What is workshifting.com?
If you work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and your home every bit as much as the office, workshifting.com is for you. We'll feature tips, reviews, and opinions about the world of Web commuting (relying on the Web to get work done at any time, from virtually anywhere.) That's what workshifting is all about. To assist with this, we have assembled a Worldwide Workplace Council comprised of the top minds in the world when it comes to Web commuting. This team of selected members will provide regular insights and will be featured here.We hope you stick around for a while, have some fun, learn a little bit and have a chance to interact with other workshifters.
Contributors
Chris Brogan
works in coffee shops, hotels, airports, aboard planes, and once or twice at the beach. He has 16 years telecom experience, but now runs a sales marketing and media consulting company. He blogs at [chrisbrogan.com]. Chris is also co-editor of this blog.
Justin Levy
spends most of his time mobile, workshifting from a multitude of various locations. Justin is able to successfully run multiple companies from these locations. He enjoys exploring how technology and productivity intersect. Read More...Justin runs New Marketing Labs, along with Chris Brogan. Justin writes over at justinrlevy.com and can be found hanging out on Twitter and Facebook. Justin is also co-editor of this blog. New Marketing Labs is the new media agency for Citrix Online.
Eric Bensley
works in Product Marketing for Citrix Online. He Web commutes and also works with geographically distributed partners on a daily basis. He's an advocate for workshifting, results-based work environments and the anywhere office. Read More...On the job Eric works on brand development, customer & competitive research, market growth strategies, launch planning, pricing, packaging and positioning. He has a degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Business Economics.
Greg Rollett
is a Social Media and Youth Culture Marketer based in Orlando, FL. His background consists of marketing and advertising as well as a 10 year stint in the Indie Music Business. Greg is currently working on helping young people change the world through Rock Star Lifestyle Design. Read More...Greg is proud to serve on the Rock For Hunger Board of Directors and serves as the VP for the start-up non-profit in Orlando, FL. The organization helps those less fortunate in the area through Music, Peace and Action and has shown tremendous growth in its 1+ year of existence. Greg also sits on the inaugural Board for doterati, an association of Interactive Professionals in the Central Florida area.
Greg can be contacted via email at rollettmarketing at gmail dot com, on his website, Rock Star Lifestyle Design, at his Music Marketing site, or on Twitter.
David Baeza
leads the global media team for Citrix Online. He's a Workshifting advocate and is obsessed with finding great and free wifi. He's active on Twitter and believes in the power of crowd sourcing for social good. He has been in media and advertising. Read More...David Baeza leads the global media team for Citrix Online. He's a Workshifting advocate and is obsessed with finding great and free wifi. He's active on Twitter and believes in the power of crowd sourcing for social good. He has been in media and advertising for 17 years. He enjoys writing 140 character wine reviews as @manonthevine on Twitter.
AJ Leon
has been a vagabond workshifter since October 2008, traveling over the world with his wife and business partner, helping charities embrace the social web and utilizing "real time" web technologies to empower third world communities. Read More...AJ is the Co-Founder of the LaC project, a company with no headquarters, comprised of a workshifting staff, dispersed around the world, dedicated to seeking, collaborating & partnering with those hell bent on changing the world.
Ridiculously passionate about the power of the human web to enact social justice, AJ speaks has spoken in the US, Europe & Africa on the concept of opensource Charity. You can also find AJ blogging at theLaCproject.com and OpenSourceCharity.com and tweeting like a banshee. If a day goes by without him tweeting, he is probably dead.
Robin Roschke
Co-Founder, Principal, Product & Client Development, oversees all system design, and development as well as third product sourcing of FlexPaths' flexible work solutions to the Fortune 500 marketplace. Additionally, she leads the deployment of FlexPaths solutions Read More...to ensure these meet products the requirements of the corporate marketplace. Robin is directing the launch of the Flex Supplier Network designed to connect flex talent with flex employment opportunities. Robin earned both her B.A. in Finance and M.B.A. in Marketing from The George Washington University. She currently resides in Westchester, NY with her husband and two children.
