I was coming to Paris and knew it was going to be one of those out and about all day and half the night and with a side trip to another country kind of vacations. And it was January, which meant heavy luggage. What was I going to do, lug my laptop around with me? Leave it in a safe? Certainly not in the room!

And when, realistically, was I going to use it? Those café tables are hardly big enough for two beers. I knew from experience there was a computer in the lobby of my hotel where I could check my e-mail for X Euros per X number of minutes. So the laptop stayed home. It was not easy.

Now the days of deprivation of this magnitude are over, luckily for you! Prepare yourself for the Parisian dream geek vacation.

Mama Shelter, a luxurious hotel in the 20th arrondissement of Paris wants you. But why would you want to stay out on the eastern edge of Paris instead of in the heart of the Latin Quarter with the other 80 million tourists? Well, it is only a couple of blocks from the eerily beautiful Père Lachaise cemetery (one of my favorite places in Paris and where many of my favorite heroes, eccentrics and geniuses are buried: Oscar Wilde, Molière, Gertrude Stein, Colette, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison…).

But mostly because at Mama Shelter, they’ve done away with the TV entirely and put at least one 24-inch iMac in every room. Of course, the wi-fi is free. And every room has an office. The incredibly cool bar has live music and iMacs too.

Geek bonus: Wookie mask bedside lamp, the pièce de résistance.

Even though I’m more Star Trek than Star Wars, I adore this place already, and am planning a surprise getaway there with my husband. (At least it was a surprise till I posted this.)

Mama Shelter is the brainchild of the Trigano family (co-founders of Club Med) and French philosopher Cyril Aouizerate (only in France, right?). Its edgy interior was done by renowned designer Philippe Starck. Words cannot do this place justice. You have to check out the site. And then the hotel! Rates right now, since it’s off season, are from 79 € – 139 €. Totally affordable!

If any of you are going to be here for Le Web ’08 Paris in December, you might want to see if they have any room!

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You can kiss your home office good-bye (hopefully temporarily). So now what?

There may be co-working spaces near you, but they’re not quite as ubiquitous as Starbucks yet… You can dig (and dig and dig) through craigslist and hope it’s your lucky day and that your dream workspace will appear in the first 10 listings (because looking at any more than that is mind numbing and hazardous to your health) and that the people with the perfect space for rent that miraculously appears in listing number seven actually respond to you when you do contact them. (I have a very low tolerance for classifieds sites, can you tell?)

You can go to Regus, the slick, corporate rent-a-workspace/meeting room/virtual office people, and deal with “a representative” who will probably try to sell you a plan or a package or something. (That’s just the impression I get from looking at their site and knowing how American businesses operate… I could be wrong.)

Or… You can check out ShareYourOffice.com, a new project with a whole lot of potential. It’s a free service for people who need office space, or those who have extra space they’d like to fill with a warm, rent-paying body.

Wait! Before you say, “Not interested” and stop reading, think of this: it’s a French startup. Parisian. Which means most of the office spaces (at the moment) are in Paris. Ever dreamed of living and working in France?

Why not get outta Dodge for a month or three and rent a workspace in some gorgeous, 19th-century (or older) building with hardwood floors and crown molding on the high ceilings, curlycue iron balconies embracing every giant window… And they have fancy espresso machines in their offices here, and teensy weensy cups (like in those annoying George Clooney Nespresso commercials). No donuts on Fridays, though. No donuts period. (Small price to pay, if you ask me.)

You can search for a space using multiple criteria (number of desks, physical space, amenities, price range), and you can see your search results on a Google map. You can create an alert so you’ll receive an e-mail if something that fits your criteria comes up. Those with space to offer can provide many details, so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. (Here’s a demo.)

The site began as bureauxapartager.com (offices to share), a project of FaberNovel, a management consulting company with their fingers in many pies. The company recently translated the site into English and kindly bought a domain name we anglophones could remember how to spell. The project came into being because the company had some extra office space and, being groovy techie webbie types, they decided to offer their space to stray geeks in need.

The idea has since grown into something very cool. They want to accumulate office space and focus on startups in need of incubator space, and plan to offer them space at a below-market rate. All in the spirit of cooperation and community that pervades the (generally) youthful and idealistic tech crowd. (I so dig all that warm fuzziness.) And, as we speak, they’re submitting a proposal to the City of Paris, which currently has plans to build 50,000 m2 of space for incubators in the city. (How sweet is that, by the way?) The bureauxapartager proposal urges the city to consider using existing space instead, by encouraging businesses to use their platform to rent their spare space to co-workers and startups.

I really like the idea of this project. I think we don’t really know what the economic storm that’s brewing will bring, and this platform could not only be a great service for web workers in need of a change of scenery, but it could also potentially help businesses pay their rent if they fall on hard times.

Help spread the word (and the grooviness)!

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I didn’t find the millions of euros I was hoping for (I admit I didn’t try very hard). But I did find some real live French web workers/startup founders (including a delightful web-working couple with the delightfully French names of Sylvain and Jacinthe) and a startup with an app we web workers can use (more on that soon).

I also discovered La Cantine, which is where the event was held. It’s a great co-working space run by Silicon Sentier, a nonprofit networking organization for tech professionals.

