Remote Office Franchises
September 29th, 2007Years ago a friend of mine and I worked on an idea for remoting to work. We wanted to find a happy medium between the office versus home contrast. The stark difference between fighting traffic to get to the office downtown and walking from the kitchen to your home office is significant. And you have distractions at the office but at home you may have different distractions. Scott Hanselman writes that he can sometimes hear his wife playing with their son. Scott also writes that it can get lonely when he sits alone for hours without any face to face conversations with co-workers.
The concept for the happy medium addressed many shortcomings of a single massive office located in the center of the city. The following scenarios are what we wanted to make possible. I will use Scott's situation as an example. When Scott was interviewing for his position he could have been given the option to work at a remote office which happens to be a 10 minute drive from his home. He would be set up with a desk at this remote office where he can dock his computer and directly access the main company network with high speed access. His desk would be grouped in a room with a few others from Microsoft with other employees who also live near him. They could arrange to have lunch together and chat about company news during the day as they work.
Then a few months later Scott decides he wants to fly his family down to Florida in the middle of winter to enjoy the warm weather for a couple of weeks but he has a deadline at work. No problem. He will just request a temporary desk at a remote office at one of the franchise offices in Florida. He will be able to do his work in Florida with no major differences and still spend the rest of the day and weekend with his family in Florida.
The remote offices would be like McDonalds. They would be everywhere and you would know exactly what is on the menu. A basic desk would just have a desk, chair and an internet connection hooked up securely to your main office. This would assume you would provide your own laptop. Another option would provide a 17" LCD screen, keyboard, mouse and a docking station for a selection of supported laptops. And finally the top level option would be a dual monitor system with everything that the medium and basic levels offer. The IT staff employed by the franchise would handle all issues with preparing these desks so that you can request a desk in Florida with just 1 weeks notice to ensure that it will be ready.
The remote offices would also feature a shared conference room that is outfitted with a projector and phone system including a video link system that would make face to face conversations possible. The conference room would be scheduled for use as any conference room would be at any company but this one would be shared among each company that happens to be leasing desks at that location.
These franchises could be associated with hotels in some locations. When Scott goes to Miami and stays at the Radisson he could just walk down the hall from the dining hall to the remote office and get to work. The time saved with driving across town could now be spent with his family. He could even meet his family for lunch, which is just something you could never do with a long commute. Generally I think the remote offices would be set up at office parks located in suburbs for easy access.
The idea of the remote office also addresses another scenario. What if Scott was working on a project with Rob Conery who is the lead developer on the SubSonic Project, a very popular .NET project that has caught the eye of Microsoft. Perhaps Microsoft wants to assist Rob with better aligning SubSonic with future .NET releases. Microsoft could send Scott and a few other developers to work with Rob in a remote office in Hawaii where Rob lives. They could work directly together for a few weeks to get the project started on solid ground and then return to their homes and continue working remotely with occasional visits as needed.
At the time when I worked out this idea with my friend we decided it was too soon for an idea like this to catch on. But that was years ago and today we have things like Skype and Vonage with video conferencing right on the computer which actually could make this possible at a reasonable cost. Know anyone with some venture capital? I would love to make this a reality.
September 29th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Actually we have these in Portland, the company is called "CubeSpace"
October 1st, 2007 at 8:23 am
Hmmm... does CubeSpace cater to companies like Brennan describes, or do they just let self-employed people come work there?
October 1st, 2007 at 9:22 am
I looked at what they offer and they seem to nickel and dime you for everything. I would prefer a weekly or monthly lease for the desks with a discount for a longer term or quantity discount. Office space in the suburbs has to be a lot cheaper than the center of a large city. I think that CubeSpace is similar to this idea but I do not see their model catching on widely.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:42 am
There are certain security issues that would need to be addressed. If you use your own laptop and connect to work using a VPN, then you wouldn't have to worry about others sniffing your network packets. But, what about old fashion spying? The rooms and desks could potentially get bugged with tiny cameras and microphones, and you would have absolutely no way to guarantee things to be secure. Anyone and Everyone can potentially have access to these facilities. For example, If some Microsoft employees were working at a rented desk there would be serious security issues if they were working on the next version of some major product that's still in secret. All I'd have to do is bug the office to get some secret screenshots or steal code. Or, what about a banking employee? I guess the same risk exists if the person is to work anywhere that's open to the public, but it may be more of a risk in this scenario. You may call me paranoid, but the risk would still need to be addressed.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:52 am
When we were working out the idea we thought we would have a policy set up with each company. The network infrastructure would be handled by the franchise company by conforming to that policy. That may mean configuring a VPN link from the 6 computers leased to a company. The IP addresses should be known and could be set up for specific access from those white listed addresses. The security teams from the franchise company and the customer would be coordinated whenever a new desk is prepared.
And I would also use key cards to access the rooms. The 6 desks would be in a separate room with keyed access. That is pretty common these days. To get anywhere where I work I have to use my key card to get into different parts of the building. And I can enable/disable access for a person rather easily this way based on when they have the desks scheduled. It would need a way for the customer to grant or revoke access to someone quickly as well. Potentially the key card could be something that is already compatible with their existing office.
October 21st, 2007 at 2:37 am
Business Ideas Forum
I couldn't understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting