Lowry explained that the human has been taken out of work at many large companies and led to a “hierarchical, document-centric culture.” But changing that culture to one that’s more collaborative and social requires people who are willing to admit that they don’t know everything, the so-called “naked intellectualists” who can expose their lack of knowledge and act as a model for other employees trying to learn how to switch gears after what might be a lifetime of thinking in terms of documents, and delivering goods once they are finished and having a very buttoned down mentality.

Of course, this assumes a company wants and benefits form having a human-centric model. In the panel discussion, Dennis O’Malley, VP of Services at Moxie Software explained that offering social and collaborative tools doesn’t always end up boosting productivity. In some ways it may help make a company more agile and improve quality, metrics that may not be easily measured and hard for managers to justify. Yet he believes that over time, implementing collaborative and social tools can help the bottom line by reducing waste or identifying problems early enough so they can be fixed.

He gave an example of a pharmaceutical company that reduced time wasted in its supply chain by 40 percent because employees could anticipate upcoming problems by looking at the social tools. Plus, even if the company doesn’t think it’s ready to be human-centric, employees may disagree and find their own ways around IT structures that force them to use document-centric tools. Lowry said she recently got a sales call form a social vendor who said that 800 employees under the Turner domain were already buying the company’s product, so it might make sense for Turner to buy the product at an enterprise level.

The overall gist of the talk was that social tools are not a panacea, nor are they a problem. When companies understand the value and help employees become used to thinking in a human-centric way as opposed to in a document-centric way, work changes, but ultimately it can change in ways that are beneficial.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast
• Report: Web Worker Survey 2010

Flexible office locations and teleworking reduce the need for as many square feet per employee, according to a real estate broker that specializes in flexible work space. Broadband is also changing the workforce in other ways, by altering the definition of work and ideas about how productive an employee could be, according to Your Office Agent, a real-estate consultancy that helps businesses find space for remote workers and flexible offices.

As a broadband lover and remote worker, I’m intrigued with how broadband changes the way people work, so a blog post on the company site yesterday caught my eye. It said:

Companies have traditionally strived to have between 100 and 200 square feet per employee but, by employing alternative workplace strategies such as teleworking, smart working and outsourcing, this can be brought down to as low as 50 square foot per employee. Yes, we are talking about serious savings here.

At GigaOM, about two-thirds of the editorial staff are remote, with most of us working from home or from co-working spaces. Our home office is also devoid of real cubicles, and I would guess that our overall square footage per employee is on the low end when all of that is taken into account. The down side of this flexibility is that it can leave employees without an “office” and feeling distant from colleagues. Another issue is who pays when the employee doesn’t have a home office and wants to work from a co-working venture or a traditional office space?

For example, if someone doesn’t want to work by themselves at home, does a company that is willing to hire them have to suddenly invest in office space? I’ve seen it happen both ways, where a company made the investment and actually saw the business grow and where a company decided not to hire the employee. That’s pretty binary, which is why I think Your Office Agent or companies like LiquidSpace, which is like an AirBnB for office space are so interesting. If you’re interested in these kinds of questions too, we have an entire conference on how broadband is changing work in December called Net:Work.

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• The future of Wi-Fi in the enterprise
• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce

I have to admit, I’m still not convinced that the iPad will be my laptop replacement. However, with the help of the Apple wireless keyboard and some other peripherals and apps, it can come close. Here are some tips to make your iPad work-worthy.

1. Make audio calls via VoiP. Audio calls via Skype on the iPad work like a dream. Just plug in the earbuds that you usually use for your iPhone, fire up the Skype app and make your audio calls. There are other VoiP apps that will work on the iPad without charging fees, such as Viber, but they require that the other person also has the same software on her device. You can even use Google Voice on the iPad,  albeit with a little extra elbow grease.

2. Editing images and video. You can get digital photos and videos directly from your cameras using the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, which comes with a USB adapter and SD Card Reader. I was a little skeptical about using the iPad touchscreen for editing images, but after downloading and trying the free PhotoPad by ZAGG, I’ve found it makes it fairly easy to manipulate images, including color and contrast adjustments, rotating and sizing, adding color fills, and even treating images with filters. You can also get Adobe Photoshop Express for free if you’re already familiar with Photoshop.

For video, an app like Splice can help you do some basic video editing (including combining photos and video) for free, or there’s Splice Pro for $1.99. For more editing oomph, you can go for iMovie for $4.99, although it requires a front-facing camera on your device (so iPad 2, iPhone 4 or 4th-generation iPod touch only).

3. Recording voice memos and podcasts. There are a variety of voice memo–recording solutions you can use on your iPad using its built-in microphone, including Voice Memos for iPad by KendiTech, which is similar to the Voice Memos app on the iPhone. For 99 cents, you get the basic version; for an additional 99 cents via an in-app purchase, you get the ability to trim your memos, email memos and download to your computer via USB. The export button makes your memos available via iTunes File Sharing. QuickVoice is another iPad option to record and email audio clips up to 5 MB in size for free. The $2.99 to upgrade to QuickVoice Pro can handle up to 20 MB clips. You can record and export audio clips via iTunes for free using iRecorder voice memos.

If you want more editing features, try GarageBand ($4.99). Although it features instruments, you can use it for podcasting as well.

Here’s a little voice recording hack I learned from a fellow podcaster: You can use the Camera Connection Kit and USB adapter to plug in a lightweight USB microphone to your iPad to increase the quality of your voice recordings. Using a USB mic also helps to cut down on background noise that the built-in iPad mic might pick up.