La Cantine provides 14 individual workstations with an ADSL connection and another space where 12 people can meet, or where 30 people can view a presentation. The atmosphere is very Parisian, as you can see. There’s even a wet bar in one corner, so the space can easily be converted from work to après work. More of that magnificent French work/life balance.

Silicon Sentier offers regular events, presentations and topical public gatherings at La Cantine, several of which recently focused on women and tech. The La Cantine website will soon feature an international social network for web workers and co-workers (something I’ve been wishing for) called “Coworkers United.”

So if you’re passing through Paris, even though the whole city is (un)wired for wi-fi, you might want to consider popping into La Cantine for an authentic Parisian web-working experience!

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I’ll be wearing two hats there (hopefully neither of them a lampshade, but there will be an open bar, so we’ll see…). One is my entrepreneur hat; of course I’m hoping somebody who hasn’t lost all his or her wealth in the crash will dig my elevator pitch to the tune of several million Euros. But aren’t we all? I’m sure there will be lots of talk about the Wall Street fiasco and what it means for the tech industry and entrepreneurs looking for funding. Should be interesting.

The other hat is my web worker hat.

I’m very curious to talk to the other entrepreneurs who will be there. I have a hunch that a high proportion of startup founders are web workers. We live outside of the box. We march to the beat of our own drums. And similar metaphors. Right?

We tend to be early adopters and know more about new trends and technologies than the average Joe. Because of that, I imagine we get some really good ideas. Just about all the web workers I know put their energy and skills and creative minds into side projects, whether for fun or profit. Do you? I’ll be testing my hypothesis at the Meetup and hopefully meeting some local web workers.

The other thing I’m curious about is what Mike Gunderloy asked a couple of weeks ago in his post Where are the exciting startups? He said he hadn’t seen anything come out of recent startup conferences that struck him as particularly innovative or useful for web workers. I haven’t either. I’ll be looking to see if there are any at this soirée that might get Mike and the rest of us web workers excited. Rumor has it that innovation in the Old World is on the rise.

Lastly, if you are planning to be at the Paris Meetup, please let me know in the comments! And if you don’t make it to this one, maybe I’ll catch you next time!

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In fact, when you’re working with people from any culture other than your own, you should be prepared to deal with assumptions and expectations regarding work that may be radically different from yours.

Now, before moving here two years ago, I had heard my whole francophile life that the French all went on vacation in August. But of course, that had to be hyperbole, right? I’ve concluded at this point that it’s not much of an exaggeration.

Here’s the scenario. I have a startup project and have brought the two co-directors of a French multimedia design firm on board. In early July, we signed a contract to outsource a software development project and had a strategic planning meeting where we agreed to get some tasks done by the end of August. Then Poof! my partners disappeared. By disappeared, I mean that I haven’t heard from them in weeks.

My advisor and lawyer were also nowhere to be found this month. No appointments were available in August at the French government agency we’re going to for funding.

The developer on the project is British and lives in London. I’m American. He and I kept plugging along, as you might expect. We’re web workers, after all, and nobody’s giving us paid vacation time!

One of the things I’ve always admired about the French is that they have a serious handle on the work/life balance thing. I really do like that about this culture. When they aren’t working, they aren’t working. That means when they’re at lunch, they’re savoring the food and, not infrequently, a glass of wine or beer, while their iPhones and Blackberries remain tucked away in their pockets.

And obviously, when they’re on vacation, they’re on vacation.

Before you jump to any conclusions about the French based on this summer exodus habit of theirs, I want to point out that there are plenty of French people who have been working this summer, my husband included. And although the French work fewer hours than Americans do, they have the highest hourly productivity of any country (that’s GDP per hours worked). Many argue that they’re more productive when they are working because they take more time off. They’re doing something right anyway; American companies are France’s primary investors.

But I’m trying to launch a startup here and, in my American view, “startup” and “vacation” are mutually exclusive concepts. This means I’m having a hard time reconciling my simultaneous respect and frustration when it comes to this culture’s work habits. So for several weeks, while I’ve managed this development project alone, I’ve been schizophrenically alternating between furious and flabbergasted, experiencing moments of admiration here and there. Admiration, for my partners’ having the discipline to take time all the way off, that is. The thing is, they probably don’t even realize how negatively an American partner could interpret the fact that they go completely off the grid the way they do. I’m quite sure these guys know less about how Americans operate than I know about how the French operate. I probably come across like some kind of business dominatrix to them.

My husband, also a web worker, has been on the receiving end of work ethic-related misconceptions himself. For example, project managers at a major Chinese translation agency for which he does a great deal of software localization seem incapable of grasping that he doesn’t work on weekends, and certainly not for his regular rates.

So where does that leave us? As web workers, we are increasingly placed in the position of having to work with cultures that don’t see work the way we do. It can be frustrating, or even infuriating for all parties. But then again, working with people who have different perspectives, priorities, and ways of thinking can enrich your work, your product, and your life.

If you find yourself working with people from other cultures, my advice is to be very explicit about your expectations and make sure you know theirs from the very start of your negotiations to avoid any misunderstandings down the line. Try to educate yourself about doing business with that culture. As for my French partners, I’m going to ignore my culturally programmed performance criteria—for now—and give these guys a chance to show me what they can do when they’re not vacationing.

I’d be very interested to hear about cultural disconnects you’ve experienced, how they impacted your work, and how you’ve handled them!

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