My office at a large university exists in an industrial building we acquired from a bank several years ago. While a little bit of renovation was done, the concept of “big open room with cubicles done in creativity killing colors (drab grey and beige, anyone?) and no natural light” managed to be a mainstay of the decor. I work in a “Research and Training” division, and believe me when I tell you that that environment, with it’s crap lighting, constant noise and depressing visual stimulation, does nothing to keep me on task.
One alternative I like is online office systems that allow staff to work from anywhere. For a couple of projects I’ve used Basecamp to collaborate with colleagues and with integrated messaging, to-do lists, write boards and milestone trackers, that works quite well. But why, I must ask 37 Signals, why do you stop short of integrating contacts and a more robust calendar in one application? Even so, it is hard to find competition for them–but that doesn’t mean I’m not looking.
If you are too, the article Rolling your own online office, posted by Read/Write Web is certainly a good place to start. There’s a decent overview of options for online collaboration, with pros and cons of different solutions. Another article I refer to again and again is Alternatives to Basecamp for Project Management by Web Worker Daily. Both articles point to plenty of helpful Basecamp alternatives for different tasks.
My next step is to convince my boss that online collaboration works, and that office cultures that cling to the mentality of “Hey, if you don’t spend 8+ hours a day slumped in your coffee stained roller chair, you’re not productive!” are out of touch. That’s another post, but I do intend to make this argument in my workplace, one good online office app at a time.
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