Working Remotely

July 30, 2009 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

For the past ten years, I have spent most of my workday, working remotely. Generally, this is done out of my home, or one of my employers offices. I technically have my “home” Epic Advertising (my employer) office just outside of Toronto. The challenge is that I live about an hour from this office in Toronto and share equal time with my son – this makes a workday very difficult with picking up and dropping off my son. Not to mention the lost productivity and hassle through commuting.

Fortunately, I have an employer that is understanding of this, and I work from home when I am not traveling, which I do about 40% of my time at this stage. My previous employer was located in Boston and like with Epic, who’s main office is in New York City, I worked mainly from home and went into the Boston office every other week or so.

Outside of understanding employers, technology has greatly facilitated this. Being that I work online, in essence, I can work from anywhere! My house has a strong wireless signal that is accessible in every room or outside on the deck or lawn. If my wireless signal goes down (it doesn’t anymore since I switched back to a Mac) I have wired Ethernet connections in my office, TV room and Bedroom. If we loose power, well then technically I can use my Blackberry.

Having spent as much time as I have working remotely, it’s just normal. As I write this, I am working remotely, currently flying over the Grand Canyon on the way from Toronto to Los Angeles. I look forward to when Air Canada, which I typically fly offers wireless Internet, like Virgin does for their flights. Having wireless in the air will make my flights even that much more productive, greatly minimizing the BlackBerry rush after I land!

This brings me to the topic at hand – this past weekend the Washington Post ran an interesting article, Digital Nomads Choose Their Tribes, which discused for the most part, how teleworkers find camaraderie working in hot spots.

Nomad life is already evolving. Nomads who want the feel of working with officemates have begun co-working in public places or at the homes of strangers. They work laptop-by-laptop in living rooms and coffee shops, exchanging both idle chitchat and business advice with people who all work for different companies. The gatherings are called jellies, after a bowl of jelly beans the creators were eating when they came up with the name.

Although, I am not the type the will go to a coffee shop or hotel lobby to get a signal, I understand the appeal. I suppose, if I worked out of my house more than I currently do and did not travel as much as I do, I would find it further appealing.

As it stands, I spend far too much time on the phone to really make that realistic. I can say though, that when I was overseeing the marketing at Singlenset, a few of my employees that also worked remotely would come to my house to work for a day or two every other week or so. We all found it more appearing and productive.
For a growing crowd this form of teleworking is gaining steam:

Although the number of digital nomads is intrinsically difficult to measure — they are constantly in motion and difficult to pin down for polling — evidence of a real shift in where Americans work is mounting. Dell reports that its digital nomad Web site is getting tens of thousands of hits a month.

For myself personally, if I were not able to work remotely, it would likely limit my earning potential. I would not give up time with my son for any sum of money. In my local region, there are only so many intuitive online advertising/online marketing companies. Fortunately, technology and a proven track record have provided me, like the numerous others that are growing in numbers, to be able to be location-independent.

Share
Related Posts:
Tagged: 
Category: Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking

RSS feed | Trackback URI

Comments »

No comments yet.

Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.