Just because it works for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for you to do.

So - I need to put on my PR hat for a moment.

Packt Publishing is the publisher of a number of technical and software books -and this year they also ran a CMS Award event designed to recognize content management solutions within the open source community. As part of that award event they also choose “MVPs” from within the community, and I was choosen as the MVP for ExpressionEngine.

Honestly, I was completely unaware of this event - and award - until informed of it via Twitter.  I’m quite humbled by being on that list - especially since most of the other people chosen are the CMS developers (you know, the really smart people that actually solve the challenges vs. just telling others how stuff works..)

However - it’s very nice to be recognized for work that’s already very rewarding and a great deal of fun besides.  My thanks to whoever took the time to submit my name as a nomination.

Normally we go there as a family but this visit was just a time for me to be disconnected and offline with no responsibilities.  Call it a mini sabbatical, call it a walkabout, call it a vacation - it’s something I want to do at least once a year.

I have more pictures up on Flickr, but here are the bookending sunrise and sunset shots:

The caveat with alot of the articles I’ve read is that they were written by (I think and hope anyway) people who are working at home, but not self-employed.  I understand I might do some things differently if that were the case for me, but it’s not, so here goes.

My main umbrella point is there simply are no rules.  No one workstyle is going to work for everyone. You need to find an office setup, work hours, and dress that works for you.  Be fearless with experimentation.  Try taking afternoons off and working mornings and evenings.  Try working in PJs or fully dressed.  Try a dedicated office, or a laptop in the living room.  One of the hardest things for me to remember - even after 6 years - is that no one is making me do any of this.  If I’m feeling like work is becoming a rut, it’s my fault and my responsibility to do something to change that.

Office Setup
Maybe there is a rule or two—and this is speaking as a soon-to-be 41 year old who has been working in front of screens for over 15 years.  For desk work, make sure you have an ergonomically correct setup.  Get a real office chair that’s height adjustable, pair that up with a a keyboard tray that is height adjustable, and make sure your pointing device is at the same height as your keyboard.  I’m lucky because I live in office-furniture-central, so was able to score a really sweet setup with an Aeron Chair in front of a hydraulically-height adjustable corner desk with a full-width keyboard/mouse tray for pennies on the dollar (Here’s a somewhat outdated photo of my desk setup - since this was taken I’ve upgraded the monitors to 22” widescreens and added some fake plants). 

With laptops, I find that the only comfortable place for any length of time is having it actually on my lap.  Coffee shops are great for getting out, but I never work at a table because they are always too high.  I look for places that have good couches or armchairs instead where I can slink back with the laptop on my lap.  I also have a couch in my office, and some days will grab the laptop and sit there for the day - just to mix things up and have a different perspective.

Seriously - make sure you’re working with things arranged correctly or in a few years you’ll be looking at carpel tunnel or back/neck issues.  With my setup I only feel it in my right shoulder after really long - like 12-14 hour days - and after all these years I can only attribute that to having good furniture.

Lighting is another place you can improve over most offices.  I’ve always disliked overhead florescent lighting - but my office has a lower ceiling being in the basement and fluorescent fixtures were the only way to get a decent distributed light level that didn’t singe your hair to stand under.  Recently however I added indirect lighting to my office with a couple of the Japanese style paper lantern type lamps from Target.  It makes for a nice mood change - most days I’ll work with the overheads on until noon then switch to the indirect lights for the afternoon.  Over the years I’ve done a fair amount of audio and video production and those environments are always low-light, and with the indirect lighting on in the office it feels closer to that control room vibe.

And then there’s music - I’ve just always worked better with music going.  The minute you get in a shared office space music generally becomes impossible due to differing tastes - but working at home it’s a no-brainer.  I pump my PC’s audio output through a small mixing board (purchased for screecasting) then into a home receiver to speakers mounted at the corners in the ceiling. 

