Work at no office who cares?

Onno W. Purbo

Once upon a time, there was time when one was respected by their physical appearance. Those who work in offices in their suit & tie, not to mention their Mercedes in their car port, consider highly respected as compared to the one in simple outfit & no office to go. A paradigm that is common in our grand daddy’s days and, unfortunately, in some of our parents. Today, one is more respected by their abilities, achievements, specialties, skills, rather then heavily on physical appearance in certain time & place. I have to admit though, the old paradigm still exists especially in the old & slow government offices where our first appearance is important especially those who wish to get government projects.

As physical appearance, fancy cars, clothes & offices are becoming less important in getting the job done, small office home office known as SOHO becomes an efficient solution to strive for the best in a competitive workspace. Logically, more simple  equipments would be needed by these workers.

As, we go deep into the millennium era, virtual contacts & discussions over private e-mails, public mailing lists, SMS seems to dominate the way we do coordinate & meet partners / clients. Softcopy of completed jobs & reports can be easily attached to e-mail & send it to the destination at no time. Normally, one may think all jobs can be completed from their SOHO with no physical meetings. In reality, the more virtual discussions / contact we do, the more quality physical meetings have to be performed. Why? Trust is the basic key in any business / activities. One need to personally see, meet & talk prior to gain trust & acceptance from the involved parties. Normally, the quality of physical meetings is much higher than the old days as we heavily exchange notes / mails prior to the meetings. These meetings are usually performed in  friendly environment, chit-chatting in restaurants or café in simple outfit & relax mode would normally be engaged.

In a competitive environment, mobility & professionalism are the key characteristics of these young & dynamic executives. Some of them are working in SOHO style. Small & mobile equipments, such as, laptop, notebook, palmtop, personal digital assistance (PDA), wireless modem, wireless LAN, cellular phone, handy scanners, handy printers are commonly used by these mobile workers. In some of my meetings, we accidentally build our own IntraNet in no time using our laptops & wireless LAN equipments in the meeting place as all of us are bringing our own fully equipped laptops to exchange note & files over the IntraNet. Surprisingly, all of us were wearing very casual outfit, namely, jeans, short & T-shirt. Well, it was logical as the meeting took place at Phucket beach in Thailand about 2-3 years ago. Well, in normal meeting environment among us IT workers & dotcommers, suit & tie are hardly seen and some insists to wear jeans & T-shirt.

Laptops / notebooks & communication equipments, either cellular phone or some sort of Ethernet, are the basic equipment needed by most workers as mobility is apparently vital. Consequently, increased in telecommunication costs would be logical. One should wisely use their communication gadgets with care to reduce the unnecessary telecommunication costs. There are simples trick to reduce the telecommunication costs while mobile, the use of e-mail & SMS as basic communication means may significantly reduce the telecommunication costs. My e-mail traffic is approx. 600 e-mails / day & costs me approx. Rp. 60.000 / monthly ISP charges. Significant reduction in cost can be obtained by reading & responding e-mails offline. One needs to download all e-mails at the POP mail server at the ISP or free Webmail sites to our local mail client on our laptop prior to read it offline. It normally takes approx. 15-30 minutes to download 500-600 e-mails using the Post Office Protocol (POP). Those mobile workers should subscribe to ISPs with many Point of Presence (PoP). In Indonesia, to best of my knowledge, there are only three (3) ISP with large Point of Presence (PoP), namely, IndoNet (indo.net.id), WasantaraNet (wasantara.net.id) & TelkomNet (telkom.net.id). TelkomNet instant may be OK for downloading e-mail but poor in relaying our mails to the Internet. Having subscribed to one of these ISPs, one can connect to the Internet in various cities by locally dial to their local dial-in ports; no long distances charges will be applied. Some of these ISPs, especially IndoNet provides excellent roaming facilities for their subscribers & enables them to roam from one city to another while uses local calls to connect to the Internet.

As more offices & people connected to the Internet, mobile workers with their laptop at hand would easily find free network connection at friends offices / SOHO while mobile. Ethernet connection to local IntraNet with proxy service to access public Internet enough for mobile workers to gain access to the Internet. Singapore’s Changi airport is an excellent paradise for mobile workers, as the airport authority provides Internet access for free for these workers via UTP Ethernet LAN, wireless LAN & infrared devices.

Investment in laptop /  notebook at US$600-1500 seems to be expensive, especially for the Indonesian workers. It is actually a worth investment knowing that most mobile workers would receive monthly earnings of at least US$500-1000. An income level that can be reached by those who strive to their best in specialized skill in 2-4 years time, based on my observation of my students.

Those students are normally gain knowledge beyond their university / Indonesian national curriculum, as the standard knowledge set by the national curriculum is far behind the actual knowledge in the IT field. Thus, one has to seek for knowledge from other sources rather than rely on the Indonesian university’s Professors. IT & Internet really help in open up the gateway towards vast pool of applicable new knowledge; those who manages to learn these  knowledge during their school years would easily past the US$75 monthly salary set for the fresh graduate.

Having an IT knowledge is not enough to survive. Community acknowledgement & acceptance of one’s skill is vital for one’s professional development. Two major ways to get these acknowledgement, namely, via industrial grade IT certificate, such as, Microsoft’s MCP, MCSE, MCT; Cisco CCNA or create consensus among IT communities regarding one’s expertise. The consensus may easily performed by sharing one’s knowledge to others by actively discussing via public Internet mailing lists, publish papers, articles & books. Only those who produce & share knowledge to others will sit in higher places in the knowledge based society. Fortunately, IT, Internet & other electronic means will enable anyone to efficiently share their knowledge at low cost to others based on copyleft movement. A snowball effect which in turn rapidly speeds up knowledge cycle which may drive the society towards knowledge based society. A society that should be ideally put together for our next generations.

Within the knowledge based society, one’s ability, skill, knowledge, achievements would ideally be the one that differentiate one to others. Those who share their knowledge will be placed in higher rank. Consequently, networking among specialized skilled workers is the basic scheme in future workspace supported by heavy virtual discussions via e-mail, SMS & various discussion groups as well as offline interactions. Mobile workers would be a common mode of operation, as mobility and professionalism is key characteristics in networked workspace in knowledge based society.