Not everybody loves Bedouinworkers

We've talked about 'going bedouin' on the site before, particularly about coffee houses here and pubs here as 'Third Place' working points. And among recent articles on the subject is this one at the San Francisco Chronicle, Where Neo-Nomads' ideas percolate.

But perhaps we're going to start seeing a backlash. Not everybody thinks coffeeworking is such a great idea: in an article in another piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, Coffee klatch, one of the comments was this: "How about some perspective from other customers who are sick of folks on laptops turning cafes into work cubicles? I go out to coffee to GET AWAY FROM WORK. I don't want to have to listen you you jabber on about some dumb-ass work plan on your cell at the top of your lungs while i'm trying to relax. And don't get me started on the hours laptoppers are spending hogging the couches and tables. If you are going to telecommmute, have the decency to do so from the privacy of your own home. Don't turn relaxing cafes into your office, cheapskates."

Homeworking cruises

Still working in a garden office or a coffee shop? How last year of you. Don't you know you should be working on water? Christina Jonas at Canoe Travel writes about Celebrity Cruises' whopper of a cruise ship the Century (pictured) which not only has nice new sinks, but also wireless internet access in every room. "The cruise lines have noticed that, despite being on vacation, passengers still want to 'stay connected'," she writes. "Carnival, the largest cruise line in the world, is now offering wireless Internet access on all 21 ships and will have fleetwide cellphone service shortly. "

A more indepth look at cruiseworking is at Roger Dooley's Rogerd's Notebook. Dooley has had mixed experiences with what he insouciantly calls 'cruise ship connectivity'. "We found the small area to be quite busy with quite a few “regulars” who were clearly trying to stay connected to business at home," he writes, saying that the connection was good enough to email and do some business. And as he points out: "If Celebrity and other lines deliver decent broadband access in passenger cabins, that would allow a whole new kind of virtual commuting. Can you imagine doing business from your private balcony as the ship floats around the Mediterranean or Caribbean?" Indeed I can.

Dooley, an experienced direct marketer, concludes that while an onboard virtual office has some drawbacks, it does allow for lots of life/work flexibility, with workers connecting briefly every day while still enjoying a holiday.

Snow and Starbucks

I've been making a snow den for my boys most of today so have generally been away from the working world. However, work goes on and a friend just emailed me to say. 'Children in the garden since 7am! Then we went to the cathedral grounds where there were hundreds of sledges - the local toyshops have done well this morning. Starbucks was full to the rafters too - all these poor mobile workers taking advantage of Starbucks electricity and wifi sat there since 9am with their laptops, creating their small offices on the tables, blissfully unaware that all the schools are closed and then suddenly WHAM! Thousands of women and small wet crying red-faced children with sledges playing with their cables and destroying the peace! Made me laugh, until I realised that it was actually hell on earth..."

Avanta launch new virtual office package

As reported on Webwire, Avanta is launching a new 'virtual office' service called VPA offering all the same options as with its serviced office package but without the actual office bit. It's aimed at homeworkers (among others), particularly those who operate or want to operate in central London. David Alberto, Avanta’s Managing Director, said: “We have developed the VPA virtual office service in response to the day to day needs of those businesses and individuals who simply don’t have the facilities and support network of working in a large corporate office set up. Our virtual office package means that home workers, small business start ups and individuals who’s job is not office-based, need no longer be disadvantaged.”

Home office on wheels

The concept of a mobile office is a key one to most homeworkers, especially in America where a recent study by The Dieringer Research Group revealed that 21 million Americans work in their cars. If you want to pay through the nose you could go to a specialist like Becker Auto Design who provide luxury limos with an on-board PC, wireless keyboard, color printer, wireless high-speed Internet connection, and up to 30-inch LCD monitor. But sadly not all of us have £150,000 going spare.

Two years ago Ford unveiled a newcomer to their F-Series of pickup trucks, the F-250 Super Duty which contained a GPS, wireless broadband, printer and digital camera-equipped mobile computer, pictured, within easy reach of the driver and powered by the truck’s battery (or it can be removed and used as a normal laptop). But now we’re getting closer to a genuine office on wheels for the general driver with Ford’s new Sync system , pictured, premiered earlier this month at the 2007 North American International Auto Show and developed in collaboration with Microsoft.

