Coworking – Climb to the Stars

Coworking: Fixed Desks or Hot-Desking? [en]

[fr] A l'occasion de la conférence Coworking Europe, j'ai pris part à un panel discutant des avantages/inconvénients des postes fixes ou mobiles.

I was on a panel at Coworking Europe about fixed desks versus hot-desking. When I opened eclau, I had a vision for it based on how Citizen Space had been set up. Mid-2008, Citizen Space was my ur-coworking-space. I was in contact with Chris and Tara and had spent a little time at the space over the summer 2007 during my stay in San Francisco.

It quickly became apparent to me that eclau’s architecture (and possibly Lausanne’s business culture) was not working out well with my desire to have a heart of fixed-desk resident coworkers.

Eclau has very few walls that are not interrupted by pipes, radiators, or windows, making it difficult to install desk+bookcase combos that most people needing a fixed desk required.

Also, people who came to visit for a fixed desk often turned out to be either people who wanted to store a lot of stuff in the space, or who wanted a “real office” and were just trying to save on the costs.

After a year or two, eclau counted only a couple of fixed desks, and way more “hot-desking” members. Roughly two years after opening, eclau 2.0 re-focused the offer on free seating, making fixed desks an extra option available to existing members. So far, nobody has actually got around to taking the fixed desk option.

That’s for my story.

One interesting idea that emerged from the panel was that coworking space managers are trying to maximize the returns for the space they have. This is kind of an alien idea to me, as I don’t earn a living with eclau — I just want it to “not cost me anything”. The debate over fixed vs. flexible desks brought us to speak of our price plans and business models, which tend to reflect how important revenue is to the space manager. Clearly, if you’re trying to make a living out of your coworking space, or if you’re making a living doing something else, the way you approach these issues will be quite different.

At eclau, I don’t really worry that summer months are “empty”. Or Fridays. Of course it’s nicer when you’re not alone when you come to work at the coworking space. But from a financial perspective it doesn’t change anything for me, because I don’t sell desk space, or time in the space, or services. People sign up to be members, for six months or a year minimum, and the yearly membership fee is spread over 12 months. So people still pay for the space in July/August, even if they’re on holiday. They’re paying to be part of the community. Not because they occupy a seat.

This fits with my vision of coworking as “community/people first”. For me the desk renting business is the business that business centers are in.

Some argue that the type of price plan I propose is not flexible. On the contrary, I see it as very flexible. The membership fee is low, because all I’m looking to do is cover my costs. Once you’re a member, you have a key, and come whenever you want. Complete flexibility.

And the rather serious commitment required of full members is balanced with an “occasional member” offer which is virtually free (tip jar) for those who want to come less than three times a month.

I also believe in keeping things dead simple. Want to be a member? Here’s how it works. You don’t need to agonize over which price plan to choose, or wonder if you want to drop in at the coworking space today and use up some of your credit. Once you’re a member, the only thing that determines whether you come or not is your need of a place to work for the day.

Now of course, if I were trying to make a living (or at least money) out of eclau, I would be doing things very differently. Because on a given day, there are a lot of empty desks at eclau. So clearly, I’m not maximizing my revenue from the space. But that’s not my objective. (Which brings us to the other session I co-held at Coworking Europe, about the criteria of success for coworking.)

Coworking Musings — Why is More Better? [en]

[fr] A Paris pour Coworking Europe. Trois jours pour penser au coworking et à l'eclau! Là, je médite sur le fait que la mesure du succès pour un espace coworking semble être "plus de coworkers" ou "plus de revenu". Je ne suis pas d'accord, comme vous imaginez, si vous connaissez un peu l'eclau...

Here I am in Paris for Coworking Europe. Three days to think about coworking and talk with other people who are also running spaces or participating in the coworking movement one way or another.

Rather than live-blog, I’ve decided to take a few notes and write more synthetic posts with my thoughts and take-aways.

One of the first things that strikes me is how success seems to be measured by numbers here. More members, better space. I’m not sure I agree. That is in any case definitely not how I manage eclau.

More members means more connections. But at what point do more connections start being “noise”? Do we always need more connections? Is this the single only indicator of success? Take the Hub Melbourne. 700 members. Mind-boggling, but is it still a community? Also, how do you count members? Are they people who have signed up to be on a list, or people who actively and regularly come and work at the coworking space?

I know I’m very careful about how I count numbers. It’s simple at eclau: a member is somebody who shells out the monthly fee. And for that, they have to have signed up for six months minimum. Yes, six months! When I give numbers, I don’t count occasional members, who can come up to 3 times a month and are on the e-mail discussion list. Many of those who sign up for occasional membership never come. Or come once. Counting them feels like cheating.

On the other hand, I see other coworking spaces boasting large numbers of coworkers but which are not “fuller” than eclau on a normal working day. Maybe we should count people actually present in the space instead. Coworker-days or something.

