When the student is ready, the teacher appears-- Buddhist Proverb

I consider myself a life-long  learner. I TRULY enjoy the process of learning about new   ideas, concepts, recipes, languages, cultures, and ways of being. As a person with a portfolio career, who has worked/continues to work in different arenas, I have learned the power of informal and formal education.

My father often says, that he received his degrees from  U.C.L.A > The University of the Corner of Lenox Avenue in Harlem.  A great deal of his education came from growing up in Harlem.  The "lesson plans" were not always structured, planned, or even safe, but they were life lessons taught by people, situations, and life experiences. They were lessons that have shaped my father, and in turn me and my sisters.  The important early childhood message of valuing informal education is one for which I am very grateful.

I have been fortunate to experience a very good "formal education." I also have been able to be a participant in wonderful professional development sessions that have spanned topics areas including coaching, "difficult conversations," educational reform, human trafficking, project management, the art of Zen cooking, among others.  I attend film festivals, university lectures, and discussion groups. These structured programs and workshops have truly enriched my personal and professional life.

And yet, I am a firm believer in the teachers and teaching situations that present themselves to us on a daily basis as we life or mobile lives on planes, trains, in coffee shops, in the nail salons, and on the "corners" of streets around the world.

The skill for many of us, involves being open to hearing "life lessons" from people who may look and sound different, and as my father says "may not have a lot of letters after their name." 
 
We can go many places with this conversation. We can focus on organizational structures that may only value certain voices; we can acknowledge that many of us have been taught to value specific social capital; we might even be able to venture into the area of multi-tasking, where we are often texting, tweeting, updating our status, or talking on our mobile  phones - -keeping ourselves busy, and not available to connect with people. Or, we can focus on gratitude, and being grateful for the opportunity to meet so many different people who in their different lives bring richness to our learning and day-to-day living.

It has happened more than once, that I have been going about my day, and have come in contact with someone who has helped me see something differently, shared their story with me, or simply showed a sense of warmth and sincerity that can be a treasure in our fast paced world.

I once titled a piece that I wrote "the Sheroes and Heroes Among Us."  I think many of us have heard of stories from people that are our neighbors, colleagues, etc. that are powerful.  Sometimes, the stories are not BIG, or even about heroism.  Sometimes, the stories are very simple, and the learning just as important.

Some recent stories and teachers for me:

• Engaging in conversations and learning from the taxi driver in Washington, D.C. who has been driving in a city for over 30 years, who has experienced the issues of gentrification, race relations, and the changing of political parties as an insider;

• Learning about the current substance abuse counseling work of the car service driver that worked in the fire department in downtown Manhattan on September 11th;

• Hearing the fascinating story of the woman in the nail salon that came to the U.S. for a better life, and took the dangerous journey familiar to many immigrants;

It can mean reflecting on the life of the young soldier on the plane, who was heading back to base, after coming home to bury a friend.

Their stories, sense of humor, and commitment to what they do, are part of my ongoing learning.

Questions to ponder:
-    How do you value our informal education?
-    Where are your "corners" of learning in the world?
-    Do we value some voices over others?


Photo Credit: Jeff

A couple weeks ago, while workshifting from a Starbucks in New York City, I decided to take the plunge and try a Hoffacino. You're probably wondering what the heck a Hoffacino is all about, so I'll take a second to fill you in. Chris Hoff, security and cloud guru, came up with this custom Starbucks drink and it's slowly started to develop a following (at least it seems like it according to my twitter timeline).
Here's how you order it:
    Venti Starbucks Doubleshot on ice
    6 shots (espresso)
    3 Splenda
    No classic (syrup)
    Breve
So, what do you think? It sounds a little crazy, right? Well, I can assure you it's not just crazy, but also very delicious. It's not for the faint of heart (ba-dum-cha!) but if you like espresso and a caffeine rush I sincerely recommend you give it a whirl.

