Rethinking the ‘office’

Last weekend I went to an event called Trampoline, which was an un-conference (the attendees decide what topics are going to be spoken about). 

Weirdly though, it got me thinking about my own office.  Actually offices, as I have three.  My North Melbourne office, where I run the Churchill Club from, my South Yarra office, where I run my Flinders Pacific activities from, and my home office where I do everything else.

I realised a traditional office offers :

• A workspace – but hang on, I can work anywhere.
• Consolidated infrastructure – but all my systems are in the cloud, and peripherals like laser printers are now so cheap I can afford to have a couple of them.
• Co-workers within easy reach – but my co-workers are geographically distributed but still in easy reach due to email, Skype and Google Docs.
• Meeting places – but I always seem to meet for coffee in a café or lunch in a restaurant.
• Chance meetings – serendipity still happens, but for me it occurs from meeting new people at functions or in cafe’s.
• Buzz – this is definitely missing for me, as creative brainstorming, sharing and camaraderie just don’t happen by yourself.

So how do I get back the buzz?

Well Trampoline got me thinking about about how communities are redefining organisational models.  A quick bit of research and I came across some interesting solutions to office space.

The free

Jelly is an American concept where someone basically opens up their workspace to let others work from there.  Sit around a table, get free wireless internet access, meet and bounce ideas off other independent spirits (normally geeks, graphic designers and ideas people).  Melbourne Jelly seems to happen around once a fortnight.

The very cheap (from around $2 per day

From the blog co-working I found out that there is slightly more commercialised version of Jelly where you can share renting of office space.  More on a Melbourne solution can be found here.

The cheap (from around $15 per day)

And finally I came across an organisation tapping into the “meeting in the café” type of work arrangements.  In Melbourne and Sydney, Bureaux runs an interesting workspace that combines café space, meeting rooms, hot desks and even a library.

Interesting that as our work habits evolve, office space doesn’t die, it just re-invents itself to suit.