Halley Hopkins
Executive Producer FlexPaths, Co-Founder Collective Context; oversees all consumer-side digital development. With a background in traditional, non-traditional digital marketing and production, Halley oversees all online content and development for FlexPaths. Read More...As an entrepreneur, her work ranges from helping to launch start-ups to social media initiatives for a variety of global brands. Hailing from Ohio with a background in fine arts and philosophy, she's been living and working in New York City for the last 8 years and hasn't looked back.
Inga Rundquist
is a PR Arsonist for MindFire Communications (www.mindfirecomm.com), a full-service advertising agency that helps ignite clients' brands with smart, research-based marketing campaigns. With a background in journalism, Read More...Inga worked as a business reporter before transitioning into the public relations world in 2006. These days, she works with clients in a variety of industries to help share their stories online and in the traditional media.
Born and raised in Germany, Inga moved to the United States when she was a junior in high school. Although she spends her fair share of time workshifting on the road or out of coffee shops, most of the time you can find her in her home office in Chicago. You can connect with Inga on Twitter, on LinkedIn.
Kellyanne Conway
is CEO and President of the polling company™, inc. a privately-held, woman-owned corporation founded in 1995. Throughout her 20-year qualitative and quantitative research career, Kellyanne has provided primary research and advice for clients in Read More...46 of the 50 states and has directed hundreds of demographic and attitudinal survey projects for statewide and congressional political races, trade associations, and Fortune 100 companies. A professionally trained moderator, Kellyanne has personally directed more than 300 focus groups and other qualitative discussions. She is one of the most quoted and noted pollsters on the national scene, and has been recognized as the most accurate predictor of the 2004 elections.
Chuck Wilsker
is President and CEO, The Telework Coalition, a not-for-profit headquartered in Washington, DC. TelCoa works to enable the advancement of Virtual, Mobile, and Distributed Work through Research, Education, Technology, and Legislation. His interests Read More...include both promoting the benefits of Telework as a means of providing employment opportunities for disabled workers, including service disabled veterans, older workers, and rural workers, and its use as a critical part of disaster avoidance and business continuity programs. Among many other networks, he is President of the Capitol Telecommunications Professionals, a member of the Internet Society, the Association of Contingency Planners, the National Council on Readiness and Preparedness and deputy chair of the Telecommuting Task Force at the Northern Virginia Technology Council. He has addressed diverse groups ranging from the National Institute of Science and Technology to the Association of Contingency Planners and the Peace Corps. He has appeared regular in national media to discuss telecommuting issues.
Amanda Alexander
is the Founder and Director of Amanda Alexander Associates LLP. She helps busy professionals to achieve work life balance via a combination of face to face seminars and innovative online programmes. Read More...
Amanda specializes in helping working mothers with pressure-cooked lives. Her coaching programmes have helped literally hundreds of women in the UK, Europe and USA to reduce guilt and stress, manage their time more effectively and feel achieve balance.
Amanda is known as an expert in the media on topics around work-life balance, women's careers, "Mumpreneurs" and women returners. She comments regularly on BBC Radio and has featured in publications such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Practical Parenting, Eve, Prima Mother and Baby and BBC Parenting.
Amanda is a professionally qualified Coach and one of very few coaches in the UK who has met the stringent criteria to achieve accreditation with the International Coach Federation.
For more information, visit Amanda's websites at: www.amandaalexander.com www.coachingmums.com and www.corporatemothers.com
Sharlyn Lauby
is president of ITM Group, Inc., an employee training and organizational consulting firm. During her 18 years in the profession, she has earned a reputation for bringing business solutions to reality. Read More...
She doesn't view her role as "administrative" but rather, Sharlyn sees human resources as a strategic partner - the marketing department for a company's internal clients. She has designed and implemented highly successful programs for employee retention, internal and external customer satisfaction, and leadership development.
In 2008, Sharlyn launched a blog called HR Bartender to provide a "friendly place for everyday workplace issues." The blog has been recognized as one of the tops in the business world and HR industry. Her experience with social media in the workplace is well known. Sharlyn is a regular contributor to Mashable and has been quoted by ABC News, AOL Finance, The Chicago Tribune and The Miami Herald.