The thought had crossed my mind to write a personal blog post about the ordering/drinking experience (like these), but while mulling it over I decided it would be even better to share it with the workshifting community. You guys and gals spend your days at home, in coffee shops, at hotels and countless other places, and I bet you enjoy a higher than average beverage quotient, I know I do.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite drinks (in no particular order):

-    Water (<10 cals):Sometimes there's nothing better than an ice cold glass of water to quench your thirst, especially in this summer heat. If you're not a big fan of water you can try adding a squeeze of lemon or lime juice or get those powder add-ins to give it a little splash of flavor. You should never forget this fundamental fluid of life; it does wonders for my productivity.

-    Smoothie (400ish cals, varies by ingredients): You might be surprised by how easy it is to make healthy shakes on a regular basis. I've been experimenting with Alton Brown's Buff Smoothie recipe and choosing different fruit combinations with quite pleasant results. I even shared my own Red Bull themed incarnation a few months ago. What's great about the recipe is you prep the night before and just do a quick blend in the morning. I take it on the road with me as a healthy breakfast and it sure beats a donut or bagel.

-    Toffee Nut Java Chip Frappuccino (350-600 cals): Sometimes when I'm on the go and get a craving for a dessert/coffee/chocolate fix, this is the drink I reach for. As with most Frappuccinos, it's high in calories, but you could order it as a Frappuccino Light to make it healthier. The toffee nut syrup is the perfect complement to the chocolate chips and coffee. Once you try it, you'll be hooked.

-    Iced Green Tea (90 cals): It's hard to resist the lure of the Free Wi-Fi at your local Panera and when I'm not in the coffee/soda mood I usually grab for their Iced Green Tea. It's definitely on the sweet side and is more akin to soda (minus the carbonation), but is a nice change of pace.

I'm always interested in new locales and new drinks, so I'd love to hear about your go to drinks.


Photo Credit: John Flinchbaugh

I recently wrote about a friend of mine who hosts a successful, productive workshifting collective from his home office. I'm a veteran workshifter, and to be honest, I really like working all by my lonesome in my office or studio. So I was especially curious to see how and why a group of workshifters had created a cooperative work environment. Here's what I learned during a visit to the team's HQ.

The Team
There are currently five people on the workshifting team -- four are founding members who adhere to regular work schedules and one member is a PhD candidate who occasionally uses the space to work on her dissertation. The regulars work in IT support, software programming and Web communications. Most of the gang boasts a comfortable level of technical proficiency, which is an advantage for troubleshooting glitches as a group and never leaves any one person with the responsibility of being onsite tech support.

The Scene
The group works in the master suite on the second floor of my friend's house. Garfunkel, the housecat, perches in a handmade cat tree steeped in southern exposure. Boxes of tea collect dust atop a side table (this is a group of coffee drinkers, mostly), and a Britta pitcher sits in the center of the large, multi-person worktable. The walls are painted a fresh shade of Mediterranean blue, and a red exercise ball rests in the center of the room.

Origin
With one member of the workshifting collective hailing from the UK, I wanted to know how all these remote paths had crossed. It turns out that the founding members of the group all attended the same church and had been working off and on in pairs at local coffee shops. My friend proposed that they officially set up shop in his house and see how things took from there. They've kept to a regular schedule ever since.

Balance
Opening up your house - and your work rhythm - to other workshifters certainly comes with the risk of personal and professional disruptions. Even the closest of friends may have radically different expectations and behaviors in the workplace. It shouldn't come as any surprise that workshifters absolutely must have compatible working styles to successfully share professional space. And they also need solid, straightforward communication skills to be able to say, "Hey, I'm taking an important call. Can you please turn the music down?"

Food
These folks may work outside of the traditional office, but that doesn't mean that the traditional office food culture doesn't factor in. One regular told me, "This is where I consume the best food of the day." The gang tends to eat en masse -- either cooking in the house kitchen, eating out together or bringing carryout back to the workplace. On the day I visited the group, I arrived during a lunchtime break. Food that day had been delivered courtesy of a workshifter's husband.

