On Telecommuting

… Attended a webinar from Citrix on “Get the Facts: How GoToAssist Compares with WebEx for Support” to see which tool I may want to recommend for telecommuters.

They highlighted two differences and then went on with PRing GoToAssist, which was fine since it was their seminar. I just found it a bit too ‘funny’ that not that many differences were found, yet that is what the subject of the seminar called for.

Two major differences I picked up on:

GoToAssist connects you with customer within 31.18 sec (yup, the .18 is interesting) while WebEx takes 1 min 3.14 sec. I found this difference was out of range for making a difference. Most web meetings and/or support calls I have participated in always take time to start — “can you hear me?”, “hold on I need earphones”, “can you turn your sound down, I hear echo”.

The second difference did seem to be important. Webex requires a heavy 10 Mb download and install, requires ActiveX or JRE or local Admin Rights. GoToAssist needs only 660 Kb Download and no installation and does not require ActiveX or JRE or local Admin Rights. GoToAssit has got that one right on. Time is money and heavier install might make a difference at the same price point, let alone and average user would not know what ActiveX or JRE are.

As I get to try these two tools and similar types that are pumping up, I will write my own impression of what works better.

In my quest about blogs and thinking about how to make my blog of value, I kept searching for ‘’meaning'’ (in blogs).

It is fascinating.

On one side, blogs and bloggers have come a long way and HAVE become a marketing and PR power for themselves and for companies they blog for. On the other side, majority of population in the US and the world is still so far from relating to what blogs are and how they can benefit from blogs or why they may want to start writing their own blogs.

Blogging is becoming a science in itself. Simple Google search on ‘why blog‘ will give you zillions of opinions on ‘why blog’, ‘how to and how not to (blog)’, ‘what works and does not’.

Having read 40-50 posts like that, and, oh well, having been intimidated by how far all advanced bloggers have gone, all I arrived at is one still has to find his own style by walking the road and testing what works and doesn’t. Intimidation is off, and am proceeding with making my blog of value. “Winning through intimidation” is the book that makes wonders when you find yourself in the sphere of those who have sharpened their pens and mastered/tested their ideas for years.

At the end of the day what makes it — Content is king, and one has got to blog for and with readers, not to and at them.

To capture a few points about blogging and posts that registered in my memory out of all:

1) David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati, analyzed the state of blogosphere on his blog (bullet points are quoted from David’s 05/01/06 posting):

• Technorati now tracks over 37.3 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour.

About 1/3 of that is written in English, 1/3 - in Japanese, and about 1/6 - in Chinese.

I read this as to become successful (in my definition - fairly readable) in blogging, one must somehow differentiate her blog among other 11 million ‘English speaking’ blogs. To ease that up a bit, take into account 55% of follow-ups and then apply the 80-20 rule twice, a new blogger competes with about 200,000 top bloggers along with all else on the net. Why 80-20 rule twice? Because it is really the top of the top that makes a difference. Apply it three times and you would be even closer to the top. Yes, sure, my finance mind keeps seeing math where it may not apply. The fact is still the fact: to bring oneself to the top, one has more work to do than if he/she’d started three years ago and kept at it.

2) Seth Godin in his Incomplete Guide on Blogs points out that there are essentially three types of blogs:

• Cat blog - a blog by and about oneself, one’s cat and, other life events.
  Cat type blogger can (and should) be happy with low traffic to his blog.

Why should? Because to be unhappy about the fact the world is not interested in your life stories is to be oblivious. People first want to be heard before they want to hear. If you think you hear them by making them aware of how you/your cat felt today, think some more… Be happy because you have already reached your audience — your remote relatives and friends are now aware of what’s going in your life, and that is already a step forward in your communication with them.

• Boss Blog — Blogs by bosses to make the public aware of strategic developments and tactical moves at their companies. Usually bosses can not reveal any news until it is not news any more, and as such, while might be educational for some, these blogs often lack zest important for majority to come back

• Viral Blogs - Blogs aiming start conversations, to bring points up, to spread ideas.

Viral blogs are the blogs that readers keep coming back to and keep spreading the word about. These are the blogs that are shaking traditional media, traditional (interruption) marketing, and traditional all.

3) I learned a lot about first steps and next steps in blogging from Guy Kawasaki’s blog.
4) A few more links that I found helpful in understanding what blogs are:

Blog’s view and Updated Manifesto

5) Blogs I found of interest are in my blog roll.

Prior to starting this blog, I have done my homework and have spent at the very least two weeks of sleepless nights on the net to read over existing blogs to learn what works, what does not, what others have arrived at (granted blogging has been in mainstream for over three years already).

Here I will share my first lessons learned and as I proceed I will be extending this post with further findings.

• How to bring more traffic to your blog
  All four are must read!

Seth Godin on Bringing more traffic to Blog

Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide on Web-Sites that Work

Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide on Blogs

No Blog is and Island

Guy Kawasaki on Blogging
On this one — go down the page to the posting on
April 20, 2006, The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog

• Designing and posting nicely formatted text

This can be a challenge even if one is familiar with html let alone if one does not know html,
(knowledge of html is not a necessity to be a great writer).

I am using Word Press — plain vanilla version with no modules or adds-on yet. I know enough html to get by, formatting text has proved to be a challenge.

More on the same issue:
Guy Kawasaki’s experience with postings in Typad #2
Guy Kawasaki’s experience with postings in Typad #1

Neither of the tools below I have tried yet. Will try and/or set up most of necessary plug-ins in the next few days like subscription and RSS feeds to my blog.

• Tools to improve formatting and make blogging more efficient

Ecto
Nvu
Mars Edit
Qumana - post from your desktop

In the course of the next few days I will be experimenting with this tools and will post what I settled on to make my blogging more efficient.

• Postings ranking

Majik Widget

Majikwidget is a widget to enable readers to rank postings.
There are three widgets:

* Ranking
* Polling
* Opening a new page from a link

• Subscription via Feedsburner

Feedsburner

• Subscription via email

Feedblitz

Technocrati

Tecnorati ranks blogs by external links coming from other sites.

• Blog platforms

Open source and can be hosted on TnR servers or set up on yours –
recommended due to more control over the look, content, and archives:
Wordpress

Proprietary and hosted externally:
Typepad
pricing: $5, $9, or $15 a month depending on features wanted

Moveble Type
pricing: $200, $350, $500 per license
this is more for corporate internal blogging solutions

Google’s Blogger
free, hosted by Google, easy interface, gives an easy way to incorporate adsense,
but this platform is hardly for a ‘professional/business’ blog

Feel free to leave comments on my blog. This will increase its rating as well as the rating of sites you will be referring to from the comments you leave. Thank you.

The idea of this blog came to me as a result of a chain of events that I may get to write about in more details in my future postings.  This chain started from a Practicum at Isenberg School of Management, UMASS Amherst, where TnR (myself in this case) worked with three very capable MBA students, Chris Woodworth, Erin Rice, and Christina Danforth, who helped find a niche where there is yet to be a lot done for telecommuters and potential candidates for telecommuting.

During Practicum, Chris Woodworth came up with an idea on how to ‘classify’ telecommuters to help understand their needs better. A picture worth a thousand words.

Among many other possible views, telecommuters can be classified based on where they work from, how many days they telecommute, and what generation they are (from Gen Yers to Gen Xers to Baby Boomers). Based on this view, there can be nine potential categories.

For example: a Baby Boomer working for a big corporation and telecommuting two days a week or a Generation Xer working from home for a small business and telecommuting five days a week.

This categorization will become meaningful and important as we explore needs of telecommuters in their telecommuting lives.

My Technorati Profile

This posting is to add my blog and profile to Technorati ratings. ‘Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere — the world of weblogs’ — from About Technorati.

In one of my next postings I will write about what I learned from the web on how to blog and what tools and tricks one has to embrace to be a successful blogger.

First, let’s agree on some definitions:

Telecommuter is someone who does not have to drive to her client and/or corporate office every day and can render her services while working from where she is, most often from home.

Telecommuting, as such, is working (most often) from home and connecting with the outside world (employer, clients) using advanced technologies and communication means like email, IM, VOIP, phone, ets.

A few more formal definitions we can get from Google search:

Telecommuter is a work-at-home computer user who connects to the corporate LAN backbone using remote access technologies. www.ohsu.edu/vcs/glossary/

Telecommuters spend at least part of their workday at home, using computers or other telecommunications equipment. Most telecommuters live on the fringe of large cities and in the suburbs and exurbs, in what is known as the “two-hour telecommuting ring”. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommuter

Hardly there is a fine line between telecommuter and commuter.

If you have to drive to your work place every day and your boss gives you a 30 minute lecture for being 15 minutes late after you were stuck in traffic for an hour, then you most probably a commuter. However, if you make souvenirs at home and sell them on Ebay, you potentially can be considered a telecommuter.

The precise definition is less important than the concept of providing more flexibility to do your work or to do what you love doing from where you are versus from where your boss/your client is as long as you meet the requirements for the quality of service/product you deliver.

A list of telecommuting jobs would include: programmer, web-designer, pr, writer, copywriter, life coach, customer rep, lawyer, accountant, sales professional, ‘manager’. In other words, professions requiring mental work vs. physical work often are good candidates for telecommuting and require less frequent presense ‘on site’. Or, as Forbes Publisher, Rich Karlgaard, alludes: ‘If you think or sell for a living–perhaps the only two career options if you don’t want your income arbitraged to the level of Shanghai or Bangalore–then two office days are certainly enough‘.

One of the most recent trends related to telecommuting, which I have yet comprehended, is telemedicine. I have a hard time with a diagnosis rendered over the net/TV. But, I guess there are enough (lonely) people who, when they see on a TV screen a ‘doctor’, that is a person in a white doctor’s smock, stating a ‘cold’ diagnosis and prescribing vitamines, more sleep, and more frequent work-out, start feeling better because they received some attention. Attention can make wonders.

As we proceed, we will have more definitions, for now let’s continue our exploration.

Hi! This is my first post to my blog On Telecommuting.

Telecommuting is certainly not a new concept. It became possible with an introduction of internet and new communication technologies. The term was coined by Jack Niells in 1973. The movement has been growing and received more publicity in the recent years mostly due to rising gas prices, a need to prepare for potential terrorist attacks and pandemic threats, and a search for work/life balance in our lives.

Telecommuting is not something unheard of any more.    There were 10 mil people in the US and 34 mil people in the world who telecommuted > 8 hours per week in 2005*, and there are 9 mil of solopreneurs working from home**.

What is interesting about telecommuting is that after a few years of experiencing telecommuting lives, we can look back and see what works and what doesn’t and see if we can find new ways to improve our work and life experiences.

I am anticipating an interesting road — new conversations, discussions, arguments, findings.

Join me in this exploration. Let’s see how we can help make the world a better place.

* Gartner Research, Publication Date: 09/14/2005 ID #: G00122284
Teleworking: The Quiet Revolution (2005 Update), Caroline Jones
** http://www.workingsolo.com/boco/faqboco.html