Sharlyn is recognized as a Senior Professional in Human Resources by the Society for Human Resource Management and is one of less than 900 people to hold the credential of Certified Professional in Learning Performance from the American Society for Training and Development.
Kate Lister
has owned and operated three successful home-based businesses over the past 25 years. Read More...She is the author of three business books including Undress For Success -- The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home (John Wiley & Sons 2009), and Finding Money--The Small Business Guide to Financing (published by Wiley in 1995; now available as an ebook). Her latest work, Undress For Success, is aimed at empowering employees to negotiate, find, or create work at home opportunities. It has won the praise of work-life and telework advocates including, WorldatWork, Telework Canada, the Telework Coalition, and many others.
Kate's research includes a synthesis of over 250 studies on telework and related topics as well as interviews with dozens of virtual employers, employees, advocates, and venture capitalists who have invested in the remote work model. Her work has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Washington Post, and dozens of other publications.
Kate's free web-based Telework Savings Calculator has been used by company and community leaders throughout the U.S. and Canada to quantify the extent to which telecommuting can reduce greenhouse gases and petroleum usage, save money, improve work-life balance, increase employee loyalty and turnover, reduce absenteeism, increase productivity, and reduce highway congestion and traffic accidents.
Her web sites include Undress4Success.com and FindingMoneyAdvice.com.
Daria Steigman
is founder of Steigman Communications and has been helping companies and other organizations tell their story for over 20 years--and workshifting long before anyone coined a term for it. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, associations, government agencies, and international organizations. Read More...In addition to her core business, Daria is passionate about helping small business owners with starting up and staying the course. She is the author of a bimonthly column for IABC's CW Bulletin and a blog--both of which focus on the business of running a business, entrepreneurship, communications, social media, strategic thinking, and what she calls "Independent Thinking." You can find her Independent Thinking blog on her Website. You can often find Daria on Twitter. Daria is a past president of the Washington chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). An honors graduate of the University of Chicago, she holds masters degrees in industrial and labor relations (MILR) from Cornell University and liberal studies (MALS) from Georgetown University. Daria grew up both overseas and in the Washington area, and has traveled extensively in Western Europe, Africa, and New Zealand.
Matt Martin
is Manager, Technology and Services at Ingram Marine Group based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also a member of The ITK Group which is an organization that helps small businesses and nonprofits understand next generation tech and how they can apply it to their organization. Read More...
Matt's focus is on IT tools that provide infrastructure and online presence without having the large capital outlays typically seen in enterprise IT. Matt love's to work with nonprofits, contact him if you are interested in discussing a technology overhaul for your organization.
You can also find Matt blogging at the Simple IT Alliance and you can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Adam Di Stefano
believes in using the web to close distance and create connections. In addition to workshifting while on the road in places across Canada and the US for his day job, Adam also uses the web to work on various side-projects with partners in North America and the UK. Read More...
Adam is a manager of performance marketing solutions for Yellow Pages Group in Montreal, Quebec, and blogs about internet marketing for small businesses at adamdistefano.com. He is also a scribbler, and maintains a writing blog, as well as writing for various sites across the web. His most recent project is a webcomic, iL-Logic.com, which he co-creates with an artist in the UK.
Adam's goal is to bring the workshifting mentality, with all of its benefits, to the corporate world at large.
Melissa Leon
has been a workshifter since late 2008, and spends most her time working from coffee shops and random cafes in NYC with good food, great wifi and plenty of outlets. She has traveled to 31 countries and would love nothing more than to workshift around the world all year. Read More... Her favorite place to workshift is the South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan looking out over the Hudson River.
Melissa is the Co-Founder of the LaC project and Director of Communications and Events. She travels around with her husband and business partner while running their cloud based, creative agency that is responsible for Twitterkids, Open Source Charity and Twitgift.
Phillip Proefrock
is a registered architect and sustainable building consultant based in southeast Michigan (p s proefrock architecture). He first explored the idea of coworking in the mid '90s for his architectural thesis, and he currently coworks at the Workantile Exchange space in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Read More...