Benefits
According to the group, a significant advantage of workshifting as a team is being able to leverage the synergy of working together to increase personal productivity. Another biggie is creating a strong sense of community and supportive social network. For the mother in the group, having a greater work/life balance is key. Across the board, creating a space that has fewer "home" distractions (like responding to a stack of dirty dishes) is a perk of working with other workshifters in an office environment. And being able to leave workspaces intact at the end of the day without packing up every last office artifact (as one must do at a coffee shop, for example) is a huge benefit.

Recommendations
If you're considering hosting or joining a workshifting team, keep in mind the following:

•    Individual job types have a direct impact on the team. For example, if a workshifter's job requires her to spend the majority of the workday on the phone, she may not be a good fit for a group of folks who spend the majority of their time concentrating on writing code or copy.

•    Work styles must mesh well, period. Music in the background could be a delight for some and a distraction for others.

•    Create a designated workspace that doesn't interrupt the flow of the underlying household. The flipside is that a messy house won't negatively impact a designated workspace.

•    Build a workshifting community that feeds your own productivity and reduces any feelings of isolation that you might have.

•    Be wary of (and quick to weed out) candidates who treat the occasional remote workday as a day off. This type of energy can easily erode the productivity of the entire group.

When I asked if the group had a disaster plan - we live in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 types of weather - my question was met with uproarious laughter. OK, no disaster plan. Obviously not a deal breaker. But it's clear that this team of consummate professionals has discovered and implemented a healthy, productive workshifting cooperative. I'll leave you with the wise words of one of the regulars: Workshifting allows you to fit "work into life, not life into work."

What do you think?

If you go back and look at how Google started as a company, it's really amazing to see how much they have grown. Starting out with search, they have grown into many areas including collaboration, mobile, and productivity. While at times I wish that Google would focus, it's hard to argue against their strategy as they are leaders in the search market and challengers in many other areas.

So when they announced Google Wave there was a ton of hype because everyone was waiting for that next killer application from Google. Let's face it, these are the guys who did Google Search, Gmail, Adwords. All game changers in their categories, so expectations were pretty high.

But something happened along the way.. No one really knew what to do with it.

I am like a lot of people when I say that I honestly haven't used Wave a whole lot. When Google first announced it I rushed out and got an invitation, started a few Wave's with some buddies, but the interest quickly faded. That doesn't mean that Wave couldn't be a great tool for workshifting and after I revisited it some benefits bubbled up to the surface:

•    For team collaboration it quickly beats trading information back and forth via email. We have all been on those long email strings, soon you lose track of what came first, that important attachment that everyone else is referencing has been misplaced in your inbox. With Wave all of this information is contained within the Wave for everyone to see. One version of the truth.

•    Get new teammates up to speed quickly. As you add new people to your team you can quickly get them up to speed by using the playback feature found in every wave. The playback starts over at the beginning of the wave and you can quickly see the content and people who where added to wave as they happened.

•    Wave brings conversation into your project. How many times have you been working remotely on a project, needed some additional information from a team member, and you then had to use other tools to start these offline conversations. With Wave, all of these conversations can happen within the project where they are then stored for the whole team to see.

I decided to take another run at really using Wave to see if it fits into my workshifting toolbox and I need your help. A few weeks back I posted five reasons why your boss won't let you workshift and now I want to come up with a post that focuses on the reasons why you can.

I have started a wave so that we can collaborate on the responses. This will help me out by getting some feedback on my post and it will allow us to kick the tires on Google Wave to see the good and the bad. I will put out a follow up post on how Wave worked and if it meets the mark for workshifting use.

If you are interested in joining, make sure you have a Google Wave account, and shoot me an email at wave@itkgroup.com and I will email you the invite. Hopefully we will get a new post put together and we will see if Google Wave is a workshifting treasure or tease.

Have you found any workshifting benefits of Google Wave?


Photo Credit: Rafa Garces

We started this blog with the goal of building a community by providing content and resource material that was tailored for workshifters. The community was not built based on promoting products or services, although the occasional promotion is ok (just don't be "that guy"), it's based on fulfilling the need for information and the desire of sharing a common interest.

