It’s still orange & it’s had a few questions posted to it already; I’m nervously keeping watch over it trying to answer the questions as best I can but I am further removed from this product than Xero Business that I wrote most of the Help Centre for. I really hope it grows into a big community site like some others I’ve seen where eventually we can hook up a blog, the @XeroPersonal Twitter feed & stuff like that. And maybe even extend it to our business product. Early days!

I’ve been thinking a lot about working remotely, in a different geographical location and timezone from the main office, and after weeks of this filling space in my head I’m going to attempt to get some of it out – after all that’s what I started my blog for even though since we’ve been away it’s become a glorified travel diary. Time for it to return to its routes as an outlet and store of my random thoughts! However I have to be careful this doesn’t cross a line – in this age of social media and people being fired for airing their grievances online and acting in a way out of line in the eyes of the company I will likely have to watch what I say, which kind of defeats the point of a personal blog! I don’t hate my job and this isn’t a precursor to any major decisions, just supposed to be random stuff about working remotely!

So why is this topic filling my head? I don’t think it’s one thing, I think it’s a collection of little things. I think if I was to pick one thing, or have one thing to sum it all up, it’s that change thing. I thought that being out of the office would open up a new way of working for me, give me some new and different things to do, stimulate new thoughts or ideas and above all, give me some freedom to change bad work habits for ones I actually want. However, due to my own need for routine, the office not really being set up for remote workers and the new way of communication that’s required for remote working, I’ve been unable to bring about new work habits.

I now spend my entire morning and early afternoon dealing with email and trying to figure out what went on back in Wellington during the night – undoubtedly normal when one works in a different timezone but I didn’t realise just how much of my working day it would take up. When you’re in the office, a lot of this is done by overhearing things in the office, attending meetings or having a conversation with someone.

The timezone differences make it hard for us to attend meetings and our office isn’t really set up for what I’d call true online meetings – if we were we’d have decent video/audio connectivity, people in the meeting room back in the office would have a different kind of meeting etiquette (arrive on time, one person talks at once, clear start and end to discussions, follow-up points). Obviously our Wellington office houses pretty much all of our staff so understandably meetings are at times that suit them so we’re either not invited, miss meetings or have to give up time outside of work to attend a meeting. Also the expectation that everything happens in the New Zealand day is not always fair.

Out of sight out of mind has been pretty hard to accept – on the one hand the trust given that someone isn’t constantly checking up on us is humbling in that we’re trusted enough to work out of sight, but on the other hand not being involved in decision-making or opinion-giving because waiting for 12 hours for those in other countries to be involved is not possible or not being asked to do something because we weren’t in the office to be asked on the spot can be pretty demoralising. This is not me being dramatic and taking everything personally, if someone would ordinarily ask our opinion or to do something, what’s changed? Why are we needed less just because we’re not there?

It’s really good for the company to spread the load and have other people be able to do our jobs, especially mission-critical stuff that The Mister was responsible for – it’s just a shame that this has been forced to happen when we left Wellington so going from feeling really responsible for something and a useful/worthy/important part of something to what feels like just another staff member makes it feel pretty acute.

I’m just not getting anywhere doing what I wanted to do when we came here. I think I spend so much time trying to be involved with the team back home online that I’m not turning attention to my own list … and when I do it’s a hurried start at the end of the day, which coincides with when NZ-based email starts flowing. At the end of the day I wonder what an earth I did all day. A manager’s life perhaps. Even if I were to initiate daily contact with my manager or team in New Zealand on a regular basis I feel I would have nothing to report. Then maybe the whole trust thing would be called into question if it seems I’m not doing anything here.

I want a change in work habits. Even though the out of mind out of sight thing could work in my favor for making a change to work hours, work location, work methods; it hasn’t. And I wanted this change to stick before we went back to Wellington so that I’d be comfortable to keep it going. I want to be able to work at home. And not feel guilty about it. I want to be able to sit in a park and read a book (for work or pleasure) during the week. And not feel guilty about it. I want to use mobile devices to check in whatever time of day or night I feel like it, out of the office. And not feel guilty about it. But even here, with no-one watching, I rush to get to the office, I stay there all day without going out to wander around the shops or sit in a park and I get sucked in to working late. All of this is entirely likely to be my own ridiculous inability to just let go, but I’m missing that gene. I suppose wanting all this change is a bit unrealistic, and given what I’ve said above perhaps it’s change I wouldn’t cope with which is why it’s not happening – catch 22! The reality is if you work for a company and have an office job, that’s what do – the more you try to change it the more you begin to question it. I guess I had some early career delusions of where I’d be and what I’d be doing at this point in my life and I have to adjust to that not being the case.

This has made me wonder how the people in our offices in Australia and the UK get on and how ‘left out’ they might feel. However what might make it easier for them is that they have their own specific (usually sales-based) jobs and objectives and customer base, and are not trying so much to be a ‘physical’ part of a team in New Zealand. Although I’m sure they find it hard to really know exactly what point the product development is at, mind you I think that might be a typical complaint of any sales team, even when in the same office!

