I’ve been working out of the Yahoo! offices for a couple of days a week and then out of the London Business School Library and most recently I was granted access to Camden Unlimited’s Collective project this is great as it allows early stage entrepreneurs some office space for a short period of time. I’m really hoping I can help shape the space and make it a really good environment.

Then, the Bee and I were having a conversation that turned into an idea for a work space that could encompass childcare and working space, and then someone tweeted about Third Door which is trying to do something just like that. I think this is a great idea and I really hope they’re able to get it off the ground and expand it into different areas.

And finally, today I came across this great blog post from Seth Godin, goodbye to the office, it’s great post discussing why do we need an office and how technology and our society has progressed beyond the need for a traditional office. I think Seth’s right, but I do think there’s something to be said for social interaction with individuals, they just don’t necessarily have to be in the same company.

Imagine if there was a group of hubs in different areas of cities where local residents could go with childcare and an office set up. Where people were working but not everyone worked for the same company. Where you could socially interact, where you could hold meetings, where video conferencing capabilities were available, but it was walking distance from your home and everyone had access to one of these work hubs. Companies pay a lot for overhead, where they have to pay for cleaning, supplying basic stuff like utilities, water, coffee etc. Imagine if they gave employees a work space allowance that allowed individuals to subscribe to a office away from home but close enough that you could roll out of bed and be at work. People may say that working in the same place helps as your team helps productivity but having worked in traditional offices for the most of my career and having worked away from my teams for the last couple of months I don’t buy that.

I’m a big fan of Scott Adams, the creator of dilbert, and I love the fact that he has an office across the street from his house, or something like that. Why can’t everyone have an office across the street. Think of the environmental impact (transport emissions saved), the societal impact (less time commuting means more time with the family) or the productivity impact. I think that’s the future of the office.

Yesterday Aziz mentioned that it was going to take him an hour and fifteen minutes to take public transport to get to work in Toronto. He tweeted repeatedly about how crazy his journey, suggested improvements (like mobile phone coverage) and you could tell he was annoyed. I responded with the tweet:

@azizkara one of the major reasons why I won’t move back. Unless it get’s TO’s transport gets to a world class level fahgeddaboutit

This really got me thinking about Public Transport in North America. I’ve lived in Europe for the last 10 years (seriously, 10 years? How the heck did that happen?) and I’ve always been impressed by the quality of public transport you have in Europe. Paris, Rome, Milan, Munich, Barcelona and yes even Geneva and Zurich, all have great public transport. What’s my definition of quality public transport? My definition is being able to get to and from work or school, the airport and public services, like the Hospital or any social services you might need, fairly easily – and by fairly easily I mean comparable to the time spent taking a car.

I also commented about how the lack of really good public transport in Toronto keeps me from moving back, it’s not the only reason but definitely a major one. I know I could live downtown and get to work probably okay, but the problem is a lot of the people I want to see are spread out and going to the “burbs” in Toronto without a car is difficult. Not to mention the fact that if you’re planning on getting to or from the airport to downtown Toronto without a car you should have a good book that you’ll probably be able to finish over the length of the journey– my friend told me they wanted to open a direct line from the airport to downtown, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

I haven’t been to many places in North America but wherever I’ve been I’ve needed to rent or have a friend with a car. I think that’s one of the worst things about the continent. Although the twitterati did respond with many comments with good stuff to say about Portland, Boston and Washington all having good public transport, I’m not sure any city could compete with the scale and spread of public transport in Europe.

The problem is North America was built with the car in mind and as a result a lot of people are fine to rely on the car to get around and now, sadly, it would cost way too much and take too much time to change user behaviour. Dubai, Qatar, Saudi and Kuwait are spending billions, yes BILLIONS on their public transport infrastructure, because good public transport can be a competitive advantage and is worth the investment and time. Unfortunately the US and Canada don’t have the appetite or the time to make the change they need to have world class public transport and as a result it will continue to keep people, okay maybe just me, away.

A couple of friends commented on her post, on Facebook and on her blog. My favourite comment was on facebook from our friend Rahim, who said:

“When babybee is in your position, there will be no books. There will be a cloud and there will be an access device. Some of which you will have to pay for, a lot of which will be free. Is the business model of the past suitable for digital? No. Is the business model being formulated at present going to work in the future? Probably not. Do people read as they do now as they did in the past? No. They consume their time differently. But books, in some form will remain, information will remain and time will remain. The book is dead. Long live the book..”

I loved this comment. But I disagree, slightly.

The thing is it’s hard to be social, tactile and share an electronic experience with an ebook, regardless the format. We’ve bought books for friends and their kids to share that have “touch experiences”. I’ve enjoyed reading with the kids of my family and my friends, and I can’t wait to open up a book with my own kids and read, and ask questions and share their experiences while discovering books.