When I tried to use my high-end Rode Podcaster microphone, my iPad told me it required too much power, so it did not work. But when I plugged in the Konami microphone from my Wii Glee Karaoke game, it worked pretty well. A quick search online reveals that some podcasters use the Blue Microphone Yeti with their iPads.

3. Powering slide presentations. If you’re looking to connect your iPad (or iPhone or iPod) to a standard LCD projector or other VGA-compatible display, you can purchase the Apple VGA adaptor for $29. You can also opt to invest in a handy, super-portable projector, such as the MicroVision ShowWX Laser Pico Projector, starting around $199, or the Mili Pro 2.0 Projector, for around $369.95. To make sure that your PowerPoint presentations are easily accessible on your iPad, check out MightyMeeting, an app that I wrote about recently. Thanks to a recent update, you can also now control your Keynote slideshow presentations on the iPad using an iPhone or iPod touch.

4. Editing Microsoft Office docs. For an app that provides combined file storage with Microsoft Office document editing, check out Soonr, which I wrote about recently. Alternatively, you can also use other file storage/sync solutions, such as Dropbox and SugarSync, and combine them with editing apps like QuickOffice and Documents To Go to provide similar functionality.

What apps, peripherals and hacks have you tried to make your iPad work-worthy?

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user KillR-B

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• The Future of Workplaces
• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
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The IPO of professional social network LinkedIn is probably the most significant web stock issue since Google, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on LinkedIn’s impact on the world of work. Though ostensibly a general-purpose social networking tool for professionals, and nowhere near as big as Facebook in terms of number of users (LinkedIn has some 100 million users, compared with over 500 million on Facebook), LinkedIn has become an important tool for connecting job seekers and employers, notably introducing several key innovations that repositioned the standard social network profile as a kind of “digital resume,” complete with features with which a user can showcase their skills and demonstrate their professional reputation.

A Digital Resume

Like other social networking apps, LinkedIn enables its users to build a profile and connect with other users. LinkedIn differs from its competition because it defines a user’s profile in terms of work history, rather than other personal details. At its most basic, it’s simply an online version of the traditional printed resume, listing a user’s work history and academic qualifications. However, coupled with LinkedIn’s reputation tools, the profile becomes much more powerful, giving employers more insight into the capabilities of a particular candidate — an attractive proposition for both employers and job seekers.

A Way to Demonstrate Reputation

LinkedIn introduced two key social network profile reputation innovations: Recommendations and LinkedIn Answers. Recommendations allows users to post endorsements from people they’re worked with on their profiles, which are then associated with the particular job the recommendation is for; they’re like an online version of the traditional reference. Despite concerns that the Recommendations system can be gamed — users offering to give each other fake recommendations to bolster their profile, for example — it does provide a way for employers to screen candidates. Employers using LinkedIn Jobs can even limit applications to users with a certain number of Recommendations.

LinkedIn Answers provides a way for users to demonstrate their expertise by answering business questions posted by the community. These answers are then added to the user’s profile, enabling users to showcase their knowledge and providing potential employers or business partners with more information about a potential candidate.

Recommendations and Answers are complementary. While Recommendations can be used to assess what a particular user is like to work with, Answers is a way to assess a user’s knowledge.

The Future

While LinkedIn would probably like to be more than just a Web 2.0 job board, those functions drive a significant portion of its income, so it needs to make sure its digital resume stays relevant. While a LinkedIn profile was once the best way for people to showcase their skills and experience online,  there are now many more ways to measure a person’s digital reputation — Klout score, Odesk and Elance reviews, and Quora answers, for example — which arguably could be even more valid; LinkedIn will need to make sure it doesn’t get overtaken by these newer services.

Additionally, with an increasing number of freelancers in the work market, LinkedIn needs to cater to them specifically. Currently, LinkedIn’s Jobs section is heavily skewed towards traditional employment, while its Answers section is seemingly mainly inhabited by consultants and freelancers. It should reconcile this disconnect by providing a way for freelancers and consultants to find employment though the service, perhaps by modifying its existing Jobs section, or perhaps by integrating an Elance-like freelance jobs marketplace.

As Stacey noted when the IPO was filed, the funds raised should enable the company to make some savvy acquisitions to round out its business offering, perhaps even including acquiring some companies that currently provide services to freelancers, or reputation-based services. Whether those purchases and its own innovations will keep it ahead of competition like Facebook, the newer reputation-based start-ups, and even the traditional job boards like Monster.com, remains to be seen.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Coletivo Mambembe

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Game design can be applied to much more than just games. “Gamification,” or the use of gaming mechanics in non-game applications, can be applied to business software, too. Any task based on a process could incorporate aspects of gaming to make it more engaging and better align it with the way most people are “hard-wired;” we respond well to games.

While Rypple does incorporate organic badge-making, distributing and displaying mechanism in its software, the gamification of work goes beyond simply thinking “let’s give out badges.” Instead it involves a thoughtful, strategic process to enhance the ways we recognize one another in the workplace and how we showcase that recognition.

Rypple recently published an slideshow explaining Debow’s thoughts on enterprise gamification:

While the slideshow points out the potential benefits to bringing game-like processes into the workplace, such as increasing team member motivation and performance, it also notes there are risks and the potential for misuse.