The blurb describes it as “a fully integrated, voice-activated in-car communications and entertainment system for mobile phones and digital music players” and it will be available in 12 species of Ford later this year. What this means is that you can use your mobile phone (and mp3 player) via voice commands and indeed your mobile’s names and numbers will be wirelessly transferred to the vehicle. And Sync also ‘talks’ French and Spanish as well as English (if you want to give your languages a workout). More details from Ford here .

And Ford have also recently previewed their, frankly not very pretty, Airstream travel trailer which includes a dual-view screen on the instrument panel which allows the front-seat passenger to view DVDs and post mobile blogs.

Of course, you can try do it yourself. Have a look at how PC Magazine modified a Toyota Corolla (including a shredder in the glover compartment) or in this article in the Daily Telegraph how Ben Tristem turned his motorhome into a complete mobile office with a home cinema screen for video conferencing with clients and satellite broadband.

Virtual offices are so useful...

In one of the strangest press releases I’ve ever come across, according to The Successful Office Group which runs a New York-based answering service and call centre business hub, an 18-year-old high school student called Danny used their services to pretend he had a major business to impress women. According to the company’s CEO Michael Anthony: “He had himself as the CEO of his own made-up company, and would go to clubs handing out his business card bragging about how big he was or how rich. This impressed many women and they would check up on him by calling his company and asking about him, verifying salary and other info he told them…We all had a big laugh with Danny.” In the press release detailing the story , Anthony reveals other uses of the company’s services, including people using it to create fake financial histories to get credit cards or “do other illegal things”. Hmmm…

Second Life as a backup virtual office

Worries about how big companies would cope in a pandemic seem to be the flavour of the week. Computerworld suggests that the increasingly popular virtual world Second Life could provide a useful backup service. In the article, writer Robert Mitchell reports that Colleen Monahan, director of development at the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education at the University of Chicago, has recently worked with a large corporation to create a virtual human resources department and a situation room for executives.

"By creating a virtual company," writes Mitchell, "employees will have a place outside of the corporate firewall where they can meet around the virtual water cooler or receive counseling. Unlike videoconferencing, in Second Life, employees meet by proxy, using avatars... Security is a big concern although you can create a private island in Second Life. On the other hand, if your other IT systems are down, a virtual company could come in handy."

Do I really need a mobile phone?

Well, for years I've been holding out against buying one, largely on the basis that as I'm not a surgeon on call I haven't ever really needed to be contacted urgently at any time of the night and day. It's not that I'm a techno/social dinosaur - I work remotely, wirelessly and videoconferencely, have a flexible portfolio career and even buy music by popular beat music combos. But after several occasions over the last few months when a mobile would actually have been quite useful, I caved in yesterday and bought a titchy little thing (pictured) which does everything I want it to do (call people, take people's calls) plus lots of stuff I don't (take photos and videos, make coffee, etc). I'm still not entirely convinced I'll be using it more than once a month though. If you feel the same, so do these people at The Guardian newspaper's Notes & Queries section and I'd be interested to hear other people's views on the subject.

James Bond – the ultimate homeworker?

Homeworkers are not well represented on the big screen. Writers are usually neurotic (see Woody Allen in Manhattan), inventors are eccentric (Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis in Dambusters) and computer experts are socially inept (Sandra Bullock in The Net, who spends so much time in her home office that only her mother knows what she looks like). However, after watching Casino Royale earlier this week, I’m wondering if Daniel Craig’s James Bond could start a new Hollywood trend. Previous Bonds have had plenty of gadgets but have used them largely as big boy toys: Craig’s Bond uses his gadgets to work.

Bond has never been deskbound in a traditional office, but now he’s become the role model for those operating a virtual office: he’s put the B in going Bedouin. So forget about exploding pens or ejector seats, now Bond never travels without his Sony Vaio laptop (though working wirelessly in a Venetian gondola is perhaps more glamorous than most of us can expect), keeps an impressive first aid kit handy (like me, in his Aston Martin DBS), and uses his Sony Ericsson mobile phone with built in GPS for text messaging.

