re paying your own travel and subsistence).

Why not just pay a higher salary?

Well, for a 4 day week, you’ve just got a 20% bonus. And if you provide a higher salary, people will adjust their lifestyle to fill it and still want work to buy books. And then you have to consider the tax implications. It quickly gets to a point where you’re going to pay people more money just for a third of it (or more) to go straight to the government. And no-one likes that.

My interest in this comes more from the work-life balance. I’m more interested in the results from a 4 day week or from the opportunities to be gained from remote working or working from home. In my experience it made me a lot happier. I missed out on being in the office but my team was virtual anyway – we only spoke over the phone or via email/IM.

20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What

Far away in some coffee shop there are three guys sitting, taking gulps of their frappes and writing an insanely great idea on the back of a napkin. They’re going to blow apart the world of social network and provide the basis for the next great revolution. Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering … Continue reading “20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What”

Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering how to sell things online – dog food, books, videos and content. We discovered that food was a bad thing to sell online unless you were local to your customer. We discovered that books and videos can be compelling if you have a great supply chain and a few huge warehouses. We discovered that people don’t like paying for online content but if it’s a reasonable price, they’ll part with their readies.

Web 2.0 was hyped as being about the conversation but it really continued the idea that content should be free. Not just free to the consumer but also free to the provider. That’s why YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are all doing so well. They chewed through investor money and then were either acquired or got huge investments from massive companies. What’s paying for these services? Eyeballs. Companies seem convinced that online advertising is worth billions.

Our three entreprenerds are working on inventing Web 3.0.

I see it as being some of the following (inspired by the Web 3.0 article on Wikipedia)

ubiquitous mobile connectivity
open identity, portable reputation
semantic web and service oriented architecture
distributed databases
intelligent ‘pro-active’ web (building on intelligent applications)
more open access to data and services
cloud, as opposed to grid, computing
persistent statement-based datastores
expansion beyond the vanilla web

I’m expecting better and more intelligent heuristics in my mobile applications. I think SaaS/SOA only works with properly ubiquitous networking, something which we do not have yet and it will be a while before we do. So we need storage and processing power locally – not a lot though more than ever before. A rich client accessing web services is obviously the way to go as evidenced by the Google Maps application on the iPhone. The experience is much better than the vanilla web

I’ve used that term twice now, vanilla web. That’s the web we access every day using a web browser. It’s a lot better than it was, with all this AJAXy goodness but it’s hard to beat a dedicated client. That’s why I prefer an RSS reader app compared to Google Reader. Why I prefer Maps on the iPhone to maps in my browser. Why I want an IM application rather than using web-based IM clients.

I think Web 3.0 will be the start of the end for the Vanilla Web.

What do you think?

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Pushing for a Tech-Hub in Belfast

DavidJRice expresses some polite frustration at the number of potentially misguided approaches to government (central and local) funding of creative and technology industries. He’s right, of course. There is a disconnect between what is happening and what the “gubmint” thinks is happening. When you see people organising themselves for events because there’s a dearth of … Continue reading “Pushing for a Tech-Hub in Belfast”

DavidJRice expresses some polite frustration at the number of potentially misguided approaches to government (central and local) funding of creative and technology industries.

He’s right, of course. There is a disconnect between what is happening and what the “gubmint” thinks is happening. When you see people organising themselves for events because there’s a dearth of adequate direction from our governmental overseers, then you know there’s money being wasted. I was told categorically by InvestNI that the technology investment model they were pursuing was to invite large technology and creative companies over here to presumably fill the large empty warehouses they built a few years ago. That’s also effectively sounding a death knell to any SMALL companies that are looking for funding. This somewhat mirrors the experience I had with InvestNI the first time round where they told me they weren’t investing in IT-style companies at all, nomatter the service or business model. Ouch.

So, David, what do we need? We need a building or a room at least. We need broadband. We need light, heat, power. I’m less concerned on the creative industries because, frankly, they get enough help. I know one company funded entirely by the Arts Council. They’re unlikely to give an IT company anything 🙂

Let’s get a list, check it twice and see how much it costs. My company will pledge a percentage of the costs of a co-working space assuming we get that far!

Digital Nomads

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past talking about “Going Bedouin”, an idea of working that I adore and which I have tried to do for several years, while working for a large telecoms company and also while working for my own company. I feel it helped the company pay for my productivity because as I embraced the flexibility to work from home, the company also received the benefits of me being available possibly 24×7 because I didn’t begrudge the call at 2 am (unlike the call at 2 am I got last night which I certainly did begrudge). It meant I was happy to help people out and most importantly I didn’t feel the need to demand extra money for the privilege.

