Adventures in home working

Inspired by listening to talks about the Microsoft Research project, My Life Bits, I decided it would be a good idea to record my telephone conversations when I can. Fortunately it turns out to be really easy if you use Skype and the free program HotRecorder.  The product is not the prettiest I have ever used, and the UI is a bit quirky but it gets the job done.  Recording quality is good, and you can add key words and the name of the person you called to each recording making retrieval easy.  The ad-supported version is free and the premium version is only $14.95.  Well worth trying out, if only to listen to the different responses you get when you tell people you are recording the call, from the slightly guarded/worried to the “where can I get a copy”, so far!

If you want to get up-to speed on My Life Bits I recommend the recording on IT conversations, which I listened to on my Treo while walking along the beach last week.

My Life Bits progress so far:

• Photo’s
• Emails
• Web pages
• Documents read
• Documents reviewed
• Audio listened to
• Contacts talked to, or want to talk to
• Bills, receipts, letters, certificates and most other paper etc

After an initial abortive attempt at using Skype I started to use it again yesterday with impressive results. Certainly BT to BT calls seem excellent, BT to cable was where I had the problems last time I tried. In fact I was so impressed that I purchased a SkypeIn number and unlimited voicemail for £24 for 12 months, which is a lot cheaper and more flexible than installing a business line. I then setup my Treo so that when I am at home all of my calls are automatically forwarded to my SkypeIn number and hence to my main desktop. When I leave home all calls revert to my Treo.

Anyone wanting to test out the quality – if you know me – ring my mobile on Wednesday; chances are it will divert you to my SkypeIn number, even better get Skype yourself!

If it all works as expected then my wife will be pleased because I won’t be hogging the home telephone line, and it’s much easier working with my microphone and PC speakers than with a conventional phone/speakerphone. I need to test it later on my Tablet over wireless so that I keep my home mobility.

Whilst investigating I also came across a really useful web application called Public Mind, which Skype is currently using to gauge demand for new features.  I found it because I searched google for “Trillian Skype” because I wanted to know if Skype had a plug-in for my favorite Instant Messaging agregator/portal Trillian pro.  anyway they didn’t but 286 other people have voted for that feature.  On their site they say:

Public Mind is helping Skype to find out what new features its users want the most.  This is a free service that lets you join with others to leverage the Internet and get what you want. Use it to gather critical mass, demonstrate real demand, and get Skype to take action.  Zero spam

This stuff is now mainstream, Skype has over 1 Million customers who have signed up for SkypeOut, the gateway to the analogue voice system.  As I write there are 2.3 Million people on-line using the free Internet Skype to Skype service.

I have gradually refined my workstation design, and its changed quite a lot since the last time I posted.  So I thought I would provide an update.  This first image shows an overview of the whole environment, there are some key points to look out for:

• First I two PC’s shown at the bottom, the one on the left is my desktop, running Windows 2003 Server, with 2GB of memory and VM Ware Workstation and all of my other applications.  This PC drives the three monitors via two ATI graphics boards.

Behind the PC’s in a curtain that my wife made for me that hides one hell of tangle of cables!

On top of the centre monitor is a USB web cam.  On the CRT monitor is my headphone jack and volume control and my Secure ID token (dual factor authentication) for my company VPN connection.

The two monitors centre and left are 19” TFT’s that run at 1280*1024.  The one on the right is a 19” Flat CRT.   I tend to use the one of the left for email, reference materials, instant message discussions etc.  The one in the middle for writing, presentations and reading, and the one on the left for Trillian Pro (docked far right) and web searches, and web reference material I am gathering up as I work as a set of tabs in Maxthon.

Lets look at things in a bit more detail now:

Working from the left again,  right next to my keyboard is my HP TC1000 Tablet in slate mode ready for jotting down notes etc.  I syncs wirelessly in the background with my email and files and I can use it wireless anywhere in the house and garden,  further afield it has a GPRS connection.  When I don’t need it it slides under the shelf out of the way.

Then there is a wireless mouse,  that slides under the shelf as well.  You can see just above the mouses cubby hole is a small pad of paper, sometimes I still prefer to make notes on paper.

The on the right is one of two DECT (wireless) phones.  These phones pick up my landline calls and my mobile calls when my Treo in its cradle, because the reception is better on the wireless phones than on the Treo and they are easier to hold.  We also have phones through the house, so i don’t have to carry my Treo everywhere I go in the house just in case I get a call.