Something else to take into account is the size of the city the coworking space is in. You don’t have the same scale in Lausanne, which counts barely over 100K inhabitants, or London or Paris or New York. The pool of possible coworkers just cannot compare. A space with 700 members in Lausanne? That is the size of a major company for our part of the world. 12 full-time members in London is probably laughable.

Peace. I like small numbers, small groups, small communities — at least offline. I’ve been holding monthly blogger dinners for many years now, and our record attendance is less than 20 people. Despite that, these dinners have allowed countless people to meet and get to know each others, and there are many friendships and business relationships who can boast some kind of Bloggy Friday connection.

The question of numbers, and therefore connections, is probably also different whether you’re catering primarily to entrepreneurs or freelancers. Most established freelancers have their own networks. What interests them (as far as I can see at eclau, at least) is more the network of peers than a network of possible clients and business opportunities. Of course those exist and are there, but I think it’s the peer support that is at the core of eclau’s success.

These observations might be biased as there is certainly some self-selection going on. People who need more connections might go somewhere else.

For the moment, I’m quite happy for eclau to stay “small” — a coworking space where there are sometimes more cats present than humans. 😉

#back2blog challenge (10/10)

Bloggy Friday, #back2blog, et l'eclau [fr]

[en] Motivating these days: Bloggy Friday, still going strong after all these years; #back2blog challenge, picked up by 20 or so bloggers; and eclau, the coworking space I manage in Lausanne, which turns 4 today.

Je fais partie de ces personnes qui vit sa vie en ayant le sentiment de ne jamais avoir assez de temps. Oh, je suis lucide. J’ai autant de temps que tout le monde, je sais que c’est plutôt que j’ai du mal à prioriser, hiérarchiser, décider, me frustrer.

Like a crazy hoarder I mistake the root cause of my growing mountain of incomplete work. The hoarder thinks he has a storage problem (when he really has a ‘throwing things away problem’). I say I am ‘time poor’ as if the problem is that poor me is given only 24 hours in a day. It’s more accurate to say… what exactly? It seems crazy for a crazy person to use his own crazy reasoning to diagnose his own crazy condition. Maybe I too easily add new projects to my list, or I am too reluctant to exit from unsuccessful projects. Perhaps I am too reluctant to let a task go, to ship what I’ve done. They’re never perfect, never good enough.

On Task Hoarding and ToDo Bankruptcy (Leon Bambrik)

Donc, je fais plein de trucs, et pas juste des trucs qui rapportent de l’argent, et ces temps, j’avoue être particulièrement motivée par ces “activités non lucratives”.

Le Bloggy Friday continue son bonhomme de chemin après toutes ces années — on était une douzaine hier soir. J’ai pris conscience il y a quelques mois que malgré l’échelle assez modeste de cette rencontre (entre 5 et 10 personnes par souper, une fois par mois), elle avait permis à de belles amitiés et des relations d’affaires de naître, au fil des années. C’est ce genre de chose qui me motive à continuer.

Sur un coup de tête, j’ai lancé le “Back to Blogging Challenge” (#back2blog) qu’une vingtaine de personnes (dépassant toutes mes espérances!) est en train de relever. Il y a une super énergie, on lit les articles des autres, on commente… cette excitation palpable me rappelle mes premières années de blogueuse. Ça me fait particulièrement plaisir de voir qu’il y tant des blogueurs chevronnés que débutants qui y prennent part (y compris une poignée d’étudiants de la formation SAWI sur les médias sociaux!) et qu’on y blogue en au moins cinq langues!

Finalement l’eclau (Espace Coworking LAUsanne), qui fête ses 4 ans aujourd’hui et se porte extrêmement bien: grande variété de professions représentées, personnes lumineuses et passionnées, excellente entente et riches échanges entre les coworkers, bon équilibre entre “possibilité de travailler” et “possibilité de socialiser”, et un lunch mensuel qui commence à prendre son rythme de croisière et trouver sa place dans nos vies.

Merci à vous tous sans qui ces petites activités communautaires n’existeraient pas!

#back2blog challenge (5/10):

Life in Pictures [en]

[fr] Photos et commentaires.

This is a lazy post. Posts have to be lazy most of the time, or they don’t happen. I have hundreds of photographs waiting to be sorted and uploaded. But I have other things to do like fight fungus on my cherry tomato plants, cuddle kitties, earn money, and prepare for a couple of week-ends abroad.

Anyway. What I did is I picked a bunch of photos from the last month or so that I liked, and dumped them together in a set. They tell bits of my life — the parts I’ve photographed. Lots of cats and plants 🙂

I almost just embedded the slideshow here. But you’re lucky, here are the photos, with comments underneath.

