How to Start a Two-Bit Operation: Small Business Tips

Working in an office is so passé.  If you haven’t heard yet, all the cool kids are working virtually now.  Whether that be working from home, cafes (John’s pushing the limits in China), on the beach, or even “co-working” together at cafes or homes.  And now that I think about it, I’ve been working in virtual teams my entire full-time career – how odd.  

John on a video conference

On my first day of work at HP back in August of 2001 I met my boss over the phone.  My boss, Mike, worked and lived in Atlanta, GA.  We did weekly team meetings on the phone and used web cams that streamed our live pictures to an internal “hollywood squares” webpage so that we could all see each other.   Over the course of my HP career, I worked with teammates in half a dozen states and numerous countries in Europe and Asia.  The cool thing about the organization I came into was that they were sort of the virtual team collaboration pioneers in HP so we experimented with all kinds of tools and techniques, with one of the most memorable being a virtual party we had where there were break out rooms on the conference lines and games like virtual pictionary using the NetMeeting whiteboard.  Fun times. 

Anyways, this trip down memory lane was spurred when I heard that a former HP colleague of mine, Loyal Mealer, recently put together a nice repository of telecommuting information called CommuteZero.  

In Loyal’s own words:

We created it to share the techniques and tools that make telecommuting and other forms of virtual work productive, easier and even fun. We want to encourage the use of virtual work as a way to improve business effectiveness and productivity, save on fuel, reduce pollution, and improve the quality of our lives. What better way to be green than to leave the car in the garage or avoid that next flight? Plus, you’ll lower your stress and have more time for family and friends.

Looking through the site I see many of the great tips and best practices that we used at HP so I recommend checking it out (blog) if you’re already working virtually or just thinking about it.  

Once you can get in your own virtual working groove, you’ll never want to go back. 

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Over the weekend I went to my first Barcamp in LA.  Barcamp is defined in wikipedia as follows:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open sourcetechnologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Basically it’s a place where people get together to talk about technology with each other in a fun and conversational way.  There’s very few rules or no preset schedule of topics.  If you want to talk, just put your name and topic on the schedule board.  Topics range widely from talking about multi-threading in web applications, business plans, to whiskey tasting for beginners.  Barcamp LA 6 was free and hosted by Mahalo with a pretty good turnout of about 150 people.  Here are my quick thoughts: 

• Twitter, twitter, twitter.  It felt like there was more interaction over twitter than in person.  As soon as I walked in, I saw dozens of laptops setup on a huge conference table with people twittering and blogging.  Even during the sessions, people were twittering on their laptops and cell phones.  I guess this is easier than talking to people face to face.  You can follow me on twitter here. 
• The introductions are fun.  Amazing that we went through over 100 people in about 10 min.  Restricting the talking time to name and 3 tags did wonders. 
• My favorite session was by Francisco Dao over at The Killer Pitch.  He was a great speaker and also gave out autographed copies of his book. 
• Mahalo has a pretty nice office space.  It’s fun yet not over the top like Rubicon Project’s.

I didn’t get to stick around for the whiskey session, but I’m sure that would have been fun.  Next time!  Barcamps happen all over the world so I definitely recommend checking it out.  It’s free and geeks are more friendly and down to earth than most other types of convention attendees.

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In an effort to find efficient ways to work, I came across the standing desk.  Basically, instead of sitting at your desk, you stand.  

Benefits

• Better posture: I’ve found that you can’t really slouch when you’re standing.  Sometimes I’ll end up putting my elbows on the table while reading something, but that’s the exception rather than the norm.  With a normal desk (or even a stability ball), it’s to way to easy to get into comfortable positions that aren’t that ergonomically great for you.
• More alertness: It’s pretty hard to fall asleep standing.  I’ve done it before (and also fallen asleep mid-sentence), but it doesn’t happen too often  Since my body’s in a much more active position, I don’t get comfortable enough to get sleepy.  Always a good thing while working.
• Breaks from the computer: While working, there’s never a time when I’m constantly typing or reading, there is, on occasion, some thinking that happens.  What’s great about standing is that it’s easy to just go walk around while thinking since you’re already on your feet.  Or if I’m tired, I’ll just go sit down on the couch and think.  Much nicer than staring at the monitor all the time.
• Burn more calories!:  Standing and walking more just burns more calories.  This computer life is a pretty sedentary and unhealthy one – might as well get some extra calorie burning in while you’re working.  Others have tried walking while working (treadmill under the desk), but that seems like overkill at this point.  However, I will sometimes play some upbeat music and dance in place while working

Getting Started
Before you commit to a standing desk, give it a try first.  Find a counter or a bookshelf where you can place your computer and/or monitor in a way that your arms are bent at 45 degrees and your monitor is roughly at eye height. Try it for a few hours a day for a week and see how it goes.  In the beginning, there was definitely an adjustment period for my legs and feet.  My mother-in-law bought me a soft standing pad from a Korean supermarket (I think it was around $10 bucks) that really helps ease the pressure of standing on the floor – and, yes, the pad is pink with a cartoon dog on it.

I’ve been pretty happy with the Utby desk from Ikea (choose “brown/black” from color, and 47 1/4″ from size).  It’s meant for the kitchen so there’s no drawers, but the crossbars make it very sturdy and also make nice foot rests.  Oh, and I’ve got a barstool behind for those moments of weakness and I just really want to sit while working.  Usually, when I’m reading things online. 

If you want to know more, read about them on wikipedia and on the 37signals blog.  Lots of the ones advertised as “standing” or “standup” desks are pretty expensive, so I’d recommend just looking around for simpler desk/tables/bars that happen to be tall.  If you’re handy, you can also try building your own.

Happy standing!
Justin

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I had the opportunity to be interviewed on The Hot Iron by Mike Maddaloni of Dunkirk Systems.  Give it a read to see what we’ve been up to and how we work as a small, virtual company.  Thanks again, Mike!

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We had some issues during a wordpress upgrade a couple months ago that was causing commenting to break, along with a bunch of other odd issues.  Wordpress is now upgraded and I installed a new look for the blog to change things up a bit.  Let me know if you see anything wonky!

Justin

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!