Submitted by Terri Griffith on Thu, 08/23/2012 - 08:29

My friends and colleagues at e-Work, LiquidSpace, and Aalto University in Finland are working through the topics for our South by Southwest proposal. We're pushing the ideas about how we all decide the what, where, and how of our work… and we'd love your vote (quick registration required to vote).

Every day you wake up and either make a decision, or follow someone else's decision, about where & how you work.

Is it:

Distributed
Co-located, but mobile
Co-located in your own place, with its own walls
Co-located, Hacker Dojo style (one place, not formal with walls)

Are you making the most of your design?

We don't know the answer to the question, but we'd like to share our experiences and work with you to get closer to a practice of how to decide.

We offer a debate in our SXSW proposal. We envision at least four tables covered with paper and markers. The speakers will share 10 minutes of background and then jump to the question of how to best make daily and longer term work place/design/tool decisions. Speakers and recruited facilitators (if you're going to SXSW please let us know) join the tables to lead three rounds of debate, breaking to ask people to switch tables and build on the ideas already on the table notes. The notes become a visual record for participants to take away (isn't that why we have cameras in our phones?)

We've done this before on other topics. It's amazing.

Questions Answered:

Is working in a garage the best way to start a business?
What do you need to know to make a winning decision about how you do your work each day?
Does everyone need to be with other intelligent beings every day?
Is technology the key to locationless work?
Are you making the most of the resources you have access to?

Feel free to start the debate now. How confident are you in the work design decisions you made today?