Over and out, from somewhere in the sky between Chicago and New York.

I wrote a bit about it on the Xero blog so please read that to save me re-typing everything here!

Letter from New York – records & film night

So for 2 days in late April I attended the NYC 140Conf - a conference about social media – aptly named 140 Characters (that’s how many characters are available to you in a tweet) where 140 people spoke for 10 minutes only, or took part in a 15 minute panel, over 2 days. A very engaging format – sure some people were a bit boring and by the end of it we were starting to hear the same things again and again – but still a very cool way of presenting a conference.

It was an extremely full on 2 days – 8am-6pm both days with a half hour lunch slot each day otherwise people just came and went and got coffee and networked out the back – unless you were me and didn’t know how things worked so stayed rooted to your seat, nervous of drinking too much water in case a toilet stop was needed and then what did you do with your bag and how did you make sure your seat in the overflowing 500+ auditorium would still be there when you got back given all the networking comings and goings?

Miss America opened the 2-day conference!

Aaaaaanyway, some notes I took/things that people said that sparked my interest, for me to look back on, and some of you might be interested in (I think I’ve captured every speaker’s name (as in their Twitter name) correctly so apologies if I’m incorrectly attributing people):

• @JohnBorthwick: currently the average length of a tweet is 77. So people aren’t using all the characters they have available. People are thinking shorter. Night before his talk, the most mentioned person on Twitter was Obama and the most used hash tag still Michael Jackson
• @acarvin: it’s all very well having a large Twitter account with millions of followers, that’s good for broadcasting but you get more conversation and better relationships with people when you have a smaller account – if you can manage your user base you can more easily let your audience get to know the face/person behind your account.
• @TheKotel: poeple can tweet their prayers and a team of people via Twitter voluntarily co-ordinate the printing, spooling into scrolls and delivery of the prayers to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where the original tweeter can’t go themselves. An old sewing machine has been turned into the prayer spooler! One guy started out doing it by himself, just an idea, not his job and now he’s seeing it pay forward as other people are approaching him to help.
• @Donny_Deutsh: don’t sell out your brand by leaping into new media trends. Never lose your brand and stay true to it. Everything is changing but fundamentals like your brand shouldn’t change on a whim. You’ve got to give something – everybody wants something so don’t just broadcast hard sell.
• @IvankaTrump: if you’re trying to build a platform or a personal brand you must be consistent. If you’re direct and honest, then be that way always, across all your platforms and personas.
• @1000TimesYes: Chris Weingarten – “good writing is dying at the hand of search engine optimisation” [GREAT point!] People can’t write well any more and Twitter contains a lot of rubbish as everyone is basically stringing together keywords and mentioning things that will get good search results or clicks because everyone simply wants to be first. In the context of bands, good musicians are basically no longer artists, they have to be keyboard (as in computer keyboard) geniuses. Musicians don’t want to worry about being viral, they just want to be good musicians!
• @AndreaSyrtash: we should worry less about trying to impress people and take time to let people impress us. We need to be present and alert, people can’t connect with you if you aren’t. Don’t try and change people, it’s OK to challenge someone but don’t expect them to change. Don’t confuse immediate gratification with long term fulfillment – ask yourself “am I a good version of myself online?” – don’t worry about the number of followers you have, worry about who you are.
• @lizstrauss: monitoring and listening aren’t the same thing – monitoring just flattens the data we have where as listening is gathering intelligence. Using the example of a traffic camera at the red lights – monitoring the data might show that x number of people ran the red light where as listening might show a good reason some ran the red light.
• @jeffjarvis: why do we only allow comments after we’re done what we’re doing? [I especially liked this point as it relates to work, as a late-comment-bloomer myself I can see that when you're building a product that permitting your customer base to communicate with you is going beyond pure lip-service to their feedback.]
• Lots of discussion and commentary on various industries using social media to get out there and spread the word for doing good in real-life communities and in times of crisis. Lots of ‘keeping it real’ – social media despite common belief is still about meeting people and people online aren’t in fact hiding there.

Anyway, here are the links:

1 April 2010: Letter from New York – settling in

18 March 2010: Letter from New York

It was the start of a very busy few days – that Sunday (for us) morning, about 5 minutes after the release went live, the news started spreading on Twitter – and didn’t stop for 3 days! I almost went cross-eyed and started seeing and worrying about tweets in my sleep – all that Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I thought tweeting for Xero might be a full-time job some day but not that quickly! However, all has returned to relative normal now and I have welcomed lots more Xero fans and got hundreds more followers in those 3 days. Yaaaay, the community is growing.

Here’s The Mister smiling opposite me – if we wanted to spend 4 months together we sure are – never at work have I had to look at him all day!!