On the top of the shelf is my speaker phone.  Its on a long cord so I can drag it onto the main desk and then I can sit back in my comfy chair with my feet up making notes on my tablet when I am on conference calls.

Whenever I go out I suspend my Tablet and drop it in my backpack and grab my Treo and I am off.  My backpack has everything I need when I am out walking and has a swim kit just in case I am tempted to pop into the pool.  It’s really small and light, but is ultra comfy which is important to me as it minimises the load on shoulders which are often in pain.

On the other side of my keyboard you can see my Treo in its cradle.  As soon as it slots in the cradle it forwards calls to the house phone number,  and when I take it out of the house, it switches off call divert (unless I ask it not to).  Then in the tray under my desk shelf is my TO READ pile,  I still get a few magazines.  Another pad of paper sits between the paper tray and the shelf and above that with the green glowing light is the microphone for skype calls.

Finally their is another PC (2GB again), which is running GSX server and my lab environment. which is currently running, Windows SharePoint Services,  Red Hat Enterprise linux 3, Windows XP VPN connected to my company network, Windows NT 4 to remember what things used to be like and Red hat Linux 8.  VMWare is just so cool!

Way over to the right tucked away in the corner is my printer, copier, scanner.  Its a HP D125xi with a sheet feeder and two paper trays,  one with good quality and one with cheap paper.  My wife makes more use of it than I do as a printer,  but I scan almost everything into PaperPort Pro which converts everything to PDF files.

Anyway thats a pretty good high level introduction.  Follow the links above for more details.

James, author of the jkOnTheRun weblog, covering all thing mobile, emailed me yesterday to let me know about his new podcast on all things Tablet.  I have recently been getting into podcasts and listen to them when I am out walking or swimming.  This time though I listened to James at 5* speed in Windows Media Player at home while I followed the products and sites he mentioned in my browser.  All in all the combination of the 5* speed and the excellent content made for a very useful 10–15 minutes.  Podcasting has definately got a future!

Check out the podcast, James covers a wide range of topics, including: 

• The under utilisation of speech recognition
• Inking strategies and the effect of inking on the creative process
• Alternative pen input applications including ritePen, OrangeGuava and a rumour of a Tablet enabled version of ActiveWords.

Here is a list of the main sites he mentioned, snipped from his blog.

Tablet PC Buzz- Spencer Goad, Rob Bushway
Tablet PC Talk- Chris de Herrera
What is New- Lora Heiny
Tablet PC Weblog- Marc Orchant
Tablet PC Questions- Layne Heiny (newsgroup)
Tablet PC Post- Lora & Layne; software info and downloads
The Student Tablet PC- Tracy Hooten & Trevor Claiborne
Tablet PC2- Linda Epstein
Incremental Blogger- Loren Heiny
Rob Bushway’s Blog
Bootstrapped- Iggy Kin
Tablet PC Place- Christopher James
Life on the Wicked Stage- Warner Crocker (apologies to Warner- he is a Theatre Director and not Stage Director)

If you read my blog then you know I am pretty passionate about office design in general and have a category devoted to related issues.  So I was interested to see dave’s ideas for creating an office for writing, where in particular he describes the benefits of consolidating all of his computing needs onto a single device.  Bryan responds that he is struggling to cope with 3 computers. 

I found both interesting perspectives, especially since I have quite a number of computers, and largely find the experience quite rewarding.  Here is a snapshot of how I work.

I have a main machine, its powerful, and drives three 19″ monitors, and a great wireless keyboard and mouse.  When I sit at this workstation its optimised for writing, analysing and information gathering.  I have everything to hand and hopefully will soon be getting a optimised chair so I can work for more than half an hour without too much pain.  My main PC is a Windows 2003 Server which allows me to work without admin priv, and always have an admin RDP session open for when I need it.

I have a lab server because my main machine needs to always be available, and always connected to the Internet – It’s the heart of my home network – I don’t take risks with it.  So I have another server that runs VMware GSX server that I use for all my testing, and I have one virtual machine running XP on the server that I reserve for connecting via VPN into my company network.  This machine is very clean and well protected by firewalls, AV and all the latest patches and almost no software.  I never browse the internet from this machine or access email, but it does pickup patches from the net and AV sig’s daily).  I can access the consoles of any of the Virtual machines from my main PC, and display them on any of my 3 monitors.  of course I can also use RDP to access the host server.

