Bedouin – Page 4 – ɔimoɈɒ

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.

Time to flee the city.

I really want to get out of the rat race. Not so much the 9-5 thing because I’m most alert during 11 am to about 3 pm and can get the most done during then but definitely the traffic commute. It takes me between 60 and 90 minutes to get to work in the morning … Continue reading “Time to flee the city.”

I really want to get out of the rat race.

Not so much the 9-5 thing because I’m most alert during 11 am to about 3 pm and can get the most done during then but definitely the traffic commute. It takes me between 60 and 90 minutes to get to work in the morning and the cruel thing is: I live in Belfast and I work in Belfast (even more chilling is that I’m coming from South Belfast into the City so it’s about 4 miles as the crow flies).

Crawling along the roads at 4 mph isn’t going to do me or the environment any good and other than catching parts of the Chris Moyles show on Radio 1, it’s remarkably uneventful. Leaving the house at 07:45 usually gets me into the office for 9 or so.

If I leave at 07:00, I’m in the office for 07:15 when the sky is still dark outside. On the other hand, if I stay at home until 8:45, I can be in the office for 09:10. There’s something to be said for staggered work starts.

So let’s try to fix this, obviously avoiding the whole work thing isn’t going to wash – we need money to eat, keep a roof over our heads and buy iPods.

Moving far out of town seems reasonable as it would mean leaving extra early and then we’d miss most of the traffic (or miss all of it should we manage to downsize and not need the day job).

Phil said this morning:

Very few people ever want to be where they are.

and I wonder how much of that is true. Is the only reason most people work in these jobs because they pay money? Without work would we all become slovenly couch potatoes? I started this day job back in June because I was finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

The small villages on the peninsula and along the coast of Strangford Lough hold the most attraction. It’s rural which means a change of pace. They’ve got broadband so my work can continue. And they’d be a lot better for the kids.

If the village is the right size, I’d also be interested in working to build a community wireless network. After experiences with Belfast City Council and their preferred support of Big Business rather than community efforts, I’m much more inclined to look after the smaller community rather than the whole – they appreciate it more.

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!

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