He is also an architectural photographer, writer and blogger. Philip is senior contributing writer for EcoGeek.org where he concentrates on green technology, renewable power, and transportation, and a regular contributor to Inhabitat, and Greenovation.tv
Jessica Eastman
is about all things tech, especially those technologies that support the mobile work environment. As a content manager for Citrix Online, she is an advocate of the workshifting movement. From creating eBooks and white papers with thought leaders and analysts to speaking on Webinars, she supports the Web-based solutions provided by Citrix Online. Read More...
She has served as marketing manager for a software investment banking firm, as well as a technical writer in the aerospace industry. Her passion for new technologies and remote work comes from the idea that most creativity and innovative thinking is not done inside a cubicle or on-site office. You can connect with Jessica on her LinkedIn profile.
Thomas Getchius
has worked for a non-profit medical association in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota for the past 5 years. His current interests include process improvement, results only work, incorporating technologies to increase efficiency, and all things workshifting. Read More...
He occasionally blogs at www.thomasgetchius.blogspot.com. In addition, Thomas is a member of the 2010 ASAE and The Center for Association Leadership Young Professional Leadership Academy researching best methods and practices for incorporating Generation Y talent into the association workforce.
Scott Nesbitt
Cafe. Library. Co-working space. If there's wifi and an empty seat, Scott's probably workshifting from there. A workshifter since 2003, Scott leads a dual professional life as a consultant and a freelance writer. Read More...
If that wasn't enough, he also speaks, blogs in a couple of places, and travels whenever possible. You can find Scott on Twitter (he's one of the @dmnguys) and on identi.ca.
Patrick Garmoe
stumbled into work shifting a year ago, after spending his first decade as a journalist in newsrooms throughout the Midwest, most recently in Duluth and Chicago. He loves writing, and connecting with others online. Read More...
As a social media manager for PureDriven, Patrick runs social media and public relations initiatives for the company and its clients. When he's not online, he loves geocaching, hanging out with his wife, reading, and helping small companies use social media and traditional public relations to explain to the world why they're awesome
Jeff Zbar
is - in no particular order - a newspaper and online columnist; a corporate copywriter; a blogger, essayist and chronicler on entrepreneurship and telework; an author (four books to date); a home office aficionado; a consumer-technologist who simplifies the complex; a married father of three; and a garage band drummer / singer. Read More...
He began working from home full time in 1989 at the age of 25 and has worked from beach houses on the Jersey Shore, cruise ships in the Caribbean, an RV along the Eastern Seaboard, and his home office in suburban Fort Lauderdale. For his efforts, Jeff was named the U.S. Small Business Administration's 2001 Small Business Journalist of the Year. Learn more at www.chiefhomeofficer.com
Natalya Sabga
is a project management professional and operational efficiency expert turned author, consultant and executive education advisor. Fascinated by the study of human behavior, she has parlayed this into a successful writing career. Read More...
Ms. Sabga is also the author of "From Secretary to CEO: A Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder Without Losing Your Identity"(2010). She is also the President of Nterprises, LLC - a firm specializing in project needs' analysis, and project management from implementation to operation. Ms. Sabga is currently working on her next non-fiction narrative, "A PMP's Guide to Project Managing Your Life," and authoring the blog 'ASK N'.
Landon Fraley
works as a Sales Engineer for Citrix. He's a highly mobile individual, spending most of his time on the road working with customers and partners on cloud and virtualization projects. Landon is fascinated by the increasingly blurry line between consumer and enterprise computing. Read More...
He's a strong proponent for the workshifting lifestyle, having personally seen the benefits for both employer and employee. Keep up with him on Twitter or his personal blog.
Susan Murphy
has been working in media and communications for 22 years. In that time, she's been a television producer, a strategic communications advisor, a technical writer, and a web site designer, a professional speaker and a teacher (often at the same time!). Read More...
Today, Susan is a partner at Jester Creative Inc., where she helps people discover and tell their stories in a variety of mediums, including video and new media. She's also a part time college professor, teaching in both full time degree programs and distance education.
You can track down Suze online at her personal blog, Suzemuse, sharing 140 character snippets of life on Twitter @suzemuse, and as a contributor to the arts and entertainment blog Ottawa Tonite, and personal creativity blog Thoughtwrestling