Chris Brogan’s blog has an interesting post on how to become a digital nomad which is as much a marketing term as “Bedouin”.

Smartphone

It’s important to stay in contact if you’re going to be Bedouin. This means choosing your technology carefully. It’s no longer good enough to carry a pager and mobile phone. The expectation now is that you’ll get your email too and with the release of the iPhone comes the first mature implementation of a browser in a handheld device. It’s relegated my laptop for a lot of the day to the laptop bag.
Online apps

While I recognise that online apps do provide a lot of power and sometimes a lot more potential for collaboration, I’m still very much a fan of rich clients. I don’t want to use primitive web app user interfaces which haven’t really changed recently. For what they offer, it’s a lowest common denominator model. It works, but it ain’t pretty.
Centralising

This makes a lot of sense and I’d clarify by saying that as well as centralising some of your services it’s worth considering outsourcing those which don’t add value. Get everyone accounts on the same domain with the same reliable provider and keep these production services separate from your development servers and off your own machines. The economies of scale make it worthwhile.
Online/Offline Storage

Just do backups. Don’t mess around with your data. That’s one of the beauties of laptops and PDAs, for the most part they have insuffient storage for keeping all of your data. My laptop has a 160 GB drive in it which is a tenth of what I need for storage. My iPhone has 8 GB of storage which really isn’t enough for anything other than current email. And the odd movie. Keep regular backups and consider keeping your data in the cloud – so you can access it from anywhere.
Messaging/Presence management

If you’re not using instant messenger applications in business then you’re behind the times. I have no doubts that Skype and iChat will make it onto the iPhone which will make my phone the hub of my communications network rather than my laptop. I don’t believe for a second that Twitter and similar wanky apps are going to to be the core of the semantic web. They’re missing everything to do with context. I don’t wast to know only a short message about someone. I want to know where they are, how they are and whether they want to meet for coffee. FaceBook or Google would seem to be the contenders here for writing the meta-app which will fulfill your context needs. I just don’t really want content delivered as a side order to a main course of advertising.
Plan your gear

This means not only making sure the kit you have is the right kit, but making sure you invest in ways and means to keep that gear running. I get a full day out of my always-on, incredibly busy iPhone. That means, if I’m planning ahead, always making sure I have at least got an iPod connection cable handy for a quick juice-up if I’m running low. For laptops you have to consider most have a battery life of 2-3 hours with some stretching it out to 5. So that’s more bulk to lug about. You’ll also have to get less shy about using power points in coffee shops and airports. The staff in the places I have been have never objected to me plugging in. Scope them out and make a beeline for them if they are free. Power is a more valuable commodity to a mobile worker than WiFi. Think about that.

For me it’s a waiting game. I’m waiting to see what will be possible with the iPhone when the SDK is released as I’m filled with ideas on how to manage this, how to add to what is already out there. I’m less and less keen on FaceBook and their constant barrages of crap but they are in the best position to start providing an implementation of the “digital shadow” (as PJ called it.

Modern work environments

From the San Jose Mercury News Like other valley stalwarts, including Intel and Sun Microsystems, Cisco is casting aside the cubicle culture that has thrived in the United States since the late 1960s. In its place, the company is embracing a new workplace design that saves space and money, and encourages collaboration among co-workers. … … Continue reading “Modern work environments”

From the San Jose Mercury News

Like other valley stalwarts, including Intel and Sun Microsystems, Cisco is casting aside the cubicle culture that has thrived in the United States since the late 1960s. In its place, the company is embracing a new workplace design that saves space and money, and encourages collaboration among co-workers.
…
Each morning, Intel employees will log onto the corporate network using wireless connections. Their phone numbers will follow them. White boards that employees use to sketch out business plans and project strategies will be outfitted with electronics so drawings and plans can be transferred to laptops and e-mailed to colleagues.

About 100 years ago, in 1999, I suggested something like this to my team lead. We were just about to outfit the wing with new desking and I suggested we might wan tto use open plan desking, reducing the height of the towers and cupboards so we could see each other. We’d kit all the desks with big screens and desk level power and have a charging socket for our handsets (using the Nortel mobile handsets which hooked into the internal telephone system). We would remove the standalone workstations and put them into the server room and use X11 to access them. Instead of pedestal drawers we would use lockable cupboards in a central location. We already had wireless at a massive 2 Mbps DSSS!

Ultimately it was poo-pooed because people wanted their name badges in a single place. Things were just not progressive enough back then. Which is one of the reasons I’m so enamoured of bedouin working now. I’ve been trying to do it for years.

