Contest to rename telecommuting

An online contest for the best term to replace “telecommuter” chose “cloudworker” to describe professionals who work beyond the office.

The TeleWho? contest, sponsored by Plantronics, invited people to submit suggestions. After a panel selected the top ten, online voting chose the winner. Cloudworker won with 27.5% of the vote.

My favorite, Robe Warrior, only received an “honorable mention.”

Link to the contest's top ten list

Did the cube improve productivity?

The office cubicle turned forty this year. Hard to believe that when originally announced, it was greeted as a major improvement in office design. The original concept was the Action Office, the product of Robert Propst, chief researcher for Herman Miller, the furniture company responsible for such iconic designs as the Aeron chair and the Eames lounger.

According to his biography, Propst began studying office worker behavior in the mid-1950s. In those days, offices were typically laid out with a bullpen in the center with rows and rows of desks, surrounded by closed-in offices at the perimeter. Propst believed that the office of that era was “a wasteland … [that] saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of unfulfilled intentions and failed effort."

Working with designers at Herman Miller, Propst’s team developed the Action Office – an open, modular, flexible office. One of the main ideas was that productivity would improve if workers could see their work spread out in front on them, instead of stuffed in an inbox. Thus, the new modular office had loads of work surfaces and shelves to display stuff. It even had a feature that allowed workers to raise their desk level so they could work standing up. Cool.

David Franz, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Virginia, studied the cubicle and says that the thinking behind the design of cubicles was utopian. Cubes “eliminated the hierarchical distinctions between managers and workers; every cubicle had an open door, everyone was equally a worker. Empowering and humane, cubicles seemed to create a workplace with a soul.”

So, did the Action Office live up to its promises? Did efficiency improve? I haven’t found any studies that prove this yet, but they may be out there. Have you run across any?

Barefoot Worker's Jelly

I love this: When workers arrive at Nancy Hoffmann’s New York office loft, they are asked to take off their shoes and put their business cards in a bowl on the table.

Hoffman is hosting a Jelly, a kind of casual co-working event, where a dozen or so laptop-toting people gather together to work. Unlike a typical co-working site, where people can go any day of the week, a Jelly takes place once or twice a month, often in someone’s home. The goal: network, socialize, get energized, do some work.

What’s a Jelly? Amit Gupta, a young Web entrepreneur started the first Jelly three years ago with his roommate Luke Crawford. In an interview with Josh Spear, Gupta says Luke came up with the name. Both worked from home and “missed the free-form brainstorming, idea sharing, and casual networking that goes on in an office (not so much the office politics.)” So they invited a friend to come over and work with them at their kitchen table. “We ended up having great conversations, came up with new ideas, and felt refreshed.” says Gupta. Soon they expanded it to invite other friends and even issued an open invitation via the Internet.

Why Jelly? It comes from jellybeans. Perhaps all the colors and flavors represent the mixture of people you might find at a Jelly.

Jellies have gotten quite a lots of press, including a piece in Workforce Management Online that described Hoffman’s Jelly, an article in Wired, and coverage on CNN and NPR.

Jellies are spreading around the world. If you want to find one in your neighborhood or start you own, there’s a wiki to answer all your questions.