My Virtual Office

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In Rolling Your Own Online Office, R/WW suggests several tools for telecommuting, including e-mail, forums, wikis, chat, document sharing, flowcharting and files. As a permanent telecommuter, I’m always looking for better productivity tools and I need some choice, as my clients have different needs and IT requirements.

I have several e-mail addresses and use one of my g-mail accounts as a spam filter, which transfers to my main account. I also have my domain name account, which can move with me, even if I change ISP’s. This is handy if you decide to change ISP’s and have to abandon something like the included @sympatico.ca account. Of course, I don’t want to keep all of my stuff on g-mail, so I forward my mail to the e-mail client on my computer. Currently, I use Thunderbird, which is simple & easy but I’ve been poking around with Evolution, which includes a calendar function and will probably use it when I transfer my main computer to Linux.

So far, most of my document sharing is with Google Documents, as this seems the easiest to get my clients to accept. I’m also looking at Coventi and have downloaded Zoho Office, but haven’t found any partners or clients to play with yet. Google Calendar works well with virtual teams, too. Also, I haven’t been doing much flowcharting lately, but have done a few designs on Gliffy, which is basic but is getting better.

With Gmail, I don’t have much need for sending large files. There are several file-sharing programs available, and I get offers from many of them on a regular basis. I’ve used Izimi for some files and find it works well. It’s only limitation is that your computer has to be connected for someone else to get the file, as Izimi doesn’t store your files online. This can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your needs. I’ve also used Filezilla for basic FTP as well as the YouSendIt service.

Of course, my blog and website is still the best virtual work tool. It lets me stay in touch with a large group of people – on their terms, not mine. My blog also includes a short version of my CV, listings of clients and everything else I want to share. This information decreases any friction with potential clients, as they can poke around without having to talk to me or send me an e-mail which is one less step needed in getting to know me.

Even in the short span of four years that I’ve been working in my virtual office, the tools have become simpler, cheaper and more plentiful. This is a good thing for anyone considering the path of the self-employed or freelancing.

Reverse Job Postings

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Are reverse job postings on the rise? I noted two years ago how Seb Paquet had posted that he was leaving the NRC,

He has basically created a reverse job posting, telling the world that he is available and under what conditions. Instead of roaming the streets with his CV in hand, Seb’s blog is a central location to get to know him or to catch-up on what he’s been up to. I think that these kinds of between-job postings will become popular on the web and I’m sure that someone will even give them a name and sell services around them.

I was reminded of this when I saw K. G Schneider’s Free Range Librarian for Rent post. Two years later and I haven’t seen too many of these posts, but more people are referring others through their blogs. Schneider’s post is much more enjoyable to read, and more informative, than any job post I’ve seen. Most job adverts are way too serious and don’t give you any real understanding about the work or the people. I still think there may be a business model in aggregating these feeds and adding a logic layer to the disconnected “for hire” blog posts out there.

Yugma free web conferencing

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I came across the Yugma web collaboration application a while back but haven’t had time to test it out. Chris Nadeau has been using it and says that it compares favourably with applications like Webex and Vyew. Yugma requires a download (thin client) which may limit its use for those behind the firewall.

What really interests me about Yugma is that it offers free tele-conferencing, something not available on the free/low-cost Vyew application and much too expensive on Webex. Yugma may have found the sweet-spot for free web conferencing.

Open Source Model for Developing Bids

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Nick Booth passed this on to me a while back. It’s about a bid to government that was developed in a completely open and transparent manner. The entire story and process is available at the Open Innovation Exchange:

This Open Innovation Exchange site was launched on April 22 2007 and used until May 14 2007 to develop an “open source bid” to the UK Cabinet Office, which invited proposals for a Third Sector innovation exchange. The invitation to tender for a £1.2 million three-year programme said:

“The innovation exchange will pilot new approaches to fostering, exchanging and replicating third sector innovation, ensuring that public services benefit from the approaches they pioneer. The innovation exchange will seek to connect innovators to one another, to those who might benefit from their work, including public service, commissioners and third sector organisation, and others who might invest in their work.”

We believed that we could develop a better proposal by sharing our ideas with others, and inviting comments and contributions. We succeeded in that, and delivered the final proposal on May 14. It is available here.

However , we aren’t are stopping now, and we invite people to continue to contribute ideas on how the exchange – and other collaborations in the field – could work.

Below are a set of question and answers on our original approach to the bid. Simon Berry answers some challenging questions here.

You would never see a corporation opening up its bidding process to the world and if it tried, its lawyers would strongly advise against it. But in this case, it worked. Once again, an industrial model has been flipped on its head by the Net.

I believe that this is an indicator of the future of collaborative work and shows how the open source model is not just for software development but can be used in almost all work endeavours.  The Internet is a revolutionary and powerful tool for all of us, as long as we keep it open and neutral.