Some key takeaways from the presentation are:

• Gamification isn’t about making work fun. It’s more about understanding human nature and strategy, not frivolity.
• Gaming already exists in work settings. The acts of competition and cooperation are inherent in most work environments. Harnessing those interactions strategically can be a part of “gamification.”
• Gamification is not just about badges and points. That is too simplistic a way of thinking about it.

Job Titles Versus Badges?

Debow also pointed me to an interesting gamification-related related question on Quora: What if you earned badges at work instead of job titles?

The ensuing conversation includes these points:

• There is a place for titles within a company, particularly to delineate hierarchy for decision-making purposes. (as noted by Ben Horowitz)
• Badges are not meant to replace titles but can be used as a supplement to one’s profile or reputation (as noted by Daniel Debow, Ben Horowitz and others)

Ultimately, people seek meaningful work: work with a purpose. They want to master something, improve their skills, and get recognition for their efforts. They want to be a part of something — contribute to the greater whole. Wouldn’t you want a worker like that? Properly implemented gamification systems can enhance these positive aspects of human nature in the workplace.

Photo courtesy stock.xchng user johnnyberg

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• Can BranchOut “Gamify” Career Networking on Facebook?

Does the above paragraph sound familiar? If it does, then we have something in common:  self-handicapping. It’s finding excuses and obstacles that explain why we’re not responsible for our mistakes, failures, or poor performance. Most of us start experiencing it as students during our first few years at school, but the habit also tends to stay with us even when we turn into capable professionals. An article from The New York Times cites a study where, in workplace scenarios, people’s “…impressions of a character began to sour after the second time the person cited a handicap.”

To avoid self-handicapping at work, we need to recognize it when it occurs. Here are some behaviors associated with self-handicapping:

• Decreased effort. Sometimes, this comes in the form of procrastination, especially when you expect to be evaluated. Self-handicapping also shows when you spend less time preparing or practicing. Research shows that giving in to self-handicapping in one task may lead to having less motivation to complete a succeeding task, too.
• Setting unrealistic goals. Aiming high or having ambitions is a good thing, but it helps to be aware of your true motivations. Sometimes setting unattainable goals is a form of self-handicapping.
• Creating or emphasizing physical or psychological handicaps. We sometimes tell ourselves that we don’t have the right training, state of mind, experiences, and other traits that would make us perform well for a certain task. We make excuses — even flimsy ones — just so our mistakes will be the fault of some external force instead of our own.

The bad news is that like most qualities deeply ingrained in us, there’s no magic pill, no one-size-fits-all cure for self-handicapping. But there are a couple of new mindsets that I’m trying out:

• Praise our own effort rather than talent. While it’s OK to recognize innate skills, acknowledging effort, practice and hard work as the source of your success has greater benefits. This kind of attitude leaves us less afraid of failure, more inclined to try again, and even to have better performance.
• Accepting pain as part of the job. Not physical pain, but the painful idea that you won’t always be as good as you want to be, that sometimes you’ll fail. Self-handicapping is all about protecting your self-image, so one way to “hack” it is to come to terms with the fact that failing is normal. It comes with being human. A few mistakes won’t make you less of a good worker or even a good person. It’s rare that you’ll fail hard enough that it’s irreparable or unforgivable.

Do you experience self-handicapping or self-sabotage? How does it affect your work and how do you deal with it?

Photo by stock.xchng user somadjinn

First, let’s look at how people react to boredom in the work environment. According to Susan Cramm on the Harvard Business Review blogs, there is a good chance that you are making your job boring. Here are her three questions to test whether the thing that’s making your job boring is you:

1. Are you on autopilot? When we have been doing any task for a while, we tend to go on autopilot. This makes our jobs easier, but it also reduces our interest level and leaves us bored.
2. Is your energy level down? Boredom saps our energy reserves and makes it more difficult for us to focus on our work and be successful.
3. Have you become a conformist? After you’ve made the big changes needed early in the job, it can be too easy just to let things slide rather than continuing to look for areas where you can make additional improvements.

I have a few suggestions to help you snap out of your work-related boredom.

• Exercise. Yes, this really is my answer to almost everything. Exercising increases our endorphin levels and helps us stay energized. This will help you get your energy levels back up, and you might even think of some new ideas while you exercise.
• Change the way you do routine tasks. Kick yourself off of autopilot and experiment with some new ways of doing things. Take a routine task, and do something a little differently with the goal of finding some way to improve the process. You just might find a better way to accomplish the task, but even if it isn’t an improvement, you’ll probably come out of it with a renewed interest.
• Pick up a new, challenging project. I try to take on new projects that will be a challenge or at least something a little different from my normal client work; sometimes these are fun, side projects or new client engagements. In Meryl’s plans for 2010 post, she talked about how she takes on a new, challenging project every year to stretch herself. When I was working in corporate jobs, I used to always volunteer for special projects and teach classes for employees because doing something new helped me stay energized and excited about my job.
• Set improvement goals. Pick one thing every couple of months that is important, but that you haven’t focused on in a while, and set a goal of making at least one improvement in that area. This could be a personal development project or some neglected aspect of your work. The idea is to make some kind of regular improvements to break you out of the conformity cycle.
• Find a new hobby or non-work related project. I’ve found that when I am bored outside of work, this can carry over into the work day. Find a fun new hobby that will keep you energized during your off-hours, and you just might find that it helps improve your energy during the work day as well.
• Get a full night of sleep. Yes, I know you are busy and that sleep just cuts down on the hours that you can be doing something more fun. However, being a half-asleep zombie at work will drain your energy and make you feel bored even when the work itself isn’t all that boring. Try it for a week, and see if you don’t have more energy. You might realize that you enjoy those waking hours even more when you are well rested.

