Wherever I lay my laptop (that’s my office)

In early 2000 I left the security of a well paid job to setup my own business as a web developer. As it happens that business didn’t quite take off the way I’d planned but thankfully another idea did and 9 years on I find myself still happily self-employed. And still not-so-happily working out of my home-based office.

Don’t get me wrong - I couldn’t be happier with the independence and flexibility that comes with working for myself. Neither is it a case that I’m suffering from the cliched negative of home-working; isolation. The virtual watercoolers of Twitter, Jaiku and Boards.ie (I’m not a Facebooker) compensate well for the lack of cubicle chatter. In fact, in many respects, the former beat the latter for ease of control and throttling!

But I could do with getting out of the house more, adding some variety to my work environment and networking with other entrepreneurs. I want to squeeze more value out of  my professional freedom. What a shame really to enjoy the privilege of an un-tethered worklife and yet waste it on a stationary existence.

When Jason Roe (of Ryanair ruffling notoriety) invited me to co-author Coworking.ie two years ago I eagerly accepted. Coworking, officially defined as a ‘cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents’ was a trend I’d been keeping an eye on for many months. The idea is simply for freelancers to take a shared office, imbue it with cafe culture and avail of the networking opportunities afforded.

But there are many definitions of and variations on coworking depending on who you ask. For instance, Jelly is ‘casual coworking’ where people are invited to work from a host home for a day. Jelly provides chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.

So it’s clear that coworking is as much about collaboration as it is about shared space among independents. Hotdesking by contrast has it’s origins in the corporate environment where  a primary motivation was cost reduction through space saving. Typically a a number of employees operated a ‘timeshare’ on a single work station or desk space.

But hotdesking has evolved and broken free from the confines of the company. Now it’s more about flexible temporary space for individuals. And a number of service providers in Ireland are experimenting with different configuration ideas. The appeal to me is that coworking is overkill for my purposes. I work fine out of my own home-office most of the time but would really appreciate the opportunity to hot desk now and again, especially when my work takes me on the road.

I’m a regular attendee of OpenCoffee Limerick and often remain working at the Absolute Hotel for an hour or two after the networking session ends, thanks to the free wifi access provided. Sometimes I head towards home and stop off at the Rathkeale House Hotel instead (another free wifi provider). Or travel all the way back to Newcastlewest to avail of a similar service at Courtenay Lodge Hotel. And of course I could do likewise through a raft of routes around the country.

While hotels are grand for a few hours they don’t usually provide the comfort or environment as conducive to work as the relative privacy, proper desk, office chair, and ‘personal zone’ of a hotdesking facility. So that’s the idea that I’m interested in promoting through this blog. Hotdesking is a fledgling trend that I’d like to see on a steep growth curve in the coming years.

In 1962 Marvin Gaye co-wrote and recorded the song “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)”. I dream of the day when I can say “Wherever I Lay My Laptop (That’s My Office)”.