I was waiting for the bus to go to my audiologist’s (who is lovely but works quite far out for somebody travelling by public transport like me) and was really disturbed by the smell of rubbish. I was grumbling about people who throw rubbish on the railway tracks or something, when I turned around and noticed the train that was parked right behind us: a garbage train. That kind of explained the smell.

When I came back from England with Quintus I was amazed at how much my tomatoes had grown. Here’s what the balcony looked like back then, early July. Not much compared to today. You can see Quintus peeking out.

I love the lake, and find it particularly beautiful when it’s stormy. I’ve been sailing a fair number of times this summer, but haven’t taken many photos. I have a facebook group for people interested in going sailing on the Farrniente. (Not my only active facebook group as you’ll soon discover.)

Corinne is in Switzerland these days, so she’s been over regularly to visit, and agreed to cat-sit for me while I was in France end July. It was love at first sight between her and Quintus. Corinne has recently redesigned my professional site. I’m very happy with the result and just need to write a little content (hah!) before it can go live. I’m quite excited to have an up-to-date professional site again, particularly as I’m now clearer about what aspects of my work I want to develop (hint: blogging/freelancers).

A couple of months ago I met Claire. I first noticed her on Twitter (@CBertol) — she was nice, a blogger and a cat person (meet @LoupiCat and his blog). She came to Bloggy Friday (yes, there’s a facebook group for that!) and I immediately noticed her nails. Turns out she’s a part-time nail artist. My brother’s wedding was coming up, and I figured it would be a good excuse to use her services.

So anyway, a few weeks later, I trekked to the other end of the canton and had my nails done. I suck at taking hand photos, I do.

I don’t think my foot photos are much better :-p

Here’s Quintus exploring the garden, with Tounsi not far behind. Did I mention they both have facebook pages? Follow the links.

There we are, here I am at my brother’s wedding. That white jacket is the most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever bought, but it was worth it. Now I need to wear it 🙂

The wedding was a really nice wedding. All weddings are nice (well, hopefully), but this one was nice in the sense that it was relaxed, sprinkled with a few nice Ukrainian traditions, there wasn’t any drama, and suddenly it was 1am and neither me nor my grandparents (who are well in their eighties!) had seen time go by.

Here are the cats again. They don’t love each other, but they tolerate each other quite well. I don’t often see them this close though, and it usually doesn’t last long, so I take a photo when it happens. Quintus started out by actively impressing Tounsi with low menacing meows when he arrived. End result: Tounsi started being afraid of Quintus — I’d actually never seen Tounsi be afraid of anything or anybody before!

Things are calming down now. Tounsi has realized that Quintus is mostly talk and not much walk, so he’s starting to stand up to him more. But Quintus is still clearly top cat.

The top cat in question, lounging on the window sill at eclau. Quintus prefers to stay in the flat, but I’m encouraging him to spend time at eclau and outside. Outside, he has his favourite spot hidden under the concrete path. It’s hollow underneath and there are two neat cat-entrances. He usually makes a beeline for it when he’s outside, and would rather be outside than hang out at eclau.

Things are changing though. He’s starting to nap at eclau and get to know the coworkers, and I’m spending a bit of time with him (and treats!) outside to encourage him to explore.

Which reminds me (I should have blogged about this already, but I haven’t, of course): we had an emergency photo shoot the other day at eclau to illustrate an article in the Financial Times I had given Ian Sanders an interview for. (That is one ugly sentence, sorry.) The photo ended up not illustrating a little feature about eclau alongside other coworking spaces, each with its little photograph, but being the main photo for the article! The link above to the article is behind a registerwall, se here’s the PDF of the article if you want to see what it looks like. Yay eclau and thanks Ian!

Back to the kitties, sharing the bed in an almost symmetrical manner.

After three kitty photos in a row, it’s no use hiding that I’m a crazy cat lady (not too old for the moment), and that there is a (francophone) facebook group for crazy cat ladies (and guys), and that I’m pretty active there posting photos of Quintus and Tounsi and liking photos of the cats responsible for the other 200 or so humans in the group.

Back to the balcony: that’s more like it! Sharing my balcony plant photos on facebook led me to create a group for people into growing stuff. Yes, another facebook group. And it’s not finished.

These sunflowers are not from my balcony, but in the garden just below. They grew to about 3 meters — I kid you not. The concierge himself was amazed — told me he’d never seen them grow that tall. I guess they liked the combination of good soil (on the compost heap) and lots of sun.

This was a yummy yummy meal I made, with green beans, which I never buy. I ended up with green beans because I signed up for a weekly basket of veggies while somebody from the coop was on holiday. And ended up with a bunch of veggies I never buy — which was exactly the point for me!

