The goal was to pull together a declaration to be presented  to the negotiators at ACTA and call for more transparency and public consultation.

The so called “anti-counterfeiting” trade agreement really takes more action on digital copyrights, trademarks and patent infringement than dealing with the sort of counterfeiting that we normally associate with the word, that is “he problem of large-scale commercial infringement, for profit, that is direct and intentional” (PublicACTA Wellington Declaration, 2010).
Instead it seeks enforce criminal liability, statutory damages and possible Internet connection termination for BOTH commercial and non-commercial “infringements” utilising intermediaries such as ISP’s, public Internet access points, workplaces, website hosting to do the dirty work.

I could go on about the concerns of this agreement but really it is un-required and will not offer benefits to any parties that it seeks to protect (See Kimberlee Weatheral’s  and Micheal Giest’s keynotes from Public ACTA available from the PublicACTA website for more information).

The key issues, concerns and then subsequently suggestions from the 120 people that attended the conference (as well as many hundreds more following along at home on the live video stream and twitter hash tag #PublicACTA) have been complied and crafted into a concise declaration to what we as Internet professionals, consumers, producers, freaks and geeks would like to see taken on board within the Wellington negotiation round of ACTA.

The declaration and petition can be accessed here, please take the time to read through and sign the petition if you are in favour of fair democratic process and your rights as consumers of digital content.

Let’s start a movement.. like this guy…

PublicACTA copyright InternetNZ and is used under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

Technically everything is working a treat.
Before I moved we had setup a company wiki, project management through BaseCamp from 37 Signals, a bug and issue tracking system called Fixx and the all important VPN enabling me to connect to our main office, files and server.
Technology however is just a tool to help make possible what is really more important in business and company culture, that is communication and relationships.

I had many questions when I set about researching, putting together and trialing my teleworking program at the start of this year (2010). Most of these questions were around how to keep the company culture alive, make sure everyone has equal access to information and of course keeping those inter-personal relationships tended to in the workplace… while not being in the workplace.

Here are 3 important concepts in workplace communication as we use in our culture at RockStar Recipes.

1. Foster a culture of responsibility to communicate and share knowledge
That is we have worked towards building a culture in which people at all levels make it their responsibility to share knowledge and keep constant contact with those both in-house & off-site (and even customers but I’ll leave that for another post!).

All our staff have headsets and web-cams for video calling anytime, gone are the days where only the big dogs with expensive full tele-presence systems have access to this kind of rich communication.  We share knowledge through our company wiki intranet which we try to update with any useful processes that get used regularly and also fun facts about the company and it’s culture.

We are also less likely to just wait around to be told what to do, we all seek out information from others and work on a results driven paradigm.

2. Use the right communication tool for the right situation
I’m sure you have done this too, you email a college about a project asking a quick question, they email you back a slightly ambiguous answer,  you email them back to clarify, they email you back asking another questions and very quickly you end up in a huge never ending email spiral of doom and a subject line full of RE:RE:RE:RE:!

What we try and do is take a moment to think about communicating clearly, using email when hard facts and data are concerned, but in matters of discussion, brainstorming or where there is no clear outcome, it is time to change your method of communication to something more rich. Emotion and non-verbal cues get left by the way side in email and most other text based methods (instant message/SMS message/message boards).

Face to face time is often the best but in the situation of teleworking, video calling is your next best option and is surprisingly effective. The added bonus I have found in the past few weeks working this way is in the use of a combination of voice/video calling using Skype and utilising the collaboration  feature of Google Docs. We can all talk while all working on the same planning/brainstorming documents, all seeing and hearing what each other are doing which keeps production blocking to a minimum.
More great ideas… more ownership of those ideas by all our staff.

3. Make time for each other
Our work is a place we spend a lot of our time, most, more time than our homes (unless your teleworking like me!).
Rather than “…the only thing you have in common is you walk around on the same bit of carpet for 8 hrs a day…”¹ being the norm, these days the workplace is a melting pot of cultures, lifestyles and personalities where great friends and company cultures flourish.

Not being in the office, you tend to miss out of some of the “in” jokes and the buzz in the office not to mention it’s easy to get busy and neglect the trust and relationships that you have built up in the workplace.

We have found the best way of keeping and transferring that buzz is just to make a little time for your fellow college. We make time each morning to say “hello” and “good morning”, maybe have a quick informal chat about who won the last Foosball game. That goes for when your in the office itself or calling in via video chat.
Every team meeting we start with all our staff talking about good things that happened to them on the weekend (and hopefully bringing a little of Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden and build technique to the meeting by doing so).