These are just a few of the techniques that I have used over the years to avoid succumbing to boredom, but I’m sure that there are other great ways to get re-energized and excited about your work.

How do you break out of the boredom cycle and stay excited about your work?

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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I’m particularly skeptical that I’ll find it useful for work. No doubt I’ll find ample reason to use it for amusement and idle time-killing. The possibility of a larger-scale version of iPhone’s Peggle alone adds up to countless wasted hours. But will I also use it to enhance my productivity? I suppose we’ll find out next week, but before we do, here’s what I’d need for the Tablet to be useful in my work.

Connectivity

I’d like, if I had my druthers, 3G connectivity and Wi-Fi. It’s not something I think we’re very likely to see, though. There will be Wi-Fi, to be sure, but 3G or an always-on connection like the Kindle 2 has is probably just a pipe dream.

If that does turn out to be the case, then there’s one thing I will definitely require of an Apple tablet to get work done on the go: tethering. iPhone tethering is the single most useful thing, workwise, that Apple has done for me to date. If a tablet doesn’t have 3G, but allows me to tether my 3GS, which does, everything will be perfect.

Bluetooth is a must, and I doubt very much that it won’t make its way in. The key will be what Bluetooth profiles are supported. A2DP and hopefully file transfer protocols will be included, but the big question is whether or not Apple will get over its love affair with on-screen keyboards and include input device profiles, too. The ability to use a keyboard with the device would go a long way to making it more productive.

Better Browsing

Mobile Safari is a very capable browser, but there’s much more you can do once you start increasing the screen size of your device. With a 10-inch screen, which is what most of the rumors are saying the Apple tablet will sport, things like proper tabbed browsing become a much more reasonable proposition.

Beyond tabbed browsing, a version of Safari running on a larger, more powerful device can also take other cues from its desktop cousin. How about support for extensions? That would go a long way toward making this tablet a better alternative for when you can’t get to a computer.

Finally, my blue sky request would be that the tablet platform would support alternative browsers. Some Firefox or Chrome action would be just what the doctor ordered, but don’t hold your breath.

More Juice

If the iPhone is setting the standard, then it stands to reason that a bigger more powerful device with a better display will have much shorter battery life. Hopefully that isn’t the case. But how to judge? The iPhone has terrific battery life for a computer, but its awful if you’re thinking in terms of mobile phones.

Ideally, the tablet maintains the battery life the 3GS has, not scaled down proportionally as its size increase. That would mean true all-day use, pretty much, which would be a real boon to productivity on the road. Hopefully the slim battery tech Apple uses in its MacBook Pros can be refined and put to even better use in the new tablet.

Everything Else

These are the things I’ll need to truly incorporate an Apple tablet into my workflow in a meaningful and permanent way. They aren’t the only things, of course, but they are the less-obvious features that are not sure to be included. Great app support will also be a big factor, but that’s something Apple clearly doesn’t need help with, whether the tablet uses OS X or a modified iPhone OS.

What are you looking forward to from next week’s Apple announcement? Do you think it’ll have an effect on how you work?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

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• Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore
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During those long months, when you can’t remember what the sun looks like and are slightly surprised at its appearance in films and on television, productivity can take a major nosedive, along with mood and attitude. As a long veteran of Canadian winters, I like to think that I’m prepared for the changes that major weather upheavals can cause in a person, but I never cease to be shocked by the strength of the effects. Accordingly, I’ve put together a list of ways to either get over — or work through — the funk. 

Take a Vacation

As mentioned above, I’ve been less than active here during the past few weeks. That’s partly because my cup was temporarily running over with work elsewhere, but it’s also because I decided to step back and take a significant chunk of time off for the first time in about a year. Making a decision about stepping back from work for a while is far preferable to the alternative, which is continuing to try to maintain a regular schedule, and having the quantity and quality of your work suffer as a result.

Planned time off, with a definite ending, will help you feel focused and eager when you do eventually get back to work. If you love what you do, that is. If you still find yourself dragging your heels, you might want to take a long hard look at what it is you’re doing that isn’t satisfying any longer.

Lower Your Expectations

A big part of the problem of trying to fight the winter doldrums is that people are often their own worst critics. Getting into a blame cycle with yourself won’t help you get work done any faster. In fact, you’ll probably get a lot less done, and just give up on days where you could otherwise have gotten at least a little bit ahead.

If you are perennially cursed by a lower work ethic as the thermometer mercury dips lower, then acknowledge and prepare for that eventuality. The best way to do that is to work more during the months that you feel more productive, and generally behave like a squirrel getting ready for the lean winter months. That way, when you’re doing less than your maximum potential output, you won’t feel nearly as guilty about it, and you’re less likely to get caught in negative attribution patterns. Believe me, if I could actually hibernate, I probably would, but this is the next best thing.

Stay Fit, Active and Healthy

As at-home workers, we’re already severely at risk of falling into a sedentary lifestyle, and that risk is amplified a hundred fold when the outside environment seems intent on killing us. Go out of your way to counter the impulse to stay inside and remain immobile, and I promise that after a few days you’ll feel much, much better for having done so.

