Though the second edition of Going Solo - a conference for freelancers, planned for September - was cancelled, organizer Stephanie Booth pressed ahead and hosted a BarCamp-style unconference, SoloCamp.
Though I was only able to attend the opening sessions with around twenty participants, the initial session to shape the day’s agenda revealed some useful and interesting topic areas for freelancers and indie workers.
Participants collectively decided to divide the day into four one-hour sessions, each moderated by a volunteer and intended to draw out the room’s collective knowledge and experience in each area. This generally resulted in sprawling mind-maps, that helped both to drive and document the discussions… Read the rest of this entry »
Back in April, my first post for WWD introduced Going Solo, a one-day conference for freelancers that took places in mid-May, right on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland’s Lausanne. (Disclosure: I’ve been advising Going Solo as an unpaid volunteer helping with strategy & logistics)
Conference organizer Stephanie Booth has recently announced that she’ll be touring the conference globally, with the next event landing in the UK on 12th September in the city of Leeds.
Like the Lausanne event, Going Solo Leeds will focus on practical and theoretical sessions for freelancing professionals, independent workers, the self-employed, remote workers and those who are considering ‘going solo’.
Though there’s a bias towards internet and media professionals, most of the sessions are appropriate for traditional independent workers too. Here’s a taster of the planned programme…
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So you thought you’d escaped the cubicle farm when you decided to put down roots in your local coworking community? Think again! The cubicle is back!
At Leeds’ The Round Foundry in the UK, entrepreneurs in the creative and digital industries can opt for traditional serviced office space or a hot-desking plan in a large shared space. Each hot-desker gets a cute lockable ‘pod’, that includes…
- Six large shelves (with file holder tabs!)
- Six power outlets.
- Two Cat-5 sockets.
- A coat/bag hook.
- A motorized, adjustable desk area.
- Um, wheels.
The pods (the model is know as a Macro-1) are actually quite cool, designed by local company Volume Products as part of a range of modular office furniture. Though they appear to be designed for traditional office spaces, they seem to have been adapted well to the Round Foundry’s coworking area.
However is raises some interesting questions about the nature of work environments that coworkers are interested in inhabiting.
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