Tending the personal relationship I think is the most important thing we can do in the workplace, it builds trust, understanding and means that communication flows smoothly and is more understood by everyone drinking the company cool-ade.

I am finding teleworking very interesting itself, not only am I getting a lot of my work done, but I am learning some more intricacies of communication in the workplace and that, physically being in the office is less important than having the right people, with the right positive culture, who are all great communicators.
As geographic boundaries become less and  less relevant, this type of work I believe will become more and more common place.

1. Great quote from the end of season 1 of Ricky Gervais’ “The Office” (The ORIGINAL UK series… not the bastardised one adapted for the USA!).

Part 1

Part 2

As it happens it looks like Julia (my partner) and myself are moving to Wellington! (NZ’s Captial City) for a change of lifestyle and a lot more Film and Television work for Julia.  So I am putting together a proposal to keep working at Rock Star Recipes but remotely!

Remote work and more interesting, remote or distance leadership is something I have become very interested in, how can we in 2010 with all the technology easily available to most businesses lead from a distance?  What are the challenges? How does communication, face to face time, company culture and atmosphere differ? I suspect a culture of great communication, trust and respect is key.

I’m hoping to document as much as I can while I learn more about this and also put my proposal forward to actually experience and work as a remote staff member and remote leader…

Perhaps we are coming to a point where there is no real difference whether someone is in the office or not as long at the end results are met and accountability is key. In the 80′s they called it “Tele-Communting” more recently it was dubbed “Tele-Work” (Perhaps to make it sound more like working for those managers who could not let micro-management go?) but I think going forward it will just be “work” as the technology and easy constant contact and communication from anywhere in the world becomes the norm.

More to come…

Oh, and for those who need their Technology and Ninja fix… check out the new Nexus One powered by Google Android.

So whats next for the blog? Well I have planned a series of posts with some great info on how to become more independent from your computer and make use of some of the great cloud computing tools available out there.

Also before I forget a big shout out to Simon Waterhouse a great photographer and designer here in Christchurch for his help on the photos and design of my personal development plan(PDP) assessment. Be sure to check out his great photography here www.simonwaterhouse.com

Another shout out to the great guys at Silverstripe CMS… i used this to power my PDP website… once I had the design I was able to integrate and drop in the content in just under 4 hours work! A killer speedy content management system for anyone looking to jazz up their website.
My final big thank you goes out to Juliette Powell, Author of “33 Million People in the Room” who sent me a signed copy of her book… made my day! A great read if you are interested in social media, co-creation, and where things are headed online. I was lucky enough to meet her at a conference this year and really enjoy her contributions online through twitter and facebook.

On the leadership tip, I will leave you with some words of wisdom from the women herself, Juliette Powell, enjoy….

http://www.viacharacter.org/VIASurvey/VIASurvey/tabid/237/Default.aspx

These are my results from the survey:

Your Top Character Strength

Your Second Character Strength

Your Third Character Strength

Your Fourth Character Strength

Your Fifth Character Strength

My signature strenghts from these 5 are:
Love of learning
Curiousity and interest in the world
Teamwork, citizenship and loyalty

These 3 give me the most joy, excitment and I would pursue them in everything I do.

I am taking this as a healthy dose of pessimism as I am always one to hope for the best, plan for the worst to a realistic level.  This is very useful in working out risk and planning contingently around projects and goals.

However sometime a little pessimism can get you down and it is always good to try and self-improve so my plan next it to work at increasing my levels of learned optimism through positive affirmation techniques, gratitude writing and reading more about positive psychology.

I just picked up a copy of Meiron Lees “D-Stress” book from the local university book shop which looks to be an interesting and practical read around improving optimism.

Having never had Teppanyaki before I was in for a treat…

The chef was great, he had all the tricks flipping produce and seafood all over the place, bouncing eggs on his spatula and making some serious flames.  At the end he wrote us a “thank you” note in salt done upside down and back to front, all very engaging and exciting to watch.

I quickly got a sense he wasn’t just cooking food… but more giving a performance… telling a story….

So wouldn’t it be great if all products and service were like this… great ideas that tell a story, feel like a performance and engage us deeply….

Do you and your company make Teppanyaki products and services? Food for thought.