I’ve also changed the way I eat, eating a full “normal” meal at breakfast (fat + carbs, mainly), another good meal at lunch (less carbs), and a light meal in the evening (salad or the like + protein). I started doing it after being advised by a naturopath friend of mine (he’s the director of the EPSN in Lausanne). I was having trouble going to bed at night and getting up in the morning (sound familiar?). Swapping my meals around has helped a lot: I’m waking up earlier and going to bed earlier without much effort.

And when you think of it, it makes sense: you do not need huge piles of energy at night when you’re sleeping. Why eat your main meal just before going to bed? You need energy in the morning and the afternoon. Skipping breakfast or having a light breakfast doesn’t make much sense physiologically. In addition to that, it seems we have a peak of something in the morning that helps us digest fat. So, sausages and pasta in the morning, here we come!

As a perpetually hungry person, I’ve also found that I’m less hungry this way. I have a better morning because my tummy is full, I do not start starving at 10:30 am, but reach noon quite content, happy to eat again but not too hungry. And in the evening, instead of being (again) starving-waiting-for-my-main-meal, I’m barely hungry. What a change!

In addition to cherry tomatoes, I’m growing cucumbers on my balcony. This is the first one. They are absolutely delicious. They actually taste of cucumber. (Not cucumber-flavoured water. Proper cucumber.)

I have two cucumber plants. Since they started producing fruit, I’m having trouble keeping up. Good thing I love cucumber, because it’s close to one a day!

Ah, here’s one of my veggie baskets from Le jardin potager. The closest delivery point is just across the road.

This is the second one. Note the beetroots? I hate the red stuff they try and put in your salad every now and again. I thought I didn’t like beetroot. I never ever buy beetroot. I tried this dead simple recipe and discovered that I actually love beetroots. I’ll be buying more!

The round basket is Quintus’s place. He sleeps there most of the time. Tounsi snuck in at some point, and stood his ground as Quintus tried to tell him off.

This cute baby is my stepmom’s new puppy, Khaly. Isn’t she a darling?

I went to Basel last week-end to visit a friend who has been there for the last four months or so. I have a pile of photos to sort and put online of course, so here’s already one which I particularly like.

I stole this pic of a guy in the tram in front of us. I thought the cigarettes behind both ears were nearly as classy as the unlit dangling cigarette some addicts tend to have permanently glued to their mouth.

My balcony seen from outside, mid-August. It’s nice and shady on my balcony-couch.

Tounsi, at eclau. 🙂

Quintus relaxing in the garden.

My third basket of veggies. Help!

Tounsi giving me his “OMG you found me!” look.

Curled up in his new spot — I didn’t think he’d fit in there.

Cute nose contest.

Basking in the sunshine.

I bought some new plants yesterday for my pallet garden. It’s been through various stages since the beginning: some plants died, some were happier elsewhere, some were simply bad choices (dangly plants kill those beneath them because they cover them up). My pallet has been looking a bit drab lately, so I bought some heather and pansies and a few other plants to fill in the gaps. Fingers crossed. Watering a pallet garden is definitely a challenge — if I were starting a pallet from scratch I would build irrigation in.

I spent all afternoon yesterday removing fungus-ridden leaves from my tomatoes. I’d bunched them up way too tightly, and hadn’t pruned them enough, and the fungus loved it. Oh well, first-time tomato-grower — I’m learning. You can now see through the tomato plants.

Here’s one of the little plants. (The pot is too small, but I had extra plants, so I thought “better a small pot than kill the plant”).

Close-up of my cucumbers.

More tomatoes.

I still have an indoor jungle. I have too many plants. I think I may be a bit of a hoarder. Anybody want to adopt some of my excess plants? Let me know if you’re around Lausanne and can come and pick them up.

I’ve had a hard time putting the plants where Tounsi won’t get at them (he’s improved, but the yucca for example is irresistible for his claws) and still leave enough space for the cats to walk around on the furniture (giving them a bit of a 3D indoor space).

The tomatoes that fell off while I was pruning and reattaching the plants yesterday. Have been looking for ideas for a small quantity of green cherry tomatoes. Fried?

Quintus cuddling this morning. He likes to sleep curled up next to my ear, so I go to sleep to the music of purring kitty, which is nice. Less nice is that he makes noises when he sleeps. Voice noises. “Mmmh” each time he breathes. Some squeaky snore? A closed-mouth meow? I don’t now, but it wakes me up. So I pet him to try and get the purring started again, but as soon as I stop he drifts off again and starts squeaking.

Tounsi taking advantage of some 3D-space I set up.

One thing I finally got around to doing today is I started reorganizing my kitchen. Wow, if my memory serves me right, the kitchen cupboard space was last allocated in 2003, when I wrote “Living Space as User Interface“! I’ve added shelves and stuff since then, and cleaned out cupboards, but the kitchen is way overdue for a spring-clean and a complete re-think.

This is the cupboard above my sink, reorganized.