Make sure your fruit and vegetable intake stays high, at least on par with what you normally take in during the summer. My registered dietitian friend couldn’t stress this enough. She also recommended taking Vitamin D supplements to make up for the absence of sunlight that normally provides this much-needed nutrient to our systems.

Sign up for a gym near enough to your house that you won’t be discouraged from going by the weather. Failing that, invest in a good Tai Chi or yoga DVD and treat it as a necessary part of your work day, akin to filling out invoices or checking your email.

It’s Only a Season

My parting advice for those of you plagued with a long cold winter, Canadian or otherwise, is to remember that it doesn’t last forever, despite sometimes appearing to. Keep that always in mind, and strap on some skates or grab a toboggan and remember that the cruelest season does have some advantages over its gentler cousins.

How do you work through — or avoid — the winter work lull?

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Now, my phone has more processing power than my first work computer, and I am always connected. This connection isn’t just for work, or even for productivity. I rely on being connected for many routine personal tasks: dictionary, looking up random facts, amusement, recipes, etc. I jump back and forth seamlessly and no longer really think of it as being online or offline. I take it for granted that I can always be connected on a moment’s notice.

Gartner’s Nick Jones agrees that the distinction between online and offline has almost completely disappeared:

Labeling time as “online” vs. “offline” is so last decade. For many of us that distinction already vanished. Many of the things we do at home and work mean we dip into web services continually throughout the day. We post updates to social networks, stream media, check information, stream feeds and tweet (not the latter in my case as I’m a twitter refuser). And behind the scenes loads of gadgets in our home and pocket silently and continuously communicate to access web services, updates, information…There is no “online” vs. “offline” any more, there’s only online.

I spent the last couple of days taking a long weekend off work to just relax at home. I finished reading “Accelerando” by Charles Stross, which I had started reading a month ago; I started and finished Cory Doctorow’s “Makers,” a fantastic book; and I started reading Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.” I stubbornly refused to do any work, but I noticed how often I kept looking things up on my phone or laptop:

• All of my recipes are in Google Docs
• I head to the search box whenever I want to learn more about something
• I play Words with Friends for amusement
• Twitter and Facebook help me keep up with news and my friends

Because I live in a place where Internet access is everywhere, I have stopped thinking about any distinction between “online” and “offline” in favor of an always-connected lifestyle.

What do you think about the distinction between online and offline, and is it still a meaningful distinction in your life?

Photo by Flickr user eschipul used under Creative Commons.

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The notion may seem anti-social, but in fact I think it has more to do with an evolutionary principle. If I seek out things that I need or run errands when there are less people about, there will be less competition for available resources, and I won’t be nearly as stressed out as I might otherwise be. Obviously, because of work schedules not everyone has the ability to do this, but it’s one of the major advantages of working from home.

While the Cat’s Away, the Mouse Will Work

The holidays are not a great time for doing much of anything. The malls are packed, transit is unbearable, and even the gym gets prohibitively busy for about three or four weeks following Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations. When there’s downtime for most, I spend the least amount of time on personal an leisure activities. Instead, I turn to work.

Work is the one refuge for the beleaguered loner during the holidays, for the very simple reason that almost no one else is doing any. This is especially beneficial if your job in any way involves competing with colleagues for publication space, as it does in my case, but it can also be useful in many other ways to any number different types of remote workers.

Less Distraction

During the holidays, and especially the Christmas season, I’ve noticed a significant decrease in the amount of Internet chatter going on. Twitter is a much less active place, as is Facebook, at least in my personal experience.

Even the news cycle seems to lull around Christmas, or maybe I just hear about it less because of the dip in social media activity. TV is totally bereft of any new content, and becomes a veritable wasteland of holiday special repeats and marathons of shows that last for 16 hours and can be pretty tedious, even if you’re a fan to begin with.

Your inbox fills up at a fraction of the pace you’re used to during ordinary working days, too. There was a day just recently when I received only five emails, total, for example. I can’t remember the last time that happened, but I guarantee it was long before I started making my money working online.

Less Competition

I know I already mentioned that there is less competition over the holiday period which can be good news for writers like me, but it also applies to other fields in less obvious ways. For example, holiday cover work is a great opportunity to make some extra money during a time when many people are on vacation. You’re especially well-placed to take advantage of this opportunity if you don’t yet have a family, or are semi-retired and don’t mind the time it takes away from your holiday.

In order to get some extra work over the holidays, make your employer and coworkers aware of your desire to help out long before the Christmas season actually hits. If you have to, make sure you put in some time beforehand training up and asking about how to go about doing the jobs you might be asked to cover when the time comes. If your organization is aware you know how to do the job, it’ll make their decision to use you when needed a lot easier.

A Gift for Yourself

While it can be hard to summon the motivation to go to work when everyone else around you is in the process of unwinding completely and enjoying the season, it an also be very rewarding. Just because the world slows down when the year winds down, doesn’t mean it stops completely. There’s still plenty of gears that need turning, and best of all, you’ll be in a much better position to pick and choose from a relative wealth of work.

Don’t get me wrong, I still crave a break. And a break I shall have, but it’ll be a time-shifted one, designed to take place at a time when everyone else has gone back to work.

Did you work over the holidays?

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You may not want to do one of the obvious web worker jobs such as being a writer or virtual assistant. Maybe something in this list will resonate with you.

