In The "Work From Home" Generation writer Alex Iskold writes about the good the bad and the ugly of working at home. Commutes, laptops, wifi, time with family, savings, flexibility - Alex has it covered.
"instead of putting on suits and driving to work, people are heading to the basement in their pajamas and turning on their personal computers. These are the early days of the new Work From Home generation..."
He's got the picture of me 20 years ago when I literally went to my basement to paint and teach and to the kitchen to do what we then called guerrilla marketing
Luckily at that point there were six of us in the house and car-pools, committees, entrepreneur groups and clients to keep me from feeling alone. But Alex addressed this too when he writes
"The dynamics of an office work environment stimulate us in ways that are not going to be present when working from home.
"Each interaction brings in human subtleties and brings an opportunity for creative thought and innovation. When working at home these stimuli will not be there and everyone is going to get bored, sooner or later. The antidote is to get out of the house - work from a local coffee shop that has wifi, and once in a while go to the office and talk to your co-workers in person.
Luckily for me, I discovered Second Life for meetings and twitter for brainstorming and networking
Alex recognizes these tools and trends including
" . .basic software for virtual teams, as well as how to assemble an online office. . . . From better brainstorming tools to video conferencing there are opportunities to innovate to make virtual collaboration smooth and painless."
I'm not saying either are smooth or painless, but what new technology is? And we do have to show more of our work-at-home brethren the wonders of Second Life and Twitter as tools, not means to an end or amazing solutions to every issue.
I'm still working from home 20 years after I started. Now I've just got better tools and more company.