Over the past year I've watched as solo-preneurs chat with large enterprise companies about a wide range of topics.  It's less about what they are talking about, and more about the fact that they are talking, discovering and to enabling. Many of the questions and conversations are fielded and managed by the community.  One of the biggest lessons learned, is that once the community takes off, the community is in control. However, their desire for a consistent diet of rich and tasty content only grows with the community. So stay on it.

Another lesson learned is that your services are talked about alongside competing services.  Gasp!  I know it's hard to swallow, but your services are not right for everyone.  At my company, we absolutely love our products, but we know one size does not fit all.  We hope we attract customers that are a perfect fit.  Sometimes we don't and we definitely hear about it.  If you're going to build a community you need to be ok with that, because much of the conversation extends beyond the blog and takes place on Twitter, Facebook and other community blogs.  

What's really fun is watching the conversations that have little or nothing to do with technology. Common topics include comfortable office chairs, pets, marriage, diet, travel and about everything in-between. This is a nice lead in to one of, what seems to be, the hardest areas in managing a community and that's being REAL.

You could also replace REAL with HUMAN, HONEST, TRANSPARENT, etc. The point is it must come from the heart. You really and truly need to care. The community has low tolerance for corporate speak and canned responses. If you do more listening than talking, it will start to come naturally.

Online communities are not the exclusive domain of companies. We all belong to communities, online and in the real world. There is your Facebook community which you maintain, monitor and contribute to. In this day and age, it will become most people's first experience with a community. Then you may be belong to a car club, or cooking group and neither of which are online.  

As workshifters we often build a community around our co-working locations. You probably know the person that works the espresso machine, a few of the regulars, etc. This real world community probably extends to the web in the form of check-ins on Foursquare (who doesn't want to by mayor of their joint?), photo uploads to Flickr and messages in Twitter. If you're thinking about starting an online community blog, take that same casual demeanor and move it online. Be consistent, be transparent, be real.

My top 7 lessons:

1.  The community is in control
2.  Be the best electronic version of yourself
3.  Listen more than you talk
4.  Keep it really interesting
5.  Monitor and contribute daily
6.  Don't let questions or comments go unanswered for more than 24 hours
7.  If you don't genuinely care, don't do it

These lessons aren't particularly earth shattering, and you may read similar advice on other blogs. What's important is the application of the lessons. Much like when you read a book on a topic that's important to you. The reading of the book is not the measurement of success.  You are not striving to be an excellent book buyer. What matters is the practical application of the advice.  

That's my opinion, what's yours?


Photo Credit: Niall Kennedy

The Telework Improvements Act (H.R. 1722) got a second chance in the House on July 14th and won. The same bill was narrowly defeated in May. A similar bill (S.707) passed unanimously in the Senate on May 24th.

While it's been a mandate since the year 2000 that every federal worker telecommute to the maximum extent possible, participation rates are only slightly higher than those of the private sector. According to a recent report, only about 100,000 of the government's 2 million workers telework at least one day a month--a number that's actually declined in recent years. While still higher than private sector participation, only about 5 percent of the total federal workforce telework and less than 9% of those who are eligible do so.
 
If signed into law by the President, the Telework Improvements Act would, among other things, direct the Office of Personnel Management to issue regulations on telework, require agencies to come up with policies that permit teleworking for up to 20 percent of the hours worked over two weeks, require agencies to designate a telework managing officer, provide training to employees, and ensure that there are no distinctions between teleworkers and others in performance appraisals. Independent of this bill, the Obama administration has set a goal of having 150,000 teleworkers by 2011, and 500,000 by 2014.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates program costs at $30 million over a five year period. In fact, the staggering costs of lost productivity from federal workers during last Winter's snowstorms--estimated by the government at $71 million a day--would pay for the five year cost of H.R. 1722 in one snow day.