• Accountant / Bookkeeper: The people who keep track of money. They review invoices, expenses, payroll and taxes and make sure everything balances. They also verify the receiving and sending of all payments.
• Coach: While people tend to prefer meeting with coaches face-to-face, some are turning to virtual coaches and communicating with them by phone, email and other online technologies.
• Course Developer: Design courses for online or offline programs. The course developer may or may not also do the teaching.
• Customer Service Rep: Answer customer questions about a company’s products and services. Reps can work with customers by email, phone, online chat and social networks. While this often involves working for a company, web workers can provide customer services for small businesses that don’t have full-time employees to do the job.
• Editor: Slice and dice content to sharpen the writing and improve grammar.
• Graphic Designer: Create, design and modify artwork for web sites, web-based applications, print, brochures, pamphlets and more.
• Marketer and Public Relations (PR): Marketers and PR professionals communicate and build relationships in hopes of getting a product or service in front of customers and the media.
• Online Community Manager: These folks Manage community for businesses or organizations by facilitating, creating content, evangelizing and evolving the community.
• Product Sales: Many people make a full-time career out of selling products via online auctions and stores. Some manage web sites that work like a gateway to many products and sites, earning their cash through affiliate programs or site sponsors.
• Programmer / Developer: Develops software or the back-ends of web sites.
• Publisher: This growing career goes beyond printing books into producing e-books and selling them on their own sites or through affiliates.
• Recruiter / Human Resources (HR): Find and vet candidates for companies needing to fill positions or hire temporary workers.
• Sales / Telemarketer: Despite all the complaints about telemarketers, some businesses do a good job with their sales and telemarketing services.
• SEM and SEO: Study PPC rates, key words and click rates. They determine what works and what doesn’t work, then suggest how to improve the metrics. Beware these are two different specialties requiring different knowledge and skills.
• Teacher / Professor: Getting a college degree online is no longer taboo as many programs have proven to be as good as on-campus programs. High schools offer online classes so students can make up a failed course or get needed credits. Classes aren’t limited to education credits. Plenty of folks want to further their knowledge of a general topic.
• Tech Support: Applications that allow you to work on a computer as if you’re in front of it have opened the door for tech support jobs that you can do anywhere.
• Virtual Assistant: Manage appointments, data entry, time tracking and much more. VAs can very well do many of the jobs listed here, as it has a broad definition.
• Writer: The folks are all about words. They can do blogging, writing for print and online publications, working with businesses on their content or training materials and doing technical writing.
• Web designer: This site and many others would never come to fruition without the talents of a web designer. Not only do they create web sites, but they also design the front-end of web-based applications while the web developer or programmer handles the things we can’t see.
• Web Site Manager / Webmaster: They maintain existing web sites by adding content on a regular basis, optimizing the site, monitoring problems and answering questions that come in. They might also add tools, widgets and other features to grow and enhance the web site as well as manage ads.
• Video Producer and Editor: Create and edit videos to tell a story to communicate the key message for the organization behind the video.

Although web workers have various common traits, discipline is a biggie. Web working requires you be able to motivate yourself to get the work done and to get more business. Unless you’re part of a virtual team, no one will push you to complete your tasks.

What other careers can you do from anywhere?

Photo credit: Brenda Lamothe Coulomme

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Last weekend, I set out a few goals to help me get more done this week:

1. Create a better work schedule (one that limits my working time to 36 hours per week).

By limiting my working time, I am much more likely to focus on the most important things that need to be accomplished at any given point. On top of that, I’ll actually leave room in my life for things outside my business, which, let’s face it, is one of the main reasons for working for yourself.

2. Create focus blocks within the schedule that allow me to move bigger rocks.

Paraphrasing from the 3, 6, 9 Time Management System, if you focus on a given task or goal for three hours straight, you’re going to make progress on it. I don’t need to get caught up in menial tasks that simply eat away at my day (see this post about grinding vs. clocking from Chris Brogan).

I need to focus on moving big projects forward. A lot of my work (writing, for instance) takes a lot of concentrated effort to get it done. If I only have an hour here or an hour there, I end up focusing on a lot of junk tasks that are better left undone, rather than getting those big rocks moved.

With a set number of focus blocks each week, I’ll have to be very selective about what gets that prime real estate in my schedule.

3. Create smaller admin blocks within the schedule that allow me to do “have-to” things, like checking email and delegating smaller rocks that still have to get moved somehow.

The reality is that you can’t be 100 percent efficient and only concentrate on profit-making tasks. Email has to be read and responded to, smaller tasks have to be delegated, and phone calls have to be made and returned. If I leave no room for them, then I feel compelled to check my email at random times throughout the day, instead of focusing on what’s right in front of me. By leaving designated windows for it, I know that that task will get done, too, and that it hasn’t been too long since I made sure there were no fires to put out.

Here’s my revised work schedule. You’ll see “dots” and “dashes,” which come from Julie Morgenstern’s book “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning.” She refers to dots as the admin tasks, like checking email and returning phone calls, and dashes as the focused blocks of time where you really get things done.

The great thing is, I can move entire focus blocks rather easily, so if something comes up that isn’t work-related, I can rearrange my schedule without too much interference with the rest of my week. On top of that, I intentionally set up my week by deciding what big rocks will be moved and when, which hopefully will ensure major progress in several areas of my business.

What does your schedule look like? How do you ensure that big rocks get moved on a regular basis?

