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Simon and Nat were in town this weekend and just before lunch, while spending time in the Pavilion Gardens the topic of coworking came up. This lead to ‘hot officing’, which is something I’ve talked about for a while and recently started planning for myself. I started thinking about this a while ago as I was getting frustrated with working from home (it’s great, but sometimes lonely) and Brighton being the media/web hub it is the concept just works.

• I don’t want to rent a desk (I’ll go there once a week)
• I don’t want to be tied to a single office (friends, love you all but change of scenery and distractions is healthy)
• I want the flexibility to work from home, from a coffee shop, or any spot with wifi
• I want to met new people and companies

My first ideas around the topic were not in an “office”, but around a “home office”, i.e. There’s room for 4 others to work at my place. The flexibility of working from home, but in a room of people working. One rule, the attendees chip-in and get the host(s) lunch as a mid-working-day thank you (or drinks in the evening etc). A wiki could handle this well.

The same wiki could handle this for offices, with very similar rules. As I work my way around the few offices I’ve already asked, I’ll check if they’d mind being listed in a wiki and start compiling a list…

… anyone outside Brighton care to join? … anyone outside UK care to join?

How cool would it be to browse to a wiki, click Paris, and email checking that next Thursday isn’t booked. Next week I’m in town for two days, and now I have an office as well!

It’s all become a bit a little complex!

A month or two back, I bit the bullet and decided to join all the social networks I found with at least another friend on. Previously I’d ignored MySpace, Facebook, and the rest of them and dedicated my time to the one I still enjoy most, Twitter. I join them all as a bit of an experiment, looking to learn and analyze how people interact online more. I’m left wondering a few things:

• Why has my usage of smilies has gone through the roof
• Social networks allow you to add “friends”, however, some people have tried to add me that I don’t consider a friend (I’m not a person full of hate, but that person you knew from 10 years ago that you really didn’t care about then, and don’t want to stay in contact with…), I’m interested in how people respond to a “denied friend request”, Facebook allows you to show limited profiles, maybe that’s a nice way of saying “I don’t like you much”.
• Most of my female friends that are online work in marketing, why is that?

My main problem now is I have friends all over the place, both online and offline. Some of these have my address/phone/im, others don’t, some are on Twitter and Facebook, but not on MySpace. To combat this I’ve got a filter in gmail that moves all emails from social networks to a different label so I can try and see everything in one place (also, I can see out of my friends what gets used more).

Thing is, my email has become voicemail. I login and see that Katy has messaged me back on Facebook (go and check that then, reply), and that Tom added me on Twitter (go and add him back), nothing from MySpace but, they don’t seem to email me (check that as I’m doing the rounds) and Rosie sent a message to everyone (read that, reply). Radar told me Pete and Josh have been adding photos on Radar (have a quick look). Then I’ve got Flickr telling me about my friends photos in Google Reader, and a similar setup with del.icio.us. Then I walk out the house, and my mobile gives me updates from Jaiku, and Twitter is my browser homepage on my N73 as well.

I love being connected, but seriously, this has to change?! If anything, just because it’s a drain on productivity - every time I check my email I’m on 10 sites doing ‘admin work’ on my ‘online social life’. And, when I want to ring Sam, he’s on my Twitter but I don’t have his number. And then there’s Skype, AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Gtalk/etc, I’ve not even got onto email yet (sorry if I’ve not replied yet). And, really, I much prefer speaking to someone.

Rant over