The potential savings of the program were not presented by CBO. Using assumptions from a 2006 study commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration (conducted by Booz Allen), we used our Telework Savings Calculator to quantify the potential governments savings if those eligible federal employees who wanted to work from home did so just one day every other week (half the level required in H.R. 1722):

Agencies would:
- Increase productivity by over $2.3 billion each year - equivalent to 26,000 man years of work
- Save $850 million in annual real estate, electricity, and related costs
- Save $2.3 billion in annual absenteeism
- Save $3.1 billion in annual employee turnover
- Improve continuity of operations
- Improve work life balance and better address the needs of families, parents, and senior caregivers.
- Avoid the 'brain drain' effect of retiring boomers by allowing them to work flexibly
- Be able to recruit and retain the best people
- Offer fuller employment for disabled workers, rural residents, and military families

Federal Employees would:
- Achieve a better work-life balance
- Save $400-$1,400/year in transportation and work-related expenses
- Collectively save $57 million a year at the pumps
- Suffer fewer illnesses

The Nation would:
- Save almost 3 million barrels and $233 million in imported oil
- Reduce greenhouse gases by 532,000 tons/year--the equivlient of taking 97,000 cars off the road
- Reduce road travel by 1.2 billion miles/year saving $20 million in road maintenance
- Reduce road congestion thereby increasing productivity for non-teleworkers as well
- Save 1,000 people from traffic-related injury or death each year and save $117 million a year in related costs
- Improve emergency responsiveness
- Reduce pollution from road work and new office construction
- Preserve open spaces
- Alleviate the strain on our crumbling transportation infrastructure
- Reduce terrorism targets of opportunity

Talk of a national telework initiative has been rattling around Washington ever since the start of the current administration. While the Telework Improvements Act does nothing for the private sector--except perhaps reducing traffic in areas with significant government workers and possibly shortening the wait time at downtown D.C. Starbucks'--hopefully it will send a strong message of endorsement of the concept to the private sector.

What do you think?

Photo Credit: Vinoth Chandar
 

GenJuice

GenJuice is a 13 city tour that aims to connect and highlight young innovators, influencers and go-getters across the nation. Hitting major cities like SanFrancisco, Atlanta, Chicago, New York and more, they have been sharing their adventures and workshifting along the way at co-working buildings, at empty desks at start-up companies's offices and filming every step of the way. With help from sponsors Justin.tv, BazaarVoice, The Cash Flow and more they have the support of the young tech and entrepreneurship crowd and bring an interesting unconference style that draws from the personalities of the co-founders, Arielle Patrice-Scott, Virgilia Singh and Danielle Leslie. Look for GenJuice coming to a city near you!

The Way Below Status Quo Tour

This adventurous journey is the coming together of 3 nomad and lifestyle design bloggers and entrepreneurs - Colin Wright, Andi Norris and Ashley Ambirge who wanted to bring interested, motivated individuals together to facilitate in-person, connect with the communities that have supported their respective online endeavors and create a link between both groups, essentially forging a network of remarkable people that's tighter than Fort Knox. Sounds pretty ambitious and it is. They will be dropping into most of America during the trek, navigating unconferences, volunteering with charities, organizing meetups and looking to find other inspired young individuals. I'll be hanging out with the crew at their Orlando put stop on July 12th.

What Are Your Summer Workshifting Plans?

With more and more young people going after their dreams, working from the road and joining co-working spots, there is an immense opportunity to collaborate, brainstorm and integrate your ideas with that of others. The advent of Workshifting is helping to make this more and more real everyday. So as the temperature gets warmer here, what are your workshifting plans this summer? Do you want to get out of the office more and work remotely (say from a nice beach) or do you want to take your show on the road, generate experiences with your customers, readers and fans? Whatever your plans are, feel free to share in the comments below.

A friend of mine started workshifting full-time about eight months after I took the plunge myself. I was still basking in the glow of my own good fortune at being able to workshift 2,000 miles away from HQ and was, of course, thrilled for my friend who, as it turned out, was a tad apprehensive about working day in and day out by himself.

In an effort to ease himself into his new workshifting routine, he invited me to work in tandem at a local coffeehouse called the Black Dog, a great workshifting venue with generously sized library tables, ample outlets and a tomato-basil pizza that makes my knees buckle. We made a few attempts to coordinate work schedules, but things never came together.

His craving for a larger group of colleagues led him to poll other workshifters he knew in the area to see if there might be any interest in working regularly from his home as a group. He discovered that there was actually a mighty big demand for this type of arrangement.