Dress Code
This is where I differ with much of the common advice that says to get fully dressed before starting work.  I’m not consistent - there are days I wander down with a bowl of breakfast cereal still in PJ’s and the next thing I know I’m being called up for lunch.  I don’t mind this—it means I found “the zone” early on and I probably got a lot done.  Other days I seem to stumble around until I make myself go shower/dress before coming back and digging in.

Either way—when it’s just me working at home I certainly don’t feel the need to dress “business corporate” just to feel like I can be professional.  Jeans and a t-shirt is fine. Shoes in the winter otherwise bare feet.  For meetings I’ll dress up a bit if the situation seems to call for it - but even then it’s just dress pants and a button up shirt.  I haven’t worn a tie in years.

Hours
Work at home advice articles always seem to recommend a fixed schedule and I always want to ask: What planet are you people from?  Between client meetings and projects to do and family commitments I not only can’t see how you could work a set schedule, but why you would want to?  Life is fluid, and I love to be able to keep my work fluid in response.  Is it a sunny/warm day now with rain/cold moving in tonight?  Get outside - work on a house project or take a bike ride.  The work will be there after dark or when the weather turns again.  Got a project on a schedule?  Put in the long hours now - get it out the door then work a couple of short days once it’s launched.  Lawn need mowing?  Get out and do it now - call it a noon workout. 

I do work more hours being self-employed than I did in the corporate world.  But - other than billable hours - I don’t track them.  I don’t try to separate work-life and home-life, it’s just life.  It helps that we got rid of cable TV a couple of years ago - I’d rather do a bit of blogging or work-related learning than sit in front of a TV every night.  You might call it working, but at least I’m not giving my life away to the advertisers.

Kids
“If you have kids teach them to not interrupt if your door is closed.” Yea, I’ve read that one a few times in different articles.  It always makes me sad - because it’s telling your kids that your work is more important than they are.  I have two kids who are 10 and 11 - and while clients and projects will come and go these two will always be my kids.  We homeschool - so it’s all of us together in our house most of the time.  My office is in the basement and has a door, and if it’s closed my kids will knock.  But I certainly don’t want to tell them to never bother me during the workday - being around them and being actively involved with them throughout the entire day is one of the absolute joys of working at home.  We never have to have the big “so what did you do today” conversations around the dinner table because I was there for it all - I know what they did.

I always warn new clients that if they call me unscheduled they are likely to get one of my “assistants”—and I think to a person when that’s happened my clients have enjoyed it. They get to see more of me than just “work-Mike”.

On the flip side, I do recommend good closed-back headphones.  There are times when I need to be able to block out the noise that schooling (including guitar and piano practice) creates and headphones are the only way I can do that.

Staying Productive
I know this is a common struggle for many people.  For me, while I’m not big on formal mission statements I do have one cardinal rule for being in business, and that’s to “Be reliable”.  I absolutely will do what I said I would do when I said I would do it - and I make sure I tap into this rule by always setting due dates for my tasks on a project. I know myself well enough to know that if I told someone I’d have a quote to them by the end of the day then no matter how strongly the call of discussion forums, twitter, etc I will get the quote done.  Days where I don’t have hard deadlines for things are tougher - for those days a 3x5 next to the keyboard with the tasks I need to get done seems to work best.  I cross things off as I go with the goal of being able to throw away the card at the end of the day —which ties into the next point for me which is..

Keeping my office organized.  I visited a client today and walked into an office that probably 4x the desk surface I have and every inch was covered with computer hardware in various states of assembly.  It gave me the heebie-jeebies to the point where I just about couldn’t stay in the room....I tend to keep everything in folders and only have the folder out for the project I’m working on that moment.  A messy office just distracts me to no end, and one of the best ways for me to get focused in the morning is to go through and re-organize, getting stuff put away and cleaninng off my white boards.

The other big productivity-killer for me is the phone.  I really don’t like how phone calls can interrupt writing or programming that requires concentration.  I struggled with this for a while - wanting to be available if a call was from a potential client, but getting frustrated when calls were either junk or cold-calls from places wanting me to outsource my programming work to them.  What I started doing about a year ago was keeping the phone turned off most of the time, and checking it once or twice a day. I changed my voicemail to tell callers that if they want a more immediate response to email me instead.  I’ve had a number of comments on my “I’m a bad cell phone user” outgoing message - and only one of them negative.  Most people just appreciate the honesty and having their expectations set.  These days I average probably 2 calls a week - and most often those are scheduled in advance so I can plan for them vs. being caught while working on something else.