Image from Flickr by wwarby

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While video production may involve location-specific elements where you need to go out to capture visuals and sounds, you can still make it a career where you can work anywhere you want.

Is video production the career for you?

Video Production Careers

In video production, some stick to just one task, while others do several things, or even do all the jobs to take a video from start to finish. Here are a few video-related jobs:

Producer: Video businesses vary in the area of production based on the type of videos they create and the topics they cover. Producers may specialize in one or several different types of video. The title “producer” has many meanings, but a producer often oversees the entire video production process.

Post-production: Folks in post-production work with existing video to enhance it, edit it and add to it. These tasks could involve animation, audio, voice-overs, DVD menus, music and graphics.

Editor: Editors compile audio and video to create the final product that meets project requirements. “The editor is much like a cook. We take raw ingredients and combine them artfully into a video that meets the clients’ goals,” says Ed McNichol of EDcetera.

How to Qualify

Video producers and editors are a diverse lot when it comes to how they first entered the video business and gained experience. Tim Clark started on Ken Burns’ documentaries in the editing room. Jack Dever, director of post production at PACSAT,  literally started on the bottom floor by sweeping in a studio before and after shoots. After that, he climbed to assistant video editor, editor, producer, director and supervisor. Many folks in video started at the bottom and worked into jobs in the field.

Kim Brame, executive producer with creative illusions Productions, took every job available to her after college to build a network and learn the craft. Her coworkers have degrees and training in audio engineering, programming, graphic design and animation.

Steve Mann, owner of MannMade Digital Video, lost his job in the dot-com bust. “Over 50 and no higher degree made me virtually invisible in the collapsed high-tech job market. Since my passion was always photography and more recently videography, doing what I enjoy seemed like the best career move,” Mann says.

Vicky Poole didn’t start at the bottom. Rather, she started in a different job as a secretary working for a post-production company. Her boss gave her opportunities to work with equipment and on smaller projects.

A handful of folks say they received a college degree in mass communications, media, film production or something similar. But these same people say that job experience is what really matters. In terms of gaining skills, many say they just learned how to use the software and practice often. No matter where you are in your video career, everyone has benefited from attending seminars and trade shows. Jeff Davis of JD Savage Productions says, “Do what you love, and never stop learning new stuff.”

“There is a balance of technical aptitude and creativity,” says Tom Hinchey of HincheyStudios LLC. Not only do video producers need to know the technical side of things, but also how to create the message the video must communicate.

A person who knows how to use all the video production equipment and tools doesn’t always have the knowledge and skills to be a full-fledged video producer. “You need to first know how to be a storyteller. This is one of the key components that people don’t understand with video,” says David Spark of Spark Media Solutions.

Video Production Tools

Video production involves a long list of tools. After all, you can’t capture sound and visuals without cameras and microsphones, or put all the footage together to tell a good story without apps.

The following popular tools are a smattering of what the professionals use: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, HD cameras (especially Sony and Canon), AVID, Adobe Creative Suite, Affect Effects and Premiere. Some also use mics, lighting, DVD authoring and scripting tools. Of course, many use a Mac computer to do their work. They often post their videos on web-based video services like YouTube and Vimeo.

Find Clients

Word-of-mouth and happy current clients rule the roost as the best way to get business. Networking both in person and on social network sites works well. Some do formal marketing or post on craigslist. Video producers create a portfolio for their web sites. “Gone are the days of DVD reels. If a client wants instant access to your portfolio, your website can help you lock in that client instantly,” says Kico Velarde.

Crystal Pyramid Productions’ Patty Mooney not only uses a web site and networks, but also finds clients through the Chamber of Commerce, search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising in online and print directories. Another way to break in the field is to volunteer to get experience and build your portfolio.

Thomas Hoebbel took the old fashioned approach by connecting with organizations that could benefit from his work, and they hired him. Some people like Clint Till of Parc Entertainment, Inc. hand out demo reels on DVD and make cold calls.

Would you consider a video production career?

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But regardless of which end of the clutter spectrum you fall on, too much clutter can cause your productivity to take a powder. No, really; it’s true. According to one poll conducted by About.com, over a third of respondents avoid going home because of the overwhelming mess. So if you work from home full-time or telecommute part-time, clutter can have a noticeable impact on your productivity. Another research project from Pricewaterhouse Coopers found that businesses spend 150 hours a year looking for incorrectly filed documents.

At this point in the post, you should be feeling an urgent desire to declare a new day and clean out your office. If so, what better time than the coming change of seasons to start anew. It’s never too late to become a recovering pack rat or join the ranks of us neat freaks. OK, if you don’t want to go that far, at least consider this expert advice on four simple ways to organize your office for fall.

Ask the right questions. Janet L. Hall, of www.overhall.com, says the key to conquering clutter in your workspace is to ask yourself some basic questions about each item you have sitting on or near your desk including: Do I actually use this? Do I really want this? And where does this really belong?

Hall says that once you’ve honestly answered these questions, you can take action to eliminate the clutter in your workspace. When you get ready to sort through your piles, drawers, filing cabinets, bookcases, briefcases and anything else that needs to be sorted through, be ruthless, determined and honest, using these questions as a guideline to help you decide whether you should keep it or chuck it. With a few tweaks, you can apply this process to cleaning out your email inbox as well.