Soon after (and perhaps to the chagrin of his tolerant wife), the dining room table was recast as a permanent conference table. A post-it note went up on the front door inviting the crew to "Come In." A larger coffee pot was procured and a band of workshifting regulars poured through the front door of his home in the heart of a residential neighborhood to work independently, together.

My friend has since converted the master bedroom suite, which occupies the entire second floor, into a much larger collaborative workspace. (Like I said, his wife is a tolerant woman.) The setup looks less haphazard than the dining room table with its nest of cords underneath and allows the living space of the house to flow more naturally. The new office digs look incredibly professional and polished--just as you would expect any other office out in the world to look. It's less "home office" and more "office within the home."

The first time I saw the suite workspace, I said, "Hmm, I could see myself working here. Are you hiring?" Though I didn't land a permanent placement, I was invited to observe the collection of workshifters on a typical workday and interview a few folks to see how things looked from their side of the multi-workstation table.

I'll share my observations of the collaborative workday and my conversations with some of the regular crew next time.

Would this type of arrangement work for you?

Thanks to all Workshifters who took the time over the past two weeks to fill out our brief one-question survey on what type of profession they were in. We had respondents from the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, France and Mexico.

Without further ado, here are the results:

Type of Profession	Percent
Other	19%
Advertising, Marketing, PR	15%
Information Technology	12%
Writer/Editor	8%
Education	8%
Salesperson	7%
Manager	7%
Programmer	5%
Creative Arts/Design	4%
Publishing & Journalism	3%
Healthcare	3%
Legal profession	3%
Customer service	1%
Accounting	1%
Engineering	1%

The goal of the survey was to determine the most common profession among Workshifters. With the exception of "Other", the top professions are pretty much in line with what I expected. Careers in advertising, IT, writing, editing and sales, all seem to be pretty easy to translate into remote working environments.

Many operate on a project basis and have clear deliverables and metrics, which is vital for both the Workshifter and the employer or client. These types of careers are also often computer based and involve solo work that can be done as a home-based business.
All could also be categorized as "knowledge workers," who are often defined as people with at least two years of college whose jobs rely on their minds, such as IT, engineering, management, etc.

I'm curious as to how "Education" fits into the remote working environment. I suspect these are people who perhaps teach out of their homes or maybe online modules?

The fact that "Other" was the top response either signifies that many Workshifters are in unique professions that don't fall within the typical categories, or that I simply didn't include enough career options in the survey. I suspect it's the latter.

In looking back at the answers, I realize that I likely should have included "professional services/consulting" or "realty" to the mix. Other than that, I'm wondering what other professions I am missing. What do you think?

Photo Credit: Carsten Knoch

I was speaking with a friend the other day about my Workshifting arrangement with MindFire, when she asked me what other types of professions would "allow" or work for this type of remote working arrangement.

It caught me off guard, because I hadn't really thought of Workshifting as being exclusive to only certain professions. Of course you can't be an emergency room doctor or bus driver and work remotely, but by and large, I had been operating under the assumption that most professionals in our Information Era could work in a remote environment as long as it is supported by management. I suppose this is a bit naïve, though. Not every job that involves a desk and a computer could be translated into a remote work environment.

So I thought it would be interesting to poll Workshifting readers to determine the types of professions you are in. Are most of you programmers? Salespeople? Writers? Editors?

Please take this one-question survey (it's only one question). I will post results at the end of June.

If I'd have to guess, I'd imagine that the majority of you are in professions that are very project based.  I would imagine this is a result of the fact that it's probably easier to manage Workshifters who work on projects with a clear deliverable.

I think you could also make a case that remote working environments are particularly successful for professions where your work is measured by clear metrics, such as sales made, or hours billed. Again, the management aspects for those types of professions would make it more appealing to allow employees to workshift. I think these types of metrics also provide Workshifters with a way to justify their working arrangements and "prove" that they are working just as hard as their office counterparts.

What do you think? What are the top Workshifting professions, and why?


Photo Credit: Mafleen