The Emerging Ecology of Work and Workplace

October 1, 2008

Recently posted to the Coworking Google Group.  Reposted here as a lead in to a series of posts of the emerging ecology of work/workplace.
After a year of living the life of a working nomad, and after many conversations with both coworkers, independents, entrepreneurs, as well as people in corporate HR and Real Estate, it's clear [...]

Dell’s Recognition of Digital Nomadism

August 21, 2008

I've been reading Dell's Digital Nomads site and the reactions (for/against) to it.  I'll be interested to see whether or not this catalyzes interest in telecommuting, coworking, nomadism, etc. at the corporate level, whether this develops into any kind of meaningful community place for digital nomads, or whether it evolves into a transparent marketing tool [...]

Boomers, Privacy is an Illusion

June 20, 2008

Boomers, your idea of privacy and security is an illusion!! How many of you have your name, phone number and home address in a telephone directory? From the size of the directory I'm looking at, I'd say, most of you. Do you realize what this means?!? It means people can find you--literally, physically!
Your concern about [...]

End the Freevolution

June 19, 2008

I'm sick to death of paying for free stuff with my time (lost waiting for the page to refresh; lost waiting for the service to come back up), with my data (it's my social graph, damnit), with my attention (no, I don't want to refinance)...   I'm ready to pay with money (the old fashioned way).
Here [...]

The Third Wave

June 17, 2008

I'm in a prognosticating mood. Here's my take on the evolution and future direction of the Internet, Internet technology and applications, business opportunities, and skills.
Pre-Wave had very little commercial activity. UUNET is one of the few examples that comes to mind..

?-1993
Research
Hackers/hobbyists build applications
Significant technical talent required. Massive capitalization required.

The First Internet Wave [...]

Twitter Your Strategy

April 19, 2008

In the current issue of Harvard Business Review, David Collis and Michael Rukstad offer up a most interesting challenge to senior corporate leaders. In their article, Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?, they ask a simple yet provocative question.
Specifically, they ask if you can state what your company's strategy is is 35 words [...]

Simple is the New Black

April 18, 2008

Tomorrow, a job in IT might be just about the worst job you could have.
Sure, IT has always been the least popular child in the family--seemingly important but not always in tune with the rest of band--but I'm thinking specifically about the impending, wholesale IT sell-off that's going to happen once companies realize that running [...]

Port 8888 Blocked! Ah, the Joys of Repression

April 5, 2008

Port 8888 is blocked!
(Technically speaking, every port except 80, 443 and maybe 25 is blocked.)
Meaning, from inside their network, I can't connect to a server of mine outside their network running a service on port 8888.
In any case, this is unfortunate, because I'm trying to demo my software.
The IT guy tells me that it's necessary [...]

Tweeter

March 26, 2008

I'm writing the draft of this post on a paper plate. The cat is attacking my feet.
I probably have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). So do the 949,623 other people with twitter accounts. I'm not going to get treatment—why kill off a good thing—not that the little magic pills don't clear the mind...
A [...]

Thinking Visually

March 20, 2008

I'm working on my visual thinking skills.
Years of education and work trained me to think in 1 dimension (the linear narrative). Thank god for UML and kin and a couple courses in drafting—without them I'd be hopeless.
2D

It all started with an article in BusinessWeek titled "Doodling for Profits".
A simple drawing can communicate complex ideas [...]