These are the shelves next to the sink. Not final, but at least I have somewhere for the great set of pans I brought back from Aleika’s.

Here’s a box filled with things I removed from the cupboard. Most of them have been outside the cupboard today for the first time in years. Need to sort through them, see what I get rid of, what I keep, and where I put what I keep.

Writing this last bit about the kitchen, I realize I’ve been quite good at keeping my weekends for “house stuff” (or leisure). In the Going Solo group (yup, another facebook one, remember the Going Solo conference?) we were talking the other day about setting time aside for one’s own projects. Half a day, for example.

I fear that if I do that I will quite quickly either let that half-day be taken over by work (if I’m stressed), or by “I don’t want to do anything, let me put my feet up”. I manage to not let work encroach on my week-end even when I’m “normally” stressed (I make exceptions in crisis situations of course). How can I recreate that level of “protection” for a slice of my time, but during the week? Food for thought.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the snippets of news. Have a nice week!

Pêle-mêle de début juillet [fr]

[en] A bunch of random stuff.

Je n’arrive pour le moment pas à m’organiser pour prendre le temps de bloquer “correctement”. Je vous fais du coup le coup (!) de l’article “nouvelles en vrac”. Old-style.

C’est le moment d’acheter votre billet pour la conférence Lift à Genève les 6-7-8 février 2013, avant que le prix ne prenne l’ascenseur. Lift, c’est à ne pas manquer. (Si vous avez participé à une édition précédente de Lift, vous avez reçu un code pour le prix “super early bird” de 625 CHF, valable encore un jour ou deux! Ne laissez pas passer le délai!)

C’est aussi le moment, si le coworking est quelque chose qui vous parle, de prendre votre billet pour Coworking Europe, qui aura lieu cette année à Paris les 8-9-10 novembre. Je suis à l’affiche d’un des panels du premier jour.

La Muse ouvre les portes de son espace lausannois, avec pique-nique tous les mardis.

Toujours au chapitre coworking, il y a de la place à l’eclau, tant pour des indépendants/freelance que des startups. Venez visiter!

J’ai pris part pour la première fois à En ligne directe, émission de la RTS qui démarre la veille au soir par un débat sur Twitter (hashtag #EnLD), repris dans le direct du matin avec des invités. Je trouve le concept génial. Le sujet du soir où je suis restée pendue à Twitter (plus que d’habitude) était “faut-il interdire/punir le téléchargement illégal“. Vous imaginez la suite. Pirater n’est pas voler, c’est toujours valable en 2012. Je suis effarée par la mauvaise foi et/ou le lavage de cerveau dont font preuve les “opposants”. Croire que le monde dans lequel on évolue (physique, numérique) et ses caractéristiques ontologiques n’est qu’un point de détail pour débattre d’éthique ou d’économie, qu’économie de rareté vs. économie d’abondance ne change rien à la morale, c’est faire preuve d’une naïveté et d’une simplicité de réflexion affligeante. Le tout repris par Magali Philip dans un Storify magistral.

Le Port de Vidy fait très fort avec ses nouvelles portes high-tech sécurisées.

Un chouette Bloggy Friday a eu lieu en juillet, après celui de juin. Les gens d’internet qui se rencontrent offline, il paraît que c’est le truc nouveau super-tendance de l’été. (Les rencontres IRC d’il y a 15 ans ça compte pas, hein. Ni les rencontres blogueurs, pendant qu’on y est. Ni les rencontres Twitter qui existent depuis des années.) Quelqu’un se lance pour faire l’hôte ou l’hôtesse pour le mois d’août? Ce sera durant ma semaine de déconnexion.

Hercule Poirot cherche toujours un nouveau foyer en Angleterre. Quintus, lui, s’installe bien en Suisse et explique au jeune Tounsi comment respecter ses aînés avec pedigree.

Les plantes sur mon balcon et dans mon appart poussent bien. J’ai des piles de photos, à mettre en ligne et à commenter ici pour vous. En attendant, il y a un groupe Facebook “Petites plantes de balcon et d’ailleurs“, si c’est votre genre.

Ah oui, c’est aussi le moment de vous inscrire pour la troisième session menant au diplôme SAWI de Spécialiste en médias sociaux et communautés en ligne. Dernière séance d’info le 21 août.

Et aussi le moment de postuler (jusqu’au 16 juillet!) si vous pensez être la personne qu’il faut pour prendre la tête du SAWI en Suisse romande. Et je suis toujours ouverte à des candidatures de blogueurs motivés pour le blog de voyage ebookers.ch.

Côté boulot, je suis pas mal bookée, mais j’ai encore de la place pour un mandat long terme de “blogueuse en chef” (ou “redactrice en chef de blog”, si vous préférez).

Inspiration, sur Kickstarter: Bridegroom et Amanda Palmer.

