Is working from home always better?

There's been lots of talk in the blogosphere about Marissa Mayers decision to tell Yahoo! employees to stop working from home. Hey, even Yahoo! employees were/are discussing it on the web.
James Robertson wrote up a nice post about this decision and also pointed to the fact that Google seems to be like-minded to Yahoo! when it comes to working from home. Also interesting is what he says about the implications of this kind of news for 'the digital workplace'.

One of the things I like about the discussion is that we have to rethink why we like/dislike working from home. And that's one of the things I miss in the discussion about tele-work. Of course commenters rightly wonder what this Yahoo! statement means with respect to trusting employees to decide for themselves where they can get their work done.
However, isn't it also OK to discuss what the pro's and con's of tele-work are. Is working from home always the best way to go?
In my experience with working from home, some types of work are great to do from home and some are great to do in the train or at the office. I know from talks with others that my experiences relate to many. For instance I find it very hard to write reports and read longer documents and books at the office. There are simply too many disruptions there. I know this does not go for everybody. But isn't this something to discuss. Along with things we personally have to get done, there are also joint task we have to get done together. How are we going to get that done when working from home and/or the office?
As Mark Morrell says in a comment to the above-mentioned post (I'm rephrasing him a bit): in the end it comes down to trusting employees to decide when and where they can get things done. Sometimes this is at home, sometimes this is at work. True. My point is: we decide this for ourselves and we decide about this together with colleagues.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this topic. Please share them as a comment.

Reasons to come to the Intranet Conference 2013 #intra13

On March 18 and 19, 2013 the next edition of the Dutch Intranet Conference will be held. We hope to meet you there! But let me give you some idea of the program and main topic of the conference.

In the intranet space lots of discussion is about choosing the right technology and selecting and providing the right features for your organization. Also, we talk about intranet governance. What is the right governance model for my organization? How can we keep our intranet interesting and vibrant?

Soft skills
What I hardly hear is the skills intranet-related people need to do intranet right? What skills does an intranet manager or owner need? For this reason we thought we’d focus the keynotes on this topic: the skills of the intranet manager and more specifically, the knowledge worker. Because that’s what most modern intranets are for: to support knowledge workers in their daily work.

Keynotes
We invited 3 keynote speakers to give their view on this topic. These are:

• Euan Semple: The internet has tremendous influence on organizations. Subsequently this also changes the way we look at intranets. Euan will share what he thinks is changing in organzations and what it means for intranets.
• Luis Suarez: What skills does the modern intranet manager need to do his/her work? And what skills does the knowledge worker (the intranet manager’s customer) need to work in a productive way? Luis will share his vision and experiences on this topic and give practical tips to improve the way we work and subsequently improve the intranet. 
• Steven van Bellegem: The intranet can be seen as a conversation between the business and technology. How do we make these two connect? The intranet itself can be seen as a conversation platform. How do intranet managers create interesting and relevant conversations? And why are conversations so important inside the company? Those are some of the questions Steven will address in his keynote. 

In all these talks we hope the conference participants will get practical insights for their daily work, which they can act on. We think we have chosen excellent keynote speakers from which we all can learn.

Breakouts: BYOD, mobile, gamification, and more
On the conference day there will also be 3 rounds of breakouts with 10+ topics to choose from. These breakouts won’t be focused on the soft side of intranet only. We set up a nice mix of more traditional and more modern intranet topics. Just to mention two modern topics: the Rabobank will be talking about how Bring-Your-Own-Device works in practice and what it means for intranet. And a large telecom company will be sharing how they use gamification on their intranet to increase engagement.

Pre-conference workshops
The day before the conference we have 4 pre-conference workshops about topics that are pretty hot. Mark Morrell will give a workshop about the digital workplace and Sharepoint intranets. Luis Suarez will talk about his (and your) battle against email. And Euan Semple’s workshop is about getting hands-on with social intranet.

You’re invited!
The company I work for, Entopic, has organized this conference for several years now. We’re proud to say it has become the largest intranet conference in the world. Of course most of the participants come from Holland and Belgium. But, over the years more and more participants from other countries have joined us as well. So, we’d love to welcome you all to this conference. Not only the keynotes, but also the pre-conference workshop and several breakouts will be in English.

I hope this give you some idea of what this year’s conference is about. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you soon.

Under pressure

How do you feel when you’re under pressure? Can you get things done then? Can you think? I was wondering how you cope with pressure, because I’ve been very busy lately. So busy, I hardly have time to blog (and tweet)… Which is not good.

In the past I’ve written about how important slack is for work in general and specifically for social stuff, like blogging. We need time to reflect and think things over. Time is needed to write things down and publish blogposts about what we do and think. What I find is that when slack leaves my time schedule, I have a hard time keeping up blogging. However important I find blogging, it’s one of the first things I stop doing. So, how important to me is it really, I wonder? Should it be part of my weekly time schedule?

However, on the more positive side,  you may know, I use the ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology to stay efficient and effective. I’ve been under pressure many times, but I never let go of GTD. It really helps me plan my tasks, get my tasks completed on time and define realistic deadlines with myself and clients.

So, is that the way to go? Should I just ‘manage’ blogging in the same way then? It would be interesting to hear how you plan your social stuff.