Closing Census

So I’m going to be officially closing my blog tomorrow (Friday 11th September). It will be my last day of remote working and I’d like to make sure all the loose ends are tied up before then. Today I wanted to share a few stats on the blog and on my work related to remote working (a bit meta there!), so here goes…

My blog has been running for quite a while, pretty much since I started working remotely back in 2008.

It was pretty easy to write stuff at the beginning. I was actively encouraged by my line-manager (Brian Kelly) and it was a great way to support the team at UKOLN. Remote working was a new thing and there seemed so much to learn and not a lot of useful information out there. Over the years it has become harder to find topics to cover. My move to Open Knowledge and working as part of a distributed team gave me lots of new fodder, but often I’ve struggled to stay on topic and have strayed into the areas of e-learning and social media more generally. Here’s some of my favourite topics courtesy of Tagxedo:

To be honest remote working is so normal to me now that I’m pretty scared about returning to an office! I’ve been having dreams/nightmares about turning up for work in pyjamas! I’ve mentioned my fear of being ‘home institutionalised’ to people – can I function normally in a more traditional working environment? We shall see – I hope the answer is yes!

At times when I’ve struggled to come up with ideas for topics then guest blog posts have really helped keep things ticking over. These have allowed me to give a voice to others and establish a much needed community around remote working. They’ve also allowed us to hear about some great tools that people are using. I recently created some data visualisations looking at the authorship and timing of guest blog posts.

Talking of tools I have used a couple of other social media ones to support this blog and my remote work. The main one is Twitter (here I just tweet about anything – not just remote work), but I also have a Pinterest board dedicated to images of remote working and Delicious account that saves related links.

When I first began writing on this blog remote working was a lot more unusual than it is now and I actually ended up writing 4 published articles about it and giving a number of presentations on it. You can see my presentations on Slideshare. I’ve also written quite a few guest blog posts on other people’s blogs.

So has it all been worth while? Has any one visited the blog or found the posts useful? I don’t know. There are some statistics on sites that link to this blog below but do they really show the value?

Google has found there to be 4,300 results when looking for this domain. Obviously 500 or so of these are the actual blog.

Moz is finding 2,387 links.

Check Your Link Popularity is coming up with 7,867 backlinks and 2,247 links to the home page.

Quite a lot of people have passed through this site over the years and a lot of people have emailed and talked to me about the blog. The numbers aren’t amazing but they’ve been steady.

This blog began as a way to record my thoughts and findings and to some degree it has been a personal development tool. I’ve often referred to my blog as a memory aid – I tend to forget what I’ve done so it’s useful to have a record of it all online. Wherever I am I can search for my own ramblings on a particular event or tool. While being an open practitioner means anyone can see (and perhaps benefit from, or even criticise) your thoughts, it also means that you have access to them too. That has been a huge help for me and I’m going to miss it.

So tomorrow I’ll say a last goodbye…

Remote Worker Blogs

When I first started writing this blog over 4 years ago there wasn’t a lot of help out there for people newly working from home. These days there is a huge amount sites dedicated to remote working, offering both organizational and technical advice and support.

There are also so many great blogs out there giving a personal perspective. There are days when I feel that my work here is done!!

I thought it might be good to highlight a few of the choicest blogs out there:

• Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen is a technology blog by a guy who works from home. There are a lot of great technology reviews, podcasts, lists of services and programming tips but Scott also writes about the challenges of remote working in his remote work category.

• Lea Woodward’s Location Independent blog has always been a real inspiration. Lea left the rat race in 2005 and has been travelling round the work and working ever since (though they are now back in the UK). Her blog gives lots of good technical tips but is also one of the best for motivational support. I keep meaning to ask if Lea would consider writing a blog post!

• Wide teams is a blog and podcast about geographically dispersed teams, with an emphasis on software development teams. It was created by Avdi Grimm, who has written a guest blog post for us before. The weekly podcast is excellent and offers a real hands-on perspective on newer ways of working.

• How to Work from Home is a blog by Judy Heminsley. Judy organizes local Jellys (remote worker meet-ups) and is an active tweeter

• Remote Worker Daily is the work of Doug Campbell, another guest blog post writer. It has lots of really useful advice, links to remote jobs and resources. Doug’s site A mobile app a day is really good too.

• The Work at Home Woman is a blog by Holly Reisem Hanna for mums who want to set up a business and work for themselves. There are quite a lot of interviews with home workers and lots of productivity tips.

• In her Freelance Lifestyle blog Emma Cossey often writes about working from home. She also podcasts and offers online tutorials.

• Andy Abramson’s blog is another technical perspective on home working. He often posts on VOIP and working anywhere.

• The author of Head In The Clouds: The Location Independent Office – How to take your business or job online and work remotely from wherever you please!, Phil Byrne, also writes a blog about Living and working abroad. More useful tips and reviews.

Also a quick mention for Mashable and the readwriteblog – both great for ideas.

If you know of any great remote worker blogs please do post below.