I have a Tablet.  I need to move around a lot, because of my medical condition my docutors recommend that I get out and about as much as I can, working in different locations in the house and cycling and walking.  When I stop for breaks for example at a cafe, in the park, on the beach etc I like to do reading and reviewing, it helps break up my day.  I want my Tablet as light as possible and I want to focus my time away from my desk on reading and reviewing, so I don’t want a keyboard and I don’t want loads of apps or Virtual Machines etc.  When I am at home my Tablet lays flat on my desk just like a paper notepad and I use it to jot notes down in OneNote when I am conference calls.  Robocopy scripts run in the background constatly keeping my “To  read” “To review” “To watch” “To listen to” and “web snippets”  folders up to date on both machines.  The final bit of the Tablet mobility puzzle is that I create collections of web pages I want to read as groups in myIE2, these groups sync to my Tablet and just before I leave I open the groups and download maybe 20-30 web pages which I can then read at my leisure. 

I find the whole tablet experience very liberating, and the maintenance of the two machines in sync effortless.  I also feel that my Tablet is a very personal device, its my music, mobile video, eBook, photo album, notepad, eWallet, mobile filing cabinet (everything paper is scanned using paperport).

I also have a company laptop which is kept very clean, just like the Virtual machine which I connect to the company network when I am actually physically in the office.  Robocopy scripts keep this machine up to date each day so I always have everything with me at work, and a backup as well.

There is more detail on how all this hangs together in the rest of my blog for anyone who is interested.

As usual Brian Madden has all of the latest information on Citrix, this time it’s the main features in Metraframe Presentation Server 4.  Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me.

Citrix’s future technologies include:

• Smart Access
• ActiveSync via ICA
• TWAIN imaging device ICA redirection (scanners, cameras, etc.)
• Performance management technology licensed from Aurema and RTO
• Audio enhancements in preparation for VoIP
• EMF-based Printing
• Windows 64-bit support
• Application Isolation Environments
• Virtual IP addresses
• GoToWebinar
• ICA Session Recording, Archiving, and Surveilling
• Hardware Appliances

For a more detailed list of each feature check bout Brian’s web site

I admit I have written a business case or two in the past that included saving paper.  One actually did make the savings it claimed, but the other like millions of others resulted in more paper usage.  There is a good article on the topic on the Bloor blog IT-Director.com.  But what caught my eye was this:

So why in these cost conscious times isn’t anyone bothering to pursue this line! Well there is no golden result; the beneficiaries are spread all over the cost centres that use the floor space. The floor space seems to be nobody’s real concern once you have it. Accountants hardly have the energy, experience and drive to get this particular show on the road when there are easier pickings in telling cost centres to reduce their numbers or capital items in their annual budgets.

What Michael has hit upon here is the same reason that Personal Productivity has dropped off the agenda within most enterprises.  No one owns it, and the benefit is widely distributed.  I wrote about this in a previous article.

Back in 2001, I was given the opportunity to create my own team.  It was a great opportunity and I pulled a team of about 30 people together to work on Architecture and Systems Integration projects in the Infrastructure arena.  We hit upon a slight problem though we could not find any space within the existing company buildings in the area.  This presented us with another great opportunity, work from home, or find and design our own office.  This is the story of how we designed our Office and what we learned.

1. At the time, (and still today), my company designs its offices by giving a guy with Visio a template desk and char and an outline of the office and asking him to cram as many desks in as he can.  We actually have a few show case offices where they go to the other extreme, but we had no where near that budget.
2. Starting with a very small budget and a very traditional culture we set about our search and found a large empty space not far from one of existing buildings.
3. We spent our budget with great care.  For example we restricted fixed networking to the outside walls, and invested the money we saved buying everyone laptops and wireless cards, (70% of us had laptops already).
4. We purchased tables, instead of desks, which were much cheaper and allowed us to fund loads of conference rooms and break out areas
5. We encouraged everyone to bring in their books and magazines from home and created a fantastic library
6. We didn’t allocate people desks, rather we allocated teams clusters of desks that they could organise as they wished.  This increased our utilisation and freed up money to allow us to get a great coffee machine, electronic whiteboards and projectors
7. We did not wire the office for phones, we purchased a load of cheap DECT, (wireless phones), which fitted in great with our flexible environment.  We spent the money we saved on phone lines and wiring to buy everyone a mobile.

