Tag Archive for: productivity

Lockdown & Remote Work: How to Adjust to Working From Home.

COVID-19 lockdown has forced the majority of the workforce worldwide to work from home. Lyda Michopoulou is a freelancer and a member of Stone Soup coworking space. She has worked remotely since January of 2017, and she has long experience in distributed work. One could argue that being a remote worker, Lyda would have an advantage over other workers who were abruptly forced to change their routines. But let’s see to what extent this is true. 

Lyda will help us answer the question, whether working from home is the same as working remotely. She will also share her own experience.

Stone Soup Coworking Member

Adopting a work from home routine and how is that different?

Lyda considers herself lucky as she didn’t struggle much during this transition. Her life as a freelancer requires her to travel around Europe and work from different countries. One of Lyda’s consulting gigs is to an American startup in the travel industry called NextVacay. She is working on US time, following a specific time frame and specific online tools. For that reason, the processes and dynamics within the organization haven’t changed much with the lockdown. 

Because of the corona crisis, Lyda is telecommuting from home and she spends most of her time hosting or participating in online meetings. This has decreased her actual working time and disrupted her usual working routine from Stone Soup.

Lyda had a functional working routine for herself, allowing her to work from anywhere as long as the WiFi connection was strong.

Fast WiFi

 

However, working from home is completely different from working from “anywhere in the world”. Social distancing, the new norm that has been given to all of us, is hardly a gift. Being able to keep a working pace, your motivation high and your productivity under control can be compromised especially when you are forced to work without a suitable working environment. 
It is quite easy to fall into traps such as working all day long, without proper breaks or even realizing that your working time is up and you should relax. Lyda sees the value of participating in virtual coworking spaces such as Stone Soup’s and Digital Nomad Girls’ Inner Circle, in finding a sense of belonging and support. 

Online Meetups

How to do your best during the COVID-19 era?

Instead of isolating yourself at home binge watching TV-series and movies, you have the opportunity to do something to better your skills and develop yourself. You can host or join online meetings with friends (networking), figure out how to support others with the skills you already possess or participate in activities that are valuable for the community.

During the previous weekend, Lyda participated in an online hackathon, called: “Hack the Crisis Austria”. She mentored a team who was tackling a challenge: “How can we support the mental health of people”. Lyda has only positive feedback to give about it. It made her more eager to participate in a bigger scale and even think about organizing something similar in Greece.

Stone Soup Coworking Member

Shaping the future of remote work after coronavirus

The corona crisis has unprecedentedly escalated the need to work remotely. The situation might be temporary but it pushes the gears of change and those won’t come back. Companies keeping previously a negative pose to the idea, are forced tο consider continuing with remote work after the lockdown.

Having a global network of contacts, Lyda has heard discussions about the struggles of friends and partners and has acquired some interesting insights. Many companies don’t understand how to use the online world to better support their work. There was no time for guidelines and transitioning. A new culture and priorities need to be set on the go. And of course, this changes the balances and threatens the up to now acquired stability. Companies and teams are being troubled by basic aspects of functionality such as what would be the best way, time, frequency, and means to conduct online meetings.

The discussion moved from online meetings to how people handle the grief that comes with being locked inside their houses. Lyda’s perspective of the situation was altered due to an article on Harvard Business Review. If individuals and companies go through the stages of grief we will be ready to accept what lies ahead and work with that.

After the lockdown is over a changed situation and land of opportunities for digital nomads and remote work is to be expected. The ground will be paved for the companies to keep workers distributed. And they would most probably like to shape their businesses in a way they could cope with similar future situations.

Creative Innovation

Coworking life is bringing people together

Operating from a coworking space brings many changes to your professional and everyday life. Poulcheria Tzova, an architect who resides at Stone Soup for almost 3 years now, shares her perspective.

 

According to Poulcheria, the thing she enjoys the most is that she gets motivated to keep on working even the days she feels the least like it. The way she describes this impact on her productivity resembles the effect of the population of a school of fish

coworking life

In nature it is common to encounter groups of fishes who are staying together for social reasons and swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner. In a similar way, a dynamic coworking environment motivates one to be committed and keep on fighting their own battles so that they won’t stay behind but they will follow the destination of the larger group that is forward.

On days where I feel tired or disappointed, I enter this space full of people and see them overcome difficulties no matter what they face. Along with them, I find the strength and courage to continue too.

Giving and taking

Poulcheria’s favourite part of the day is when the magical little exchanges among the members of the coworking community happen. They occur either consciously or unconsciously but that is irrelevant because they are very impactful either way.

Stone Soup Working Space

I love it when I am asked for advice. I feel useful offering to others and at the same time I feel as I am returning the favor because I am also receiving many things from them, even if they don’t realise it. 