Use the 15-Minute Rule. Regina Leeds, who bills herself as The Zen Organizer, suggests setting a timer for 15 minutes and then doing a blitz through your office with two large, green garbage bags in tow. In particular, be on the lookout for anything that is outdated. Some likely candidates might include: old trade publications and magazines; flyers to seminars that have passed; swag picked up at conferences and white papers that — let’s face it — you won’t ever get around to reading.

Learn to label. Lisa Zaslow of Gotham Organizers says that labeling is one of the easiest changes you can make to get your office organized. “While this may seem obvious,” says Zaslow, “it is amazing how many offices I visit where the lack of labels and inaccurate labels leads to wasted time, misspent money and unnecessary stress.” Zaslow suggests labeling the following so you can easily identify their contents and purpose: file folders; boxes (especially if they are stored on a high shelf); binders; keys; switches; cords, cables and chargers; shelves; drawers and file cabinets. She even suggests putting a label on your cell phone or PDA with “reward for return” and a different phone number so you can be contacted if it’s lost.

Manage your manuals. Web workers seem to collect all manner of technical and reference manuals, many of which are out of date or rarely used. Monica Ricci, author of “Organize Your Office in No Time,” suggests freeing up precious storage space by removing those manuals that are rarely used from your immediate workspace and storing them elsewhere. In addition, go through and throw away any outdated or old manuals. Consider keeping only frequently referenced titles on — or near — your desktop.

Spending just 15 minutes a day over the next week working on these items can net you a clutter-free office and get you ready to rush headlong (and organized) into the coming holidays. Don’t you feel the strain of clutter and stress of mess leaving your shoulders already?

Share your office decluttering tips in the comments.

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• In the 2006–07 academic year, 66 percent of the 4,160 accredited US colleges offered college-level distance education courses. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
• In fall 2007, 22 percent of U.S. college students took at least one web-based class. (Source: Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 from the Sloan Consortium)

Would you believe I have a B.A. in education? Though not a teacher by profession, I’m passionate about education. Perhaps, that’s why I’m a writer — to educate people. Being deaf, I knew I never wanted to teach in a classroom, but I’ve worked with online classes at a major university’s M.S. program. Distance education opens doors for many of us. You can develop expertise in any subject you want.

Online education might make teaching a possible career for those who wouldn’t consider working in a classroom. Is teaching the career for you, or perhaps something you can do on the side?

Types of Teaching Careers

Online programs don’t stop at postsecondary education. School districts offer online classes so students can make up failed classes, get ahead or take extra classes. Professional organizations, specialized schools and programs, community colleges and experts offer non-credit courses for people looking to learn new skills in their professions or hobbies.

I took a handful of online classes through my city’s community college affiliation with Education To Go. The price was right and it helped me conquer QuickBooks and do more with Photoshop.

As an example of the diversity of online learning options and opportunities for teaching posts available, here are some options for writing courses.

• Degree programs: Thomas Edison State College offers a B.A. in Journalism, all done online. Texas Tech has an M.A in Technical Communication.
• College-affiliated resources: Education To Go includes writing courses in its catalog.
• Experts: Professionals with teaching experience, like Christina Katz, conduct email classes. While you can go off and create your own courses to teach like Katz does, you still need to do marketing and earn credibility to encourage people to sign up with you when you’re not affiliated with a college or known organization.
• Online publications and resources: AbsoluteWrite, a popular resource for writers, gives instructors a space to teach their classes. While AbsoluteWrite and its staff don’t teach the classes, it allows credible professionals to affiliate themselves with the respected AbsoluteWrite name.
• High schools: My local independent school district offers English classes in its eSchool.

How to Qualify

For college programs, you typically need at least a Master’s degree and others require a PhD. Danielle McIntosh, White River Online teacher, teaches at a local district’s public online high school that serves students all over Washington State. Before working there, she had 10 years of teaching special education. “Boise State University offers a certificate program for online teaching. However, almost everything has been on-the-job training in my situation,” McIntosh says.

Author Christina Katz believes that credibility is the first qualification to becoming a teacher. “Credibility can come from degrees, experience, word-of-mouth and having been published on your topic of expertise. When it comes to credibility, I don’t think it comes from any one thing but the accumulation of many things — especially what others say about you,” she says.

Teaching Tools

Each online program has a preference as to what application or system it uses as the base for its courses. Some use a third party solution while others create their own system.

Tools of the trade include email, headsets for online lectures/webinars, Microsoft Word and Excel for reviewing student work and tracking grades. Depending on the course type you teach, you may need specific tools or applications. One course I worked with used a web-based simulator where students entered decisions and could see the results of their actions. Danielle McIntosh uses Moodle as well as APEX and PLATOWeb for content.

Find Opportunities

Margaret Garcia recommends looking for posts through the web sites of online colleges or programs. She points out that some schools have stringent hiring requirements while others don’t. “Most people break into online teaching through University of Phoenix — they have an easier hiring process and though they don’t pay well, they are willing to give a break to a possible good teacher. Cappella University, on the other hand, is one of the hardest,” Garcia says. She works with as many as five different online universities including National University and Kaplan University.

In “Get Known before the Book Deal,” Christina Katz recommends starting locally in the classroom with live students to gain experience before teaching online. She suggests looking into organizations, conferences, local meetings and events and adult education centers. While this takes away the web working aspect, it’s just for a short time with places near you. Not only research the sites of those offering online classes, but also remember to network and seek out other teachers who might have insight to offer and decision-makers behind the programs.

Would you consider a career in education?

Photo credit: LittleMan

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