Rock Out
If you’re lucky enough to be able to work at home, don’t make it just a little mini office away from the office.  Life’s too short to replicate the creativity and soul-sucking office environment in your own home.  Work in your PJ’s, work odd hours, play music at high-volume, have a movie on while you work—do anything just to remind yourself that by being at home your life is a little less like Dilbert everyday.

Otherwise what’s the point?

If you’ve never been to Holland, Pine is a major thoroughfare which allows Northbound traffic to get downtown.  You can also see in the picture - it’s also a heavy industrial area with both a power plant and a metal recycling yard.  In addition to three lanes of regular vehicle traffic this means lots of semis and the occasional steelyard train.

Holland is also known for its bike paths - there are over 60 miles of it in the area. Since the North and South sides of Holland are bisected by a river, there are only a couple of ways to get across from one side to the other.  It was obvious that this route needed a bikepath since the next closest bridge would be another 5-6 miles added to your ride.

Obviously there was a concern about putting bike traffic through such a busy area.  What could be done to prevent biker/semi accidents?

Here is the answer the city came up with - sets of staggered gates that bookend each drive across the bikepath.  There are 12 sets of these gates in a one-mile stretch of bike path.

So what’s the problem?

These gates utterly fail at their intended task.

And no - I don’t have evidence of increased collisions due to having them installed vs. before.

But here’s what I’ve seen and experienced riding through this area a number of times.

First - a few of these gates are located next to parking lots.  Riders can simply veer a couple feet to one side and bypass a couple of sets of gates by riding through the parking lot instead.

Second - in a couple places riders can just go through a couple of feet of grass and get around another set or two.

Third - the increased hassle of dealing with the gates starts to make riding in the street look more attractive.  I’m no hard-core biker, and usually prefer to be on the bikepaths.  And - this is a busy stretch of road, where I’d especially prefer to not be in the street.  But the gates are such a pain that I do seriously consider it each time I ride through.

Fourth - and this is the one that bothers me the most.  These gates have exactly the opposite effect on lowering risk of accidents.  Why?  If these gates weren’t there, when I ride through this area I could focus all my attention on watching for cross-traffic. Now I have to both watch for cross traffic and negotiate the gates.  My cognitive load is doubled—I can’t be looking back in the lots and steelyard for traffic because I’m too busy making sure I don’t bite it getting through the gates.

I’m glad of one thing - see the circular cover set into the sidewalk between the gates?  When they first went in, there was a 4’ steel post filled with cement there.

All in all these gates are just evidence of a committee trying too hard to help a situation, and in the end having exactly the opposite effect.

And I have to ask myself...in the work that I do, building websites for users and configuring a CMS to power the site, am I putting up gates that my clients and their visitors just find ways to go around?

Here’s a taste of what Scott came up with - this will be used on the site home page.  In addition to this illustration, Scott created 5 variations to go on each of the site’s main sections.  I’m really happy with the vibe of these, and look forward to designing the rest of the site around them.

If you are building a site and need some illustrations done - by all means contact Scott!

For those that have never heard of or been to a BarCamp, here’s a quote from the site I linked to above:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees, usually centered around design & technology topics

But that doesn’t quite cover it either - better still are the rule posted on the parent BarCamp site:

1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
4th Rule: Only three word intros.
5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don’t really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)

To be honest - I was a bit intimidated by these rules before signing up.  However a couple people I knew had also signed up, and I saw some other names on the list that I wanted to meet and hadn’t yet. I decided that no one could make me do something that I didn’t want to do, so went ahead and signed up anyway (worse case I could take out the trash or something...).

I arrived Friday and milled about some by myself...I always tell people I’m neither an extrovert or an introvert but rather just a “vert” who takes a bit before warming up to a given situation.  There were a couple of whiteboards in the hallway where the presentation schedules were to be posted, but I held back and didn’t offer one until I could get a better feel for the event. 

I sat in on the opening session, and while waiting for the speakers to begin had a pretty good conversation with the guy next to me.  We discovered some common challenges in getting people to buy into new technologies once installed - in his case knowledge management and in my case content management. It seems like no matter how cool the tool it still boils down to someone having to take the time to go write content, and we had both had ideas and experiences around this.

After the opening sessions I ended up back at the schedule board next to the same guy so thought “What the heck” and proposed a session around the topic we had discussed - not one intended to communicate solutions but more of an open discussion to see how other people and companies dealt with the issue.  He was game, and we called it “The People Side of Content and Knowledge Management”, and had about 14-16 people show up and some pretty good discussion around the issue.  I came away thinking I need to develop a new post-launch service offering for clients, where somehow I stay more engaged with them than in the past and hopefully it will lead to them continuing to use their new website effectively.

At this point I was really having a great time - the adhoc, loose and last-minute BarCamp approach really suits my personality and style.

A few sessions, hallway conversations, and brewery company tables later and I had met several other local web guys, programmers and designers, and had fun connecting the dots between them and the companies and people I’ve worked with in the past.

I had many conversations around ExpressionEngine, and it’s got me thinking that it might be time for a W. MI EE user group (I intend to follow up on this idea, but it’ll probably be a couple of weeks).

By the time things were over at the GR Brewing Company Friday night it was after midnight. I drove back to the College and had the decision of where to sleep.  I figured that no matter if I:

• Drove back to Holland for the night
• Slept on a classroom floor
• Slept in the back of my car

I’d get about the same amount of sleep, so choose the car (since I was already there).  The car is a ‘96 Roadmaster Station Wagon so with the back seat flopped down there’s plenty of room for even a long-legged Dutchman like me.  It took a while to drop off but the lot was quiet and I managed a few hours sleep before being checked on by a Calvin College security guard about 6AM. He must have been hip to the BarCamp going on as he quickly apologized and moved on.

At that point I got up and drove to a McDonalds for breakfast, then headed back to the BarCamp session for a few more munchies before getting going for the day again.

After a couple more conversations that included ExpressionEngine I relented and put an EE demo on the schedule - with the assumption that if no one wanted to see, they wouldn’t come..

I hadn’t prepared much - so while in another session downloaded a template from OpenSource Web Design.  My main goal for the provided 30 minutes was to do a bit of template “chunking” to show how embedded templates worked, how to pass a variable to an embedded template, and then how to quickly setup a static section of a site with the one weblog, one template approach.

I had 10-12 people show up, and managed to get through the process.  It was a bit stressful to code with an audience but luckily I didn’t screw up too bad.

I sat through some more sessions on jQuery, Tumblr, and Firebug, and then BarCamp was done.  The participants helped clean up, and as I went to leave was encouraged to take some leftover food home (Subway cookies? Uhh..sure....).

So in the space of a day and a half I:

• Met lots of new people, all local, and all in the same or related industry.
• Had lots of really great conversations around content management, web marketing, working with clients, project management, as well as specific tools for use in doing this kind of work.
• Spent the grand total of $5 on one breakfast
• Got to speak/host at two different sessions
• Got to do some low-ley promotion of my services as a business
• Have leads on some local resources I’ll have a need for at some point (designers, etc).
• Came home with food

And honestly, the experience leaves me wondering—why would I go to SXSW again, when BarCamp delivered on every front (education, networking, conversation) for (virtually) no cost?  I’m seriously considering looking for another BarCamp or two within driving distance and going to them instead of SXSW. 

Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed SXSW this past year.  But mostly because I went with the intent of meeting both the EllisLab and Godbit folks.  This year I don’t have those same goals, and if you remove the whole SXSW after-hours party scene that doesn’t interest me, I’m thinking the BarCamp approach just flat-out makes more sense.