Tips for the new generation

As an experienced professional Poulcheria gives value to the workspace itself. When we asked her what would be her piece of advice for the new generation of architects, she responded;

detail-driven

“It is said that in order to become an architect you have to own the three O’s;
 1. Observation 2. Observation and 3. Observation !
This is one of the most essential qualities you need to own in order to succeed in every task you undertake. No matter what the workspace of your choice is, try to build a pleasant working base, but never forget how important is for our profession to be responsible, serious and detail-driven.”

Are innovators born or made?

The entire western world talks about innovation. It’s the key for the development of western economies, and it’s a one-way street. All of the engineering and math-oriented work passes through globalization to overseas engineers. It combines low operational cost with high productivity. However, in the case of innovation it is really complex. Actually, there is no consensus on how innovation works.

Numerous products such as book or pieces of art are made each year, but how many of them actually obtain an exceptional place in the market? Engineering plus creativity gives birth to innovation. It’s not a coincidence that great innovators were not just engineers or scientists; they were also artists in their own fields, in their own community.

One-inch

It is true that innovative minds can be taught, to some extent; but not the regular way. Arts and  Humanities is that one-inch that makes the difference. Is it possible to imagine Mac OS without art? However, markets are not always in favour of the best technology. Mac Os is vastly superior than Windows OS in many aspects, but the latter dominates the markets. Believing  that every product or skill deserves the share that it takes is a big fallacy. It may be true when talking about low-level service and measurable skills, but it’s not about innovation. It’s almost trivial to give credits on to someone or something that is already established.Any wise analyst can see all the critical points that made the difference of that one-inch and claim “I knew it, I knew it, I saw it!”. Bullshit! Nobody takes into consideration the billions of products that never surfaced because of flawed timing, funding or many, many other reasons that we may find afterwards.

Start wherever you are!

In the real world with real considerations and a well-structured market, skills and abilities will be expressed and rewarded somehow. But that could be anywhere! What they say? ‘History is repeated!’ Nonsense! Just nonsense! Every path is unique and, the dots can only be connected by looking backwards. All innovative newbies are fighting for a ticket in a theatre where the performance is never, ever repeated. The roles are changing upon the stage and the script is nothing more than trash.

The best way of learning is by doing..

A YouTube founder once said: I am not impressed by our success, we planned it! Hah They planned it! They planned to receive in a couple of years a bunch of millions. When Google came to light, its founders  wanted to sell their idea but nobody wanted to buy it! They couldn’t see any commercial value in a multi-billion-dollar business idea that changed the flow of information in the whole world! Who really knows? Trial and error was the most effective method that has ever existed, and it still might be.

The point is that the harder you work, the luckier you get. Perseverance can make the difference. The vast majority of inventors, innovators, and scientists  around you – they are not as charismatic or talented as you think – they are persistent.

Give it a shot!

Credits for the article go to: Antonis Vatousios
Find the original article here 

Stek.io: a SaaS that makes Open Source Software accessible to non-tech users.

Stek.io is a Dutch-Greek startup company, which works regularly out of Stone Soup. They are building a software platform that provides a set of tools in order to install and manage Open Source Software.  Users of Stek.io, have the control of their data in a secure surrounding.

Stek.io uses three tools: Ghost, Discourse and Hackpad. Ghost is a blogging platform that helps you record your news. Discourse is a forum that enables the creation of new communities. And Hackpad is a tool to capture, organize and share knowledge in order to collaborate with other people and work together. These tools are only the start. There will be more tools coming very soon as the main purpose of this project is to become an one-stop open source shop.

              

With Stek.io, you pay for ease of use, privacy, and security.The usage of the website is very easy. You only need to create an account, providing your email and a password, and you have access to each tool. Then you click on the tool that you want and you can either start a free trial or buy it from 15 euros per month.

The 3 creators of Stek.io have diverse and very interesting backgrounds.  They are Erwin Blom (VPRO, Fast Moving Targets), Mark Pors and Dimi Balaouras (both former in WatchMouse).

Here is a little bit info about them:

Erwin Blom is a journalist, media specialist and entrepreneur and he loves open source because of the fact that he was responsible for making content management system MMBase open source in 2000, at the public broadcasting organisation VPRO in Netherland.

Dimi Balaouras is versatile and passionate full-stack Software Architect. He continues to have a strong interest and be active in all aspects of Software Development. But the most important thing for him is that he enjoys working with Dev Teams.

Mark Pors is a tech veteran with a lot of experience in technology, project and people management and online business such as marketing, product design and more. He is Co-founder and CTO of WatchMouse (acquired by CA Technologies in 2011).