(2008-04-21) Nomad Working

Article on Nomad workstyle, leveraging Mobile tools. Related to CoWorking, but many people are intentionally working in a variety of places over the course of a day. Interesting Pip Coburn and MoveOn anecdotes. Mr Jonathan Schwartz, like Messrs Boyd and Coburn, has also noticed that he is having fewer "flesh meetings". This runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the past few decades, which held that improvements in telecommunications always lead to more physical travel, rather than less. Mr Schwartz used to spend two weeks a month travelling to meet customers; that has come down to less than one week a month. With more than 100,000 customers, he finds that he communicates far more efficiently through his WebLog, which is translated into ten languages and "on a good day reaches 50,000 people." The article raises the issue as to whether this lets people control their personal/work integration better, or lose necessary separation....

Need more Free Wifi!

I've been working lately from the local StarBucks rather than my official Temp Office/Hot Desk. Closer to home, better neighborhood, somehow the buzz around me makes me more productive than being in Cubicle-farm. I was working alone anyway.

Though, back at last DayJob, I preferred being in the office, with both my team (where we all sat together in big open space) and non-tech peers nearby. More likely to get tech-input into broader discussions, plus within tech team everyone had more Context because of overhearing things, and we could pull AdHoc meeting together instantly with White Board.