What in the World Is Coworking?
Just the other day, I was doing my due diligence on the webbernets trying to find out some juicy tidbits about alternate working situations. And since you happen to be on a web conferencing blog, chances are you’re on the lookout for more tips and tidbits that could make your situation more efficient. Well, I ‘discovered’ (similarly to how Columbus ‘discovered’ America) this brilliant alternative to from home not from home!
It’s called coworking! And from what I gather…
Coworking is a way of working where you independently work alongside other workers, though the work you’re doing is totally separate. Think of it as a well-lit and nicely temperature-ed café where you can go to work comfortably all day without enduring the angry glares of the barista trying to Jedi Mind Trick you into buying more coffee or get off his ‘free’ WiFi. There’s only so much caffeine one person can take, doncha know.
No, it’s not free, but it seems reasonably priced. These coworking spaces are all over the place and a quick Google revealed five locations within walking distance of my current office and a whole bunch more in the area.
What’s more – these places seem really COOL. Quite a few of them offer free drop-in options to check them out. You can use meeting rooms, supplies and whatnot as part of the service. I had a big old #FAIL that one day I had to work from home, and if I had to work from home on a regular basis, I would totally consider signing up for something like this.
So… whether it’s coworking, meeting online, figuring out a way to pre-occupy the kids or putting an accountability system in place (Thanks Heather and Yasou for the tips !!!) – we realize that knowing your options is the first step.
Have you ever tried coworking? How did it work?
6/17/10 Update: Seth Godin recently did a post on coworking. Check it out > Goodbye To The Office
Oui Oui, Fuze Meeting!
Why the sudden international flair?
Well HERE’s why. Last week in a previous post, we whetted your appetite for ALL the features in our new release, and we’ll spend the next couple of weeks unpacking all the details for you.
We’re global, baby!
*ring ring* Hello Fuze, Is that you there with new dial in numbers in Mexico, UK, France, Brazil, Netherlands, Spain? Si, yes, oui, sim, ja and si again!
What this means:
Before this update, if you had a meeting in a country outside of the US, the audio conferencing portion of the meeting was still being routed through phone numbers in the US…so you would have to pay international phone rates even if you and all your attendees were scattered around Brazil (or…anywhere else). No More! Now…we have local numbers in-country, so having meetings all over the globe just got cheaper.
I will take my meeting online, s’il vous plaît!
And while we’re at it, we’ve also added some international flav-ah to the meeting experience. You can sign-up for Fuze Meeting through a French site and hold a meeting with a French interface. I’m guessing because this blog is in English, you may not be choosing French, but feel free to call Pierre and Chloé and let them know the good news!
Voulez-vous avoir une conférence en ligne avec moi? Ce soir?
Stay tuned for MORE languages coming our way. Next on deck: Spanish!
Lessons from Eyjafjallajökull
Yes that’s right everybody. Your favorite Iclandic volcano and mine has been doing quite a number on the air space around Europe and has stranded quite a few would-be meeting attendees on the other side of this big blue ball of dense space dust (or on my side for that matter).
So what does this mean? Since you’re on the Fuze Meeting blog, I’m going to let you guess… But OK FINE, I’ll just tell you. If by chance you happened to be stranded, enjoy your few extra days of vaycay, but take advantage of this moment to learn about web conferencing!
If you haven’t been doing online meetings yet, THE TIME IS NOW.
Q: What have you got to lose?
A: Literally…nothing. I mean…do you really have another choice anyway?
So, *hint hint wink wink* sign up for our 30 day free trial (or just get free unlimited meetings for 3 attendees by fanning us on Facebook) and (for heaven’s sake!) use this opportunity to learn something new about whatever unexpected culture you’ve just found yourself amidst.
Take that, Eyjafjallajökull! You and your ridiculous spelling won’t keep us from being productive with our co-workers.
Telecommuting Hits Home
Crews work to return connectivity to surrounding buildings while Fuze Box employees telecommute for a day.
No thanks to a big ol’fire in a manhole at 7th and Mission, the entire Fuze Meeting office had no network connectivity Monday morning and after about 30 minutes (don’t worry…our web conferencing software was still up and running), we all just called it quits and headed home with our laptops and mobile phones in tow, ready for a day of wildly productive telecommuting.
You work remotely-ers. You work from home-ers. You on-the-go-work-outta-your-hotel-ers. It’s not all a walk in the park!
Which leaves me to the real point of this blog – a plea for advice for our community that works remotely. A request for help and any tips that could make ‘working remotely’ productive and not painful.
Real life testimonial:
After immediately changing out of my work clothes and into my civvies (1 point telecommuting), I sat down, popped open the laptop and NOPE. It took me less than 5 minutes to realize this is not happening. Not at my house. There was way too much to get distracted by, including but not limited to quite a few DVR’ed episodes of 24. So off to the coffee shop.
After one quick little “working from home today” Facebook status update, all of a sudden, my friends are all up in my bid-nezz like I somehow snaked a day off? “Oh great, I’ve been meaning to catch up with you. Let’s get coffee!” Hel-LO, I’m WORKING!
“OK. OK. This is all part of the gig,” I remind myself in a soothing zen voice. But…at this point I’ve been camped out at a coffee shop for 3 hours and honestly couldn’t stomach one more banana nut muffin and the guy behind the counter is giving me the stink eye, so I pack up and head out. Goodbye 30 minutes of productivity.
Where am I supposed to go now? Another coffee shop, of course! And on to coffee number 3 for the day. By 4 PM with caffeine buzzing through my veins, I canceled my evening plans because I realized I was already shooting way under target and could count on a whole evening working. Goodbye work/life balance.
The conclusion: Hats off to all of you who manage to do this effectively, because I can tell it’s the sort of thing that would take a lot of practice to be good at. Thank goodness I have my web conferencing software all picked out and ready to go, but let’s face it; online meetings are just going to scratch the surface.
So the question is: How do you do it? What tips/tricks/software do you use to make working from home more efficient? And hopefully my next telecommuting blog post will have incorporated all your fun little tips.
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