Seen in passing

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If mobile learning interests you (you know, cell phones and the lot), then check out the new and improved mLearnopedia.

I was also introduced to Coventi this week, which is similar to Google Documents, but 1) it’s not owned by Google and therefore is not connected to all that other information about your Web life and 2) it features a chat bar. Think of it as a user-friendly wiki with integrated text chat. Conventi offers 3 roles – reviewer, author & owner.

Four years later …

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the-four-trees.jpg

Today marks four years as a free-agent for me. This has been a learning experience every day and I still don’t have any easy answers for anyone else considering the life of an independent consultant. The best part is the lifestyle and the flexibility while the worst aspect is constantly chasing after more work and managing cash-flow (that’s the part that people with regular paycheques don’t understand).

There have definitely been some interesting aspects to this career choice. On the positive side, because of my blog, clients have found me through search engines. On the negative side, I’ve had clients go bankrupt before paying me and I’ve also been stiffed for my services. I’ve learned something from every one of my clients and I have especially enjoyed some of the non-profit organisations, with their unique challenges.

I would not have been able to go out on my own if the Web didn’t exist, as much of my work is at a distance. I’ve had several clients whom I’ve never met face to face. However, I think that my frequent slow periods may be a result of not enough face to face encounters. People forget you when they don’t see you regularly and that’s a disadvantage of living in sparsely populated Atlantic Canada. Obviously, not everyone lives on the Web.

At this time, my hope is to celebrate my fifth anniversary.

Photo of Monet’s, The Four Trees, by Maulleigh.

Wildlife Photo Blog

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I’ve been volunteering at The Atlantic Wildlife Institute as Director of Education for the past five years. This year we managed to get a few Summer students to help us out and Mark has set up the AWI Blog, which is highlighting photos of the orphaned babies as well as some of the injured animals that have started to pour in to the Institute. For example, New Brunswick allows a Spring bear hunt so we usually receive a few orphaned cubs.

baby-black-bear.jpg

AWI uses these animals in much the same way that scientists conduct water and air sampling. We want to understand the causes of displacement. This knowledge informs our research work, in partnership with several universities & colleges, and lets us create appropriate learning programs. AWI is a registered national charity, so you can make tax-deductible donations, too :-)

Update: Our new blog is atlanticwildlife.org

RSS Feed Stealing?

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Scott Leslie is concerned that someone has taken his entire feed and used it in a way that contravenes his Creative Commons license, which happens to be the same one I use for this site.

A quick aside – if you don’t understand CC licensing, you should review the license explanations before you start using other people’s work on the Web, and if you are a teacher, you should ensure that students understand copyright and copyleft.

In my comment to Scott, I noted that there is another organisation, The Human Capital Institute, that uses many RSS feeds (including mine) but makes you register for their “service” before you can read a complete post. Some might think that this too would contravene the copyright license that I use. Here are two other CC-licensed sites I noticed from the same website:

e-learnspace

InternetTime Blog

I also noted that many blogs do not have clear copyright statements, like The Learning Circuits Blog, which means that they are fully copyrighted, so that taking an entire feed would likely infringe copyright. If you have a blog or website and want to share, then you should use something as simple and easy as a Creative Commons license. However, it obviously doesn’t mean that everyone will play by the rules.

Update: Following my notification of copyright infringement to the Human Capital Institute, they promptly deleted my feed from their resource list.

Process improvement is bad for innovation

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I’ve had this feeling for a while and now there is evidence that process improvement, like Six Sigma, stifles innovation. Oligopoly Watch feels that, “The management moves that cheer stockholders and financial analysts, when taken too far, can lead to the long-term decline of the company in question.” Their article today reports that Six Sigma process improvement has resulted in less innovation at 3M, a company renowned for its innovative products, like the Post-It Note:

But, according to the article, 3M is hurting this year. Its operations are far more efficient, but this is company that has thrived on having a variety of new and sometimes breakthrough products coming to market. No longer. Financial results are down, and the general sense is that 3M is doing everything more efficiency except innovation. Six Sigma is great for speeding up the assembly lines or minimizing errors, but fails at producing new ideas.

About ten years ago I became immersed in Human Performance Technology (HPT), another process improvement method, but not as lucrative as Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing. The tools and perspectives were beneficial but that is all that they are – tools. Process improvement is a tool set, not an overarching or unifying concept for an organisation.  Process improvement is a means and not an end in itself, and this seems to be the trap that 3M fell into.

I left the HPT fold about a year ago when I realized that being a Certified Performance Technologist was not an achievable end, but a costly merry-go-round that just kept spinning.  I have learned a lot from HPT, but you cannot look at things one way, to the exclusion of all others. The fundamental problem with all of these process improvement methodologies is that you get myopic. It seems that 3M is learning this lesson as well.