Google aménage ses cafétérias pour encourager ses employés à manger plus sainement. Fascinant.

La plaie des infographies.

Pourquoi les femmes ne peuvent (toujours pas) tout avoir.

Passer du temps à ne rien faire, pour mieux faire.

Et pour finir: l’été de mon chat. (Non, pas le mien, celui du journaliste du Temps.)

Cockerel, Anybody? [en]

[fr] Plein de nouvelles!

So, what’s up?

I’m in the UK. I’m helping Aleika find a new home for one of her cockerels, Hercule Poirot. He’s a super-good-looking guy, and he takes his job with the hens very seriously.

Do you know anybody in the UK who has chickens (hens!) and would like a stunning rooster to look over them? Do let me know.

I have had a week of holiday planned here for months, and in between Safran’s death and Somak’s appointment as Professor of Physics at Presidency University, Kolkata (so… back to India for the three of them!), we decided I would be taking Quintus back with me.

Do you know any good people in Calcutta/Kolkata? I’m particularly interested in getting in touch with

people who are into organic farming/gardening in the area
expats who have done the move from the UK sometime during the last three years or so (moving companies! shipping! organisation!)

For those who may not know, Bagha was also initially Aleika’s cat, and I adopted him when they moved from India to the UK, coming back home from India with him in my luggage. So, a little sense of déjà vu here 😉

On the work front, the OrangeCinema Official Bloggers project is underway. I spent a few days grading final reports for the course on social media and online communities I co-direct in Lausanne (some excellent, I have to say) and we’re preparing to welcome students for the third year of the course in September. I am looking for more writers for the ebookers.ch travel blog, and eclau is looking forward to everyone in Lausanne hearing more about coworking through the opening of a second space there, La Muse (which started out in Geneva). I will by the way be attending the Coworking Europe Conference 2012 in Paris (and probably speaking, will confirm in a couple of weeks). I have rekindled my enthusiasm for organising Bloggy Friday meetups (please do come to the next one, July 6th!) There’s more to say, but this is becoming a long paragraph 😉

What else should I tell you? I’m reading Drive, by Dan Pink, a fascinating book on motivation — and you should too, whether you’re interested in how your own motivation works, or in how to keep other people motivated (I’m thinking of taking a Sagmeister). I’ve started a group on Facebook for people in and around my area (and a bit further out) who like growing stuff on their balcony and elsewhere. I’m in the process of figuring out how to continue juggling judo, sailing, and singing (answer: be super organized). On the way to Birmingham, I stopped by for a day to stay with Steph and meet Emile The Cat.

I might not have told you, but Steph is my organisation inspiration (amongst many other things, which include being a very good friend!) and so I seized the occasion to face my calendar head-on and get a few holiday/travel dates sorted out. Short version: I don’t have a week-end available until June 2013 (don’t panic for me: it includes week-ends I have blocked out as “must stay at home and relax”).

I’ve also been realizing what a long way I’ve come regarding my organisational and time-management skills. Oh, I still fall in the pit every now and again, but a few discussions lately with people who seem to share the same core issues I have (had?) with time management, procrastination, perfectionism made me realize how far I have traveled.

I’m sure there was other stuff I wanted to say/blog about, but that’s the lovely thing about a blog, right? I can just write about it tomorrow, or the day after, or when I think of it. “Just.”

Semaine chargée! [fr]

Quelle semaine!

Le dernier module de la formation SAWI que je co-dirige, pour commencer, de mercredi à samedi. Je suis vraiment très fière de ce que nous avons accompli avec cette formation, des étudiants qui se sont lancés pour faire partie de cette première volée, des First Rezonance organisés, des échos et retours positifs de toutes parts… et je me réjouis de remettre ça l’année prochaine! (Avis aux amateurs…)

Vendredi, je fais une infidélité à la formation SAWI MCMS pour remplir un engagement pris de longue date: deux formations destinées aux enseignants à l’occasion du séminaire de formation continue “Pollens pédagogiques” de l’IFP, à Genève — en anglais et en français dans la même journée!

Dimanche, je m’envole pour Montréal afin de donner une keynote à Intracom, mardi prochain. Je compte en profiter pour assister à la conférence, bien entendu, et passer ensuite une petite semaine à découvrir la ville et la région (c’est la première fois que je vais au Canada, et donc à Montréal!)

Comme je suis super bien organisée, je suis encore à la recherche d’une bonne âme locale pouvant héberger cette suissesse aux cheveux roses du 13 au soir jusqu’au 20. Un grand merci à tous ceux et celles qui m’ont donné pistes et contacts à Montréal, je vais me mettre à les explorer, j’ai juste… pas encore bougé 🙁

Après (on n’est plus dans le contexte de la semaine chargée mais je vous dis quand même), je fait une escale d’une semaine à Londres pour y voir des amis. Et je compte maintenir mon rythme nouvellement retrouvé de blogueuse effrénée: il devrait donc y avoir de la lecture! (En passant: vous avez vu ce que je commence à faire sur le blog de l’eclau? là aussi, du mouvement en perspective.)