You get the idea.  The resulting office looked a bit like the following diagram.  I say a bit like because we changed it around all of the time.  This was dead easy as everything was wireless and the tables were easy to move.

The environment was designed around zones that provided support for the following working scenarios:

• Need to sit and read, research  etc
• Library Space, comfy chairs, book cases and magazine racks etc
• Need to sit in a corner and work on your own
• Hot desk, small desk areas with fixed networking connections
• Need to work collaboratively
• Collaborative space, tables that can be arranged flexibly, whiteboards and projector screens for design reviews
• Need to discuss privately
• Traditional ‘conference’ rooms
• Need to do builds
• Tables to reduce desk clutter, Virtual Machines used for build development prior to targeting specific hardware
• Need to demonstrate and undertake design reviews
• Demonstration room, two projectors, electronic whiteboards, demonstration stations
• Labs and server room
• For use for ‘dog-food’ and concept development lab facilities

We had a cunning plan around utilisation as well:

1. We bought a whole load a storage trays and put them on every table block and filled them with every kind of stationary item people needed
2. We provided laptops to everyone so they had no excuse for needing paper files
3. We put coat racks all around so people did not take ownership of chairs
4. We provided everyone with personal storage, but not at the desk.  After a month people hardly every used it, they got so used to keeping everything electronic.
5. Because everyone was wireless and no one had desks people just sat and worked in the environment that suited and with whoever they needed to.  This was almost always possible because there was always space available because we under utilised it.  In a traditional office everyone has a desk, and that desk is only actually used 50-60% of the time, (holidays, meetings, off-site visits etc.

We got a great culture going as well:

1. Everyone was involved in the initial design and the re-designs
2. Everyone liked the facilities and the flexibility
3. People collaborated much more
4. Teams designed their own environments and working practices
5. People relaxed a lot more and did more research in the breakout areas
6. Do not disturb areas were created for people needing to do quiet work
7. We showed a lot of visitors around, and everyone took pride in this and it helped to keep the place tidy
8. Even though we cost less than average everyone was much better equipped
9. We had team meetings in the big conference area every week, and we funded the food from savings
10. We held a children’s party to say thanks to the team, and used the office.  The kids loved the eWhiteboards and we had two DVD movies playing on the projectors.  We had the biggest pass the parcel I have ever seen with about 40 kids!
11. We ran a tuck shop and gave load of cash to charity
12. We created an automated sandwich ordering system
13. We bought loads of books and everyone was encouraged to learn and develop
14. The team was led by technically savvy managers, with project managers working in a supporting role.   

 It was probably my best team leader experience, a great couple of years!

I have been quite happy with my two monitor setup at home,  but using maxivista I am now able to drive three monitors from my main desktop PC.  This is just great.  I can now have my email in one, my RSS feeds in another, be using Office in another etc.  I am also using a lot of virtual PC’s and I can have these displaying on different monitors.  So I can have RedHat on one monitor and SUSE on another and still be using Office on my third.  It really must have driven my productivity up 20% when I am doing this sort of work, which is probably 50% of the time.  That’s at least £100/day.  A staggering return on investment – the third monitor, (old laptop), was being scrapped and Maxivista is about $40!!

The other great advantage is that your concentration and focus is not disrupted, you might think it would be, but it seems that by not switching applications all the time, and by being able to focus on the task at hand on your primary screen, the other two monitors just provide supporting information.

We really must get more people to understand the value proposition of multiple screens!  

Inspired by interest in my humble office …. 

There are two discussion threads active on the GTD forum on Offices.  The first is asking people about their home offices and I have replied to this with some links to my blog.  Inspired by the interest people seem to have I have updated some of the pictures and added a couple of new ones.  Of particular note is my new baby spider phone, (brand new and 2/3 off retail price off eBay!):

Then Eric Mack got into the act with this “not so tidy” desk post, and another post that links to his blog:

I cope with this by having a designated untidy area:

My wife and kids also have a desk each, and share this one in my office, which helps keep them away from mine: