Where I Work…
Many people assume that Alfresco has formal offices throughout the US. Even my business card says I’m based in an über-prime location on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. But that fact is that thus far, Alfresco’s 10 US-based employees all work from home offices or in the case of Kevin Cochrane, a shared office with a few other startups. Working from home has many benefits, such as reduced real-estate costs for Alfresco (making great fiduciary sense), no commutes (more time to work and better for the environment), and in my case I get to see my wife (who’s 7 months pregnant) on a daily basis.
One might also assume that by working from home, I might miss out on the camaraderie and strong personal bonds forged among office colleagues, but the fact of the matter is that I consider all my colleagues throughout the country to be good friends. We shorten the vast distances that separate us through email, instant messaging, Skype, and telephone. To be honest, I never feel alone… Even though we sometimes don’t see each other for months at a time.
One problem that any newcomer to “telecommuting” will most likely encounter relates to the distractions that may present themselves at home during the course of the day and believe me, there can be many. The main way that I mitigate these distractions is by having a dedicated, personal workspace (my home office) where I can close the door and obtain privacy when necessity demands it. I try my best to keep my personal space clutter free (though it may not look that way) and organized as best as I can so as to reduce stress. This I need to temper with my utter addiction to all things electronic. With that I’d like to give you a tour of my workspace.
First up is a view of my desk as one steps into my inner sanctum. I chose a large wrap-around desk from Ikea with plenty of horizontal space to put things and keep them organized.
Note that I have multiple computers and monitors (all flatscreen LCD’s to save space). To the left you’ll see my HP Color Laserjet 2600, at $200 it’s probably the smartest purchase I’ve ever made. After 1 year, I’m still using the original toner cartridges.
I only use one keyboard and mouse to control all my computers, but I don’t use a KVM switch. Instead I use Synergy which is a software utility I can load on my PC, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux box and all I have to do is move my mouse cursor to the edge of the screen and it bounces straight to the next computer in line. Really sweet stuff!
I keep in touch with my colleagues and customers through Vonage, but when I’m on the road, my Vonage line automatically forwards calls to my new Samsung Blackjack from Cingular. Although I’m not a big fan of Windows Mobile, the UI and features are functional enough to justify picking it up when you take the ultra-slim form-factor into consideration.
I pride myself in being able to record quality podcasts having spent about $75 in hardware and software, but recently decided to borrow my friend’s more expensive podcast rig and see what kind of difference it makes in the quality of the audio.
What you see here is a Mackie Onyx 8-Channel mixer with the Firewire connectivity option, an AudioTechnica microphone (with pop filter), a DBX 266XL Compressor/Gate and a decent pair of studio headphones. These are connected to my MacBook Pro and I’ll be recording a new podcast with this rig very soon. I’m quite excited about this!
That’s pretty much it. I hope you’ve enjoyed my little tour. In the next day or so, I’ll be posting about the evolution of portal technology and what we can expect in the future.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
[...] And so the reason why I’m still up at 5 in the morning is because I did a little more reading than usual and ended up putting myself in an excited state. Tonight I started reading up on SharePoint and eventually found myself first to Alfresco and then finally to a blog post of one of it’s developers on the same topic. Same setup, same problem/s. He does share his “secret” on how to deal with it: [...]