And like many homeworkers, his employers are keen to keep track of his movements when he is out of the main office, although injecting him with a trackable microchip is perhaps a step too far.

Never one to miss a trick, Sony have bundled all this stuff, including a screen privacy filter, into one delightful Spy Gear Bundle package which you can buy from their site here.

Virtual office market thriving

An indication of how well the virtual office market is doing is reported everywhere in the financial press including Hemscott here.Managed workspace provider Regus has announced a strong trading performance with good future prospects and has decided to start paying dividends. The group, which has a year end 31 December, said that revenues for the eleven months to 30th November, at actual exchange rates, soared 47% to £616.5m from £418.8m for the equivalent period last year.

Homeworking from pubs

There’s a lot of talk about homeworkers using their wi-fi connections to work away from their home/garden office/shed in coffee houses, but while this seems to work well in the US, perhaps it’s more likely that in the UK we’ll go down the pub route. Indeed, some pubs such as the Huntsman and Hounds in Maldon, Essex, are already selling themselves to businessmen in this way, providing a place to work in a relaxing (and often smoke-free) environment.

“The pub is a different place than it used to be - they're high end places, lots with gourmet food; they're the business place to go for lunch in London and around it,” says George Polk, the managing director for The Cloud , a UK-wide Wi-Fi hotspot network with big plans, especially for pubs.

Big chains are starting to get the idea. Shepherd Neame have been experimenting with wifi in their pubs in Kent, Surrey, London, Sussex and Essex while Wetherspoon’s customers can now take advantage of a free Wi-Fi connection service. Their partnership with ItBox means that when you order your drink or food from the bar you ask for a Wi-Fi voucher which contains an access code for your computer. You can then connect to a network free for 30 minutes. Another purchase, another 30 minutes. Wetherspoon’s head of purchasing, Paul Hine, said: “We really are in a mobile environment at the moment, with more and more people using the Internet for business and pleasure – 24/7. We felt that our pubs offer comfortable and private surroundings, to come to enjoy a drink or a meal and also connect to the Web.”

You can also get free wi-fi access at all Corney & Barrow wine bars in London and you can find a photo guide to London's wi-fi pubs at Silicon.com

Of course there are problems, the major one being the strength of the wi-fi signal in an environment not built for it – microwaves, steel pillars, lighting and large plants can all impoverish the reception. But intelligent placement can get round this – despite a few horror stories of some pubs, I’ve already heard very good things about Corney & Barrow’s spots in particular.

Virtual office faq

If you're confused about the different types of virtual office, there's a good rundown of the three main species at Eirepreneur, an always interesting blog about 'doing microbusiness in Ireland' which was originally written as a comment by Infurious. Essentially (if I've understood it correctly) a serviced office is a real office with most services provided that you rent out on a short contract, a virtual office is the services without the bricks and mortar bit, and a 'Bedouin workspace' is the bricks and mortar and the services but you just turn up and use what you need when you need it.

Coffee shops are the new home offices

I’ve posted here before about the idea of ‘third place’ working, the American concept of working somewhere that’s not at home but not in an office, i.e. usually a coffee shop. On the basis that something similar is bound to happen over here in the UK, it’s worth having a long look at Jackson West’s comments at Web Worker Daily where he discusses this trend for coffee shops to actually become like ‘real’ offices – particularly as regards San Francisco - and links to various other blogs which have commented on the idea of ‘going bedouin’ as they put it. Among the most interesting is this one at Coffee To The People which discusses this kind of work from the point of view of a coffee shop owner (he’s obviously not keen on people working all day and buying one coffee) and this one at Gregor J. Rothfuss which goes one step further and suggests that coffee houses should actually consider renting out ‘office’ space.

Virtual meetings

Virtual business meetings are the new black. As this article in Computer World by Linda Rosencrance points out, decent e-meeting software includes integrated audio- and video-conferencing, application sharing with markup capabilities, real-time feedback, whiteboards, instant surveys and text chat, not to mention recording it all too. The piece looks at three case studies and includes a list of pros (cheaper, less disruptive, more focused, better objectivity) and cons (hard with big groups, socially not so jolly) of e-meetings.