Rouverture des bureaux et reprise de la vie “normale” lausannoise: début mai.

Jelly ce vendredi 17 décembre à l’eclau, et lundi 20 à La Muse à Genève [fr]

[en] Jelly here in Lausanne this Friday and in Geneva on Monday. Check the French post for links to sign up!

C’est “opération Jelly” en Suisse Romande, durant la semaine qui vient! 🙂

Ce vendredi 17 décembre, comme vous le savez, c’est [email protected] ici à Lausanne (inscrivez-vous sans tarder sur Facebook, si c’est aussi plein que le mois passé, il vaudra mieux être inscrit!)

Lundi 20, Noël approchant à grands pas, La Muse à Genève vous convie non seulement à son mythique pique-nique hebdomadaire, mais en plus à venir travailler la journée dans l’espace coworking pour le Jelly de Noël. Inscriptions également sur Facebook (et proposez à vos amis et collègues de vous accompagner).

Les Jelly sont gratuits et ouverts à tous. Venez nombreux, c’est l’occasion de rencontres enrichissantes et (paradoxalement pour certains) de productivité augmentée! (Lisez: participer à un Jelly, quel intérêt?)

Cet article a été initialement publié sur le site de l’eclau.

Participer à un Jelly: quel intérêt? [fr]

[en] What is a Jelly, and why should I come? In short: it's a casual coworking day. Benefits for participants include increased productivity, creativity boost, a timeframe to work on procrastinative projects, networking, discovery of coworking and the Lausanne coworking space, eclau. Sign up on Facebook if you'd like to participate (Nov. 19th, 2010 is the first Lausanne Jelly).

Cela fait quelques semaines que j’annonce à tous vents la création d’un Jelly lausannois, le troisième vendredi de chaque mois. Le premier a lieu le 19 novembre 2010 à l’eclau.

Deux questions vous taraudent certainement:

qu’est-ce qu’un Jelly?
quel est l’intérêt d’y prendre part?

Je vais tâcher de satisfaire votre curiosité.

C’est quoi, un Jelly?

Un Jelly, c’est simplement une journée où plusieurs personnes se retrouvent dans un même lieu pour travailler ensemble. Un peu comme on faisait quand on était étudiants, vous savez? Soit à la bibliothèque, soit chez quelqu’un…

Là, en l’occurence, c’est l’eclau qui fournit le lieu et le wifi. On invite plein de personnes intéressantes et sympathiques à venir travailler à l’eclau le même jour, ordinateur portable sous le bras et pique-nique de midi dans le sac.

Les participants visent d’arriver vers 9h, ou plus tôt si ça les chante, ou plus tard s’ils ne peuvent pas plus tôt. On travaille jusqu’à 18h, ou 17h, ou 19h, chacun comme il veut, il n’y a pas de règle.

Comme c’est à l’eclau et qu’à l’eclau on aime le poha (un petit-déjeûner indien que j’affectionne), j’en ferai une bonne platée que j’amènerai vers 9h pour ceux qui veulent commencer leur journée de travail par quelques bouchées d’exotisme gastronomique.

Pourquoi je viendrais à un Jelly?

Il y a plein de raisons qui pourraient vous motiver à venir à un Jelly. En voici quelques-unes qui me viennent à l’esprit.

Tout d’abord, pour la productivité. Changer de lieu de travail, être entouré de gens qui se concentrent, ça peut faire des miracles quand on a tendance à s’enliser dans le quotidien.

Pour avancer sur ce gros vilain dossier qui patine. Dans l’état d’esprit du Website Pro Day d’antan (Jelly avant l’heure), un Jelly ça peut être l’occasion de bloquer la journée, de sortir de votre cadre habituel, et de vous consacrer corps et âme à un de ces “machins” informes qui vous pourrissent la to-do list et la vie depuis des semaines ou des mois.

Trouvez quelques camarades d’infortune et donnez-vous le mot pour vous retrouver un Jelly afin de mettre à jour votre site professionnel / écrire des articles sur votre blog / mettre en place un système de backups / réparer ce fameux plugin WordPress / finir votre compta / concevoir la plaquette que vous voulez faire depuis deux ans / et j’en passe… ce sera encore plus motivant!

Pour donner une bouffée d’oxygène à votre créativité. A nouveau, vous sortir de votre quotidien, côtoyer de nouvelles personnes, ça va aider votre cerveau à respirer. Nouvelles idées, autres façons de voir les choses… c’est d’ailleurs un des grands bénéfices du coworking. Le Jelly vous y donne accès gratuitement, même si vous n’avez pas le profil d’un membre d’espace coworking (vous avez déjà des bureaux, vous êtes employé, vous préférez travailler chez vous…).

