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Editor’s note: This is a blog post that I don’t really want to have to publish, because that will make it true. Adam is one of the most fun, creative, enthusiastic people I have ever worked with and my heart is more than a little broken by his news. However, as you will read below, he’s doing what’s best for him right now. Love and luck to you and your family, Adam. We will never air-drum, karaoke, listen to The Darkness, use the emo emoticon or see a rust eagle cruising down the road without thinking of you — MRR.
After nearly two and a half years, this week was my last at BatchBlue. This is a decision that I couldn’t have imagined making just a few weeks ago. My awesome co-workers have been incredibly understanding and supportive…and I think a big reason is that the decision really has nothing to do with BatchBlue at all.
Next week, I’ll be joining a company called PatientsLikeMe. PatientsLikeMe is a unique company that provides online communities for patients with life-altering diseases. What started as a small community of patients suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) has evolved into a site that hosts over a dozen communities for diseases ranging from mood disorders to Parkinson’s Disease.
While my role is not specific to any particular communities, I recently found myself in need of a community that isn’t there yet. The opportunity to make this happen is what brings me to PatientsLikeMe. I’m going to be doing HTML and CSS, but I also have much greater and very specific goals I’ve set out to accomplish in my new position.
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Tags: batchblue, sad trombone, work/life
I recently spent a few weeks vacationing with my husband, 3 kids and a rotating stream of relatives and friends at our family retreat on a tiny island north of Portland, Maine. Each day wondering if we should sail, climb the rocks, play on the beach, boogie board, collect starfish, hunt crabs, fish, play tennis, eat mussels, clams or lobsters, or all of the above. At BatchBlue we put a high premium on family time. We talk a bit about mandatory vacations in our Virtual Office Blue Paper, but a customer wrote in recently with the comment, “it is great that you know how to disengaged, but do you find it hard to re-engage?” It’s hard to benefit from the personal time if you are worried about the mounting workload, so I thought I would share a few of my tips on quickly catching up on the waiting backlog.
Here are a few of the things I did to quickly get back up to BatchBlue speed::
- Read staff meeting agendas – ok, alright, I did this one while on vacation. Not to prove I work harder than anyone else, but just because leaving your business for a few weeks is like leaving your kids for a few weeks. You can’t not check in once in a while. So on staff meeting days I would check our company wiki and read through the notes that the team had taken during the meeting. Great way to peek in without being noticed.
- Search of the daily staff updates – at BatchBlue each staff person sends around a daily report on what they are working on. I set up a filter in Gmail to collect these in a folder while I was gone, so it was pretty easy to quickly read through them chronologically and get a sense of what progress was made while I was out.
- Click back through the history of my Twitter feed on the BatchBook dashboard to get a sense of what the Twitterverse was saying about BatchBlue, SBBuzz, or me.
- I already have a “BatchBlue” folder in my Google Reader where I subscribe to a number of company related RSS feeds. So all in one place I get a quick glimpse of the following:
- BatchBlue Blog posts written by the staff while I was gone.
- BatchBook comments or notes added to contact records in BatchBook. For the most part these were silly remarks by staff about each other, but there is something comforting about catching up on some of the inside company jokes, as well.
- BatchBlue communications including all e-mails, phone calls, Twitter messages or other communications sent out or received by BatchBlue staff. I admit I would flip back into BatchBook reading most of these – such a great way to remind myself who some of the e-mails recipients are (thank you social media SuperTag!).
- Forum posts showed me all of the BatchBook questions and suggestions our customers posted in our online forums as well as the BatchBlue responses. I always learn something new in there.
- Hubspot Feeds are the nice messages our friends at Hubspot send telling us about anyone in the wonderful world of the Web talking about us. A little self-indulgent, but in a good way.
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Tags: batchblue, communications management, how-to, small business, work/life
I’ve always kept a clear separation between work and home. Now that I’m working remotely with BatchBlue, that separation has gotten a little murky. So…how to adapt? I’ve taken a few steps to make the transition a smooth one.
First off, get a laptop. There are countless distractions at home and it’s good to have the option of getting away. I’m lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with more than a dozen cafes offering free wifi. Working from a cafe offers a glimpse of the work/home separation I’ve grown accustomed to over the years. Anytime I need to get out of the house, there are several pseudo-offices just minutes away.
Second, split up your day. One of the big benefits of the virtual office is flexible hours. Need to meet your tax guru in the afternoon as I did last week? Not a problem. The concern is letting flex get in the way of your work. As a software developer, I generally need several consecutive hours to fix a bug or implement a new feature. An hour here and there isn’t a good use of my time. I like to plan out 4-5 hour blocks to focus on particular projects.
Third, keep up on the pulse of your company. Daily updates, regular 1-on-1s, instant messenger, blogs, twitter, email… You lose something by not sitting next to your coworkers. Commit to keeping others in your loop and involving yourself in theirs.
Fourth, and one of the bigger perks, find a comfy pair of slippers (thanks Michelle)!
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Tags: virtual office, work/life
Yesterday, ReadWriteWeb’s Alex Iskold posted an article titled “The ‘Work From Home’ Generation“. Already a proud member of said generation, I had a blog post idea brewing about this topic, but luckily Alex gives me a bit more groundwork on which to write.
Alex lists “Entropy is after you” as one of the “bad things” about working from home. He says:
Each interaction brings in human subtleties and brings an opportunity for creative thought and innovation. When working at home these stimuli will not be there and everyone is going to get bored, sooner or later. The antidote is to get out of the house – work from a local coffee shop that has wifi, and once in a while go to the office and talk to your co-workers in person.
I like to think BatchBlue has found a good balance to deal with this issue. We do have one advantage over other virtual companies, though. Most of us are logistically close to each other (as in, within a 15 minute drive). Because of that, we are able to meet face-to-face much more often. Those of us who aren’t in the Providence area still have to get in front of the webcam, though.
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Tags: virtual office, work/life
While the “work from home” stereotype of stubble-bearded zombies working in pajamas twenty hours a day doesn’t really apply to us (check that, most of it doesn’t), we at BatchBlue (a virtual company) still have to work extra hard to get the human interaction that most take for granted.
Every month, BatchBlue has some representation at the Providence Geek Dinner meetups. I’ve also recently started going to Web Development Lunch Hour meetups in Providence. And just last week, Michelle & I made the 182-mile round trip to a North Shore Web Geek Meetup in Newburyport, MA.
Why meetups? Let me give you a few reasons.
- It’s good for business. All of our earliest press came directly from folks we hang out with at Providence Geeks. Don’t be a nag. But form relationships with people in the community. People will come, Ray.
- See what else is going on. This, of course, can be huge for those of us who work in our kitchens. But remember that meetups aren’t just for those who work from home. Simply talking to other folks in your industry (or those just outside of it) is a great way to get your own creative juices flowing.
- Get involved. At Geeks, I ran into Sara Streeter, a high school friend (and Johnson & Wales University student). She is organizing an unconference called NewBCamp at a J&W. BatchBlue is getting involved by helping support the event and by presenting.
- Make friends. Isn’t this the most important? Home-based web workers don’t get to have water cooler chatter. You need to get this social interaction elsewhere. Meetups are perfect for this.
I didn’t attend a single meetup while I worked in Boston. The one Boston meetup that Michelle and I attended was what you may expect—huge, loud, and not conducive to having real conversations with people. That’s what I love about places like Providence and now Newburyport. They are the perfect size to have manageable communities.
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Tags: NewBCamp, providence geeks, Social Media, virtual office, work/life
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