Currently, I’m in the stone age technologically. While at home and with Infurious/Mac-Sys I’m in the 21st Century with 17″ MacBook Pro, iPhone, Wireless, VoIP, VideoConferencing and all the presence-software I can eat; during the day I’m tethered to a single desk, with a desktop computer, an awful clackety clackety keyboard, two low-res 17″ screens (I should count myself lucky there’s two), a desktop phone with a dozen buttons I don’t use and a rabble of wires behind the screens. And yes, just over a month ago I was upgraded to Windows XP.

Doing remote support using the tools provided is an exercise in frustration. Not having access to laptops, VoIP phones and having the expectation that I will call the United States on my personal mobile phone and then fight my way through the system to get the costs back is truly killing my enthusiasm. It’s not as if I don’t work for a technology division. Ah. Yes, it seems I do.

Steve put it plainly: it’s the difference between working for a technology company and working for a company that happens to use technology. While a CIO might shout about how we have the need to simplify and lead the business, there are areas which are simple to resolve (like information retrieval). These issues won’t be solved because they’re good for the customer (me) but not necessarily good for the IT department. It’ll make them work and learn. The will isn’t there to provide a modern work environment now as it wasn’t in 1999 in Nortel. I’m not even talking about cutting edge but rather just using the capabilities we have. i.e. having IP hardware phones on the desktop is a waste if they can’t provide IP softphones too. The latter would enable us to log in from anywhere and get our telephones as well as our desktops (though to be honest, they haven’t even sorted out the desktops thing yet).

To be fair, we don’t have cubicle-culture but it certainly a workstation farm. Rows and rows of screens. People’s heads in regular punctuation. Meeting room devoid of computers, projectors, anything but a normal whiteboard.

Stone tools and string, I tell you. Stone tools and string.

I asked for my team to get laptops with IP softphone software for the Christmas period so they could provide effective support over the Christmas period without having to trek into the office. Having almost given up on that – I’ve begged for the IP softphones alone.

It’s so frustrating.

Bedouin workspace in Belfast

The Northern Ireland Science Park may not be the most obvious place for an bedouin entrepreneur but it’s a live and working Bedouin workspace in Belfast’s Titanic quarter. You can Join Up and benefit from the following: Bronze (available to individuals only) – Â£50 per quarter paid in advance (1 month notice). All services provided … Continue reading “Bedouin workspace in Belfast”

Bronze (available to individuals only) – Â£50 per quarter paid in advance (1 month notice). All services provided are tracked and billed.

Service includes: –

a. access to communal spaces including meeting and conference rooms on the same terms as physical tenants;
b. access to reception services including photocopying and faxing;
c. access to wireless broadband;
d. access to NISP intranet;
e. inclusion on NISP promotions â€“ web-page, reception TV, etc; and
f. inclusion on mailing list for events, etc.

Applications will be considered by NISP management on the basis of need and value to the individual and of the value to the NISP project. Irrespective of any of these criteria, NISP reserves the right at its absolute discretion to refuse any company application.

So, more Co-Working space in Ireland than you can shake a stick at!

CoWorking Map of Ireland

James, the Clever Bugger, has used the Google MyMaps feature to produce one of those push-pin maps of Ireland to identify co-working locations in Ireland. I thought it would be useful to have the following colour scheme for pushpins – Red = possible (requiring a lot of negotiation) Yellow = probable (being actively pursued) Green … Continue reading “CoWorking Map of Ireland”

James, the Clever Bugger, has used the Google MyMaps feature to produce one of those push-pin maps of Ireland to identify co-working locations in Ireland.

I thought it would be useful to have the following colour scheme for pushpins –

Red = possible (requiring a lot of negotiation)

Yellow = probable (being actively pursued)

Green = confirmed / active

Here’s the co-working map of Ireland. Not surprisingly, the North looks underpopulated compared to the far South.

Let’s get to work.

coworking.ie

A new blog designed to promote and collect information about collaborative workspaces in Ireland. Community driven and non-profit and hosting the first of my posts on the subject. Last year when I started all of this, I was sufficiently keen on the concept of Bedouin workspaces that I wrote up a business plan about it. … Continue reading “coworking.ie”

A new blog designed to promote and collect information about collaborative workspaces in Ireland. Community driven and non-profit and hosting the first of my posts on the subject.

Last year when I started all of this, I was sufficiently keen on the concept of Bedouin workspaces that I wrote up a business plan about it. Adding some things, excising others to make it into a plan that an investor could get excited about. I’ve still got the plan, still got the desire to do it but placed it on the back burner until I get some other things sorted.

My posts on coworking.ie will be mainly distilling ideas from the business plan, both the final version and the parts that we excised for brevity and focus, in order to build a picture of what a coworking facility should provide.

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