Pour le réseautage. Je n’insisterai jamais assez là-dessus, mais le réseau c’est une clé importante de succès et d’inspiration, que vous soyez indépendant, employé, en recherche d’emploi ou d’une nouvelle carrière.

Passer la journée à travailler dans le même lieu, ça tisse déjà des liens. On pique-nique ensemble à midi. On sort prendre l’air 10 minutes avec une nouvelle connaissance. On va boire un verre après le Jelly. Laissez quelques cartes de visite sur la table de l’entrée, échangez-en avec les contacts que vous aurez noués, et retrouvez-les le troisième vendredi du mois d’après, au Jelly suivant.

Pour découvrir le coworking et l’eclau. Si le coworking vous intrigue ou vous tente, mais peut-être pas (plus! ou encore!) comme mode de travail régulier, le Jelly vous donne l’occasion de l’expérimenter gratuitement de façon ponctuelle. C’est aussi une très bonne excuse pour venir à l’eclau, qui est un endroit de travail fort sympathique (si c’est moi qui le dis!) et rencontrer Bagha, le mythique chat des lieux.

Jelly-FAQ imaginaire

Puisque je suis lancée, quelques questions que vous vous posez peut-être, et des réponses.

Je ne suis jamais venu(e) à l’eclau, je peux quand même participer au Jelly?

Le Jelly est ouvert à tout le monde, est spécialement aux personnes qui ne sont pas membres ni visiteurs de l’eclau!

C’est où l’eclau? On arrive comment?

C’est à Lausanne, du côté de Prilly. C’est tout expliqué ici.

Je peux amener du monde?

Volontiers! Partagez l’événement sur Facebook, sur Twitter, motivez vos amis… Plus il y a de monde au Jelly, meilleure sera l’énergie de la journée!

On va être combien? Il y a assez de place?

Au minimum une bonne dizaine, au maximum 20-30. L’eclau a de la place pour autant de monde (110 mètres carrés, quand même) — on a acheté chaises pliables et tabourets supplémentaires, et au pire les derniers arrivés prendront possession des 3 canapés.

(Si vraiment on se retrouve avec trop de monde on devra refuser l’entrée aux participants de dernière minute donc… n’oubliez pas de vous inscrire!)

On arrive vraiment à travailler avec tout ce monde au même endroit?

Oui, bien sûr! C’est clair que c’est différent comme ambiance de travail que seul dans son bureau (ou son salon), mais la concentration, c’est contagieux aussi. De plus, les échanges et rencontres permettent des fois de gagner des journées entières de travail, en nous aidant à voir des raccourcis qu’on ignorait!

Y a-t-il des choses à éviter lors d’un Jelly?

Vu que l’eclau est un open space et qu’il y aura du monde, ne prévoyez pas de passer la journée au téléphone. Ne prévoyez pas non plus de recevoir du monde (clients, etc.) à moins que ceux-ci prennent aussi part au Jelly. L’eclau est un endroit sans fumée (on peut sortir) et sans musique (donc prévoyez de bons écouteurs qui ne fuyent pas si vous travaillez en musique). C’est tout!

Je ne suis pas un geek, je peux quand même venir?

Bien sûr, ce n’est pas du tout réservé aux geeks.

J’aimerais bien mais je ne pourrais venir que le matin / l’après-midi / quelques heures…

Aucun souci, venez quand vous pouvez, mais inscrivez-vous quand même!

Chouette, je veux venir, comment je fais?

Il suffit pour venir de s’annoncer sur Facebook ou sur doodle (liens pour le Jelly du 19 novembre 2010). C’est important de s’annoncer car ça encourage d’autres à venir, et rend le Jelly d’autant meilleur.

On se voit au prochain [email protected], alors!

Ça bouge du côté de l'eclau [fr]

[en] Eclau is turning 2 next week, and with that comes a simplified offer for members, visitor and drop-in options, and a special offer for tech/web startups.

Vu le rythme de publication fort ralenti sur le blog de l’eclau depuis le mois de juin, je vous pardonne amplement si vous n’avez pas encore vu qu’il se trame plein de choses excitantes du côté de l’espace coworking lausannois que j’ai l’honneur de gérer.

En bref? Eclau 2.0, avec, outre la belle salle de réunion que vous pouvez réserver, des formules simplifiées pour les membres, la possibilité de venir à la journée en tant que visiteur, un Jelly chaque mois pour encourager chacun et chacune à mettre un peu de coworking dans sa vie, et, last but not least, une offre spéciale pour startups web/tech.

L’eclau fête ses deux ans mercredi 3 novembre, et j’espère vous y voir!

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