Second life homeworking

This subject came up earlier this week so I was interested to see that internet consultancy depo consulting have taken on their first (and possibly the world's first) virtual employee on Second Life. Marissa Meltzer will be running the depo office from 3 to 5pm every day as a virtual contact helping businesses in this new environment (and according to the press release even helping them with free clothes which is jolly nice of her). She will be paid in the local currency of Linden Dollars and all her work for depo will be in the virtual world. Peter Dunkley of depo, which in the real world has offices in Northants and the Cotswolds, says: “Although large businesses are moving onto Second Life in increasing numbers, we feel that they are missing a real opportunity by not actually manning their offices and shops. Second Life is not the Internet, it’s a social environment and to make the most of the opportunities you have to be there." Ms Meltzer adds: "As a mother, working in a virtual office has real benefits – and I’m really looking forward to meeting the visitors to the depo office and working with them to develop this new world.”

Sharing a virtual office

Lifehacker has good advice about how homeworkers working in a team from a 'placeless office' can keep in touch at Essential tools for the placeless office. As they say: "If your team is distributed across vast distances like we are, you need to set up shop not with Aeron chairs and cubicle walls but with the right collaboration tools."

Their suggestions include:
* Campfire (for group chat meetings) rather than instant messaging
* MediaWiki (for internal knowledgebase e.g. style guides, research, brainstorming)
* Gmail (for email)
* Google calendar (for scheduling)
but there are many more so it's worth reading the whole piece as this is surely the way that groups of home office workers will start to work together increasingly frequently.

Virtual home office

You could always set something up in Second Life (are there homeworkers there too?) but the concept of a virtual home office is becoming increasingly popular, both in the UK and the USA. Essentially, companies such as The Virtual Office Group (which has bricks and mortar offices in London, Bristol, Edinburgh and even Canada) and Davinci mean that you can be working away in your garden office or sofa, but at the same time giving the impression of a 'normal' office situation with features such as a professional receptionist services, appointment scheduling, order processing and - I particularly like this - postal addresses in a neighbourhood or city of your choice. "First impressions can be everything," says Davinci President/CEO Bill Grodnik. "We run a client's office, while they run their business." Most of these companies also provide meeting room spaces if you don't have room in your shed to entertain clients (though it's never stopped me).

Teleconferencing - behind the scenes...

Videoconferencing - we'll all be at it soon

Peter Thomson, Director of the Future Work Forum at Henley Management College which he founded in 1992, has a new blog called Future for Work which is worth keeping an eye on.

His latest post looks at videoconferencing and suggests that we'll all be using video calls/meeting by 2011. He also says:

"It is often assumed that you have to invest in thousands of pounds of kit in order to use videoconferencing and then have dedicated ISDN lines. However, today I've seen a demonstration of a video meeting using broadband/internet connections with four people happily participating. This was based on Microsoft's Livemeeting so it had whiteboarding and application sharing and it was combined with Arel anywhere video software. The clever thing about this setup was that the user just needs a PC, webcam and to download two small pieces of software. They can then log in to the servers (one button operation from Outlook) and use the meeting room. As with a physical meeting room it has to be booked and costs £50 per hour which is comparable to the cost of renting meeting space for a face to face meeting. Or for £6k per year you can have your own meeting room available whenever you wish."

Third Place not Third Choice

For traditional workers there’s the office, there’s the home, and somewhere inbetween there’s often now a Third Place. The concept of the Third Place was coined in 1989 by Ray Oldenburg who saw it more as somewhere where people could get together socially, like a club, but it’s now increasingly being used to describe a location which is a mixture of second office and second home, a kind of teleworking sitting room.

While it’s a reasonably familiar idea in the US where it’s thought around 30 million people spend a significant amount of time working outside their main office (read more about it here, the idea hasn't really caught on over here yet in a big way.

Among those pushing the idea is, unsurprisingly, Starbucks which incorporates the phrase in its marketing bumph. However with greater numbers of shedworkers and homeworkers operating a wi-fi network at home, increasing numbers of hotspots around the country and companies such as BT bundling in ‘free’ Openzone minutes at hotspots as part of their Total Broadband package, we should expect the media to start talking about it soon (‘Third Place is the new homeworking’ kind of thing).