Archive for the ‘Work From Home’ Category
I’ve just entered a competition to spread the message of a World Without Offices and I need your help.
The competition is part of the launch of Richard Bransons new book called “Screw Business As Usual” and it’s being run so that the winner get’s to spend time with Richard going to South Africa to visit the School of Entrepreneurship, and also go on safari with him.
I know he would love the idea, it’s what he does. I remember seeing him get interviewed at the National Achievers Congress not long ago and he said he works out of office almost all the time and hinted on more of that needs to happen in society.
If I can get some time to speak with him and just bounce some ideas off him, he might be interested to help or at least point me to people who can really give this a push.
Please vote here if you believe that the future is an officeless society.
http://llm.im/virginunite <- click this link please!
I think it’s really interesting talking to various people about this idea because of the variety of responses and the variety of psychologies behind the notion that one day this society will not have any offices.
I was just sent this link this morning and it shows some interesting statistics from a recent survey.
http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/work-from-home-2/
The interesting facts are that 70% of students believe that they should have the right to work from home whenever it suits them.
Even more interesting is that 69% of ALL workers believed that the office was unnecessary now, a number which is up from 60% last year.
So the thing I keep coming back to around this idea is the mindset element. It’s blindingly clear that it’s not about the technology, because we already have all the tech to make this happen today.
No, the deep underlying problem with moving forward is deeply rooted in the mindset of those currently who oppose it.
What I find very exciting though is that the overall mindset is shifting faster than I imagined. Just 2months ago I decided that I would start this blog to speared the word on this cause. I thought that the general public perception around the topic was somewhat lower than I had expected.
Studies have shown that this is something society wants. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make it work.
I’ve also been looking into virtual hosted desktops the last 2days, and what I’ve found has been very exciting. It would seem major providers of servers and mainframes, the kind of companies which supply to large corporations, have mostly cloud services on their home pages, including hosted virtual desktops.
What this tells me is that this is a both a growing market, and corporations are seriously considering these remote alternatives. They just haven’t yet made the final link to global warming and the actual removal of the office space all together.
Perhaps that’s why I’m here.
I think having been working from home for the last 10 years has made me a little loopy 
Actually I think it has opened up my eyes to what is possible. It’s amazing to think that technology is the driving force behind these new found abilities and given that the internet isn’t even that old, it has really advanced at a pace which I think people haven’t managed to grasp yet.
These powers are like super powers. Imagine 20 years ago telling someone that they could literally sit under a tree in a park somewhere and be able to hold a video call to the other side of the world. Or perhaps you told them that they’d be able to control all their banking from the palm of their hand from anywhere in the world.
With all these new possibilities, why haven’t companies grasped yet the world changing idea that they don’t need an office?