The social experience of books with children is totally different from the social experience with music and film. Which is why I can’t see the book totally disappearing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think people will use ebooks, especially on vacations, especially for text books, and business books. And I don’t buy the serendipity argument, well get discovery through different channels (like Amazon book lists, people who bought this book also bought suggestions and things like facebook applications). More and more books will be read and discovered electronically, and this isn’t a bad thing, in fact – at least from an environmental perspective – it’s probably a pretty good thing.

Electronic books will just mean we’re able to read more, we’re not limited to what we can carry, and if things go the free route, what we can afford. But as long as we read and have shared experiences with our kids about books, our kids will continue to have positive thoughts and feelings about books. So while we embrace technology and new business models regarding books, don’t write off the book just yet.

We – the bee and me – moved to Switzerland, the world suffered through the worst economic crisis since the depression. That’s looking like a tie right now.

We got to visit Rome, Portugal, New York (over new years, pictures will be on Flickr soon). The US elected Obama. Think the US beat us on that one, just.

I did pretty good on my resolutions from last year. Read 37 books, so just short of my target but not bad. I’m ending the year not quite in my 1998 shape, but closer then I was at the beginning of the year. I blogged a fair amount – except when I went under the radar for the last three weeks – think 8 posts a month was met. .

But I sucked at staying in touch with friends, one friend – who I called one of my closest friends, didn’t even know we had moved to Switzerland! And as for multi tasking less, pffft not even close.

So for 2009, hopefully I’ll continue the good trends and right the ones that slipped away last year. I have a couple of new ones to add as well but to be honest their really personal and I can’t blog about them right now – but when I can I will. Let’s just say that there are three and one’s physical/emotional, one’s spiritual and one’s financial.

So instead let’s make some predictions for the world.

Good and Green get better – I think 2009 will be the year that Good businesses and Green businesses tip, just call it a hunch induced by all the Emergen-c I’ve been taking this year, being sick will do that too you. Also, I think the deep crisis financially that’s hit everything that walks will force people to invest in good businesses – and doing good leads to good business if you ask me.

Obama reality check – I love Barack, he is my homeboy most definitely. We have a lot of commonalities, and I really hope he kicks butt as President of the United States. But I have a hunch that this is the year we get past the colour issue and watch performance. The left leaning media will take the kid gloves off and he’s going to have some serious issues to resolve, I wish him luck, but I think he’ll have to work through a bit of a dip before he can really excel.

Small business boom – I think 2009 will be the year that a lot of people will go into business for themselves, sound businesses. I don’t think we’ll see too many crazy IPO’s – sorry f’book fans – but I bet in 2010/2015 we’ll be using a lot of businesses started over the next couple of years.

Overall I think, this year is going to be a cleansing year on micro and macro levels and after 2008 that’s what we all need.

Sure being in the same room as people you work with adds value, it means you’re able to socialise, you’re able to learn more about people and trust people. But how many people do you actually work that closely with? Is it enough to justify large rents in metropolitan locations? Not to mention a lot of times meeting with people or conversations get in the way of productivity.

I’ve worked virtually with lots of folks in past jobs and in my present job. I find getting together once a week with some, once a month with others, and once a quarter with others is enough to build rapport and through the telephone, instant messaging, email, desktop conferencing, video conferencing and other tools we don’t need to be in the same office as each other to work together effectively. I like working from home. I probably should do it more; I bet I’d be more effective.

So my prediction for the near future is that we’ll see a lot more virtual working, a lot more working from home and lot more smaller offices. This will potentially mean fewer meetings, less distractions and a drop in our collective foot prints. Not to mention a healthier bottom line as you don’t have to pay for large offices.

I think this is very cool. As someone who hoards bags we can reuse, actually as someone married to someone who hoards reusable bags, I’m pretty excited about this step. Now let’s do something about Polystyrene!

1. It’s kind of crazy that if you build an exceptional brand that gets engrained into people, it’s hard for a competitor to overtake you, no matter how much better the experience is.
Inspiration: the fact that Mapquest still dominates the US mapping market

2. Investment into public transport is only half the battle against climate change and carbon emissions, people need to stop seeing cars as status symbols and more as big polluters.
Inspiration: the new Tata nano and the fact that so many Indians are going to enter as car owners.

3. Standard of living doesn’t equal quality of life, it seems like the more we have the less time we have to enjoy it.
Inspiration (joint):
a) this story I heard about a fisherman who meets a capitalist, and the capitalist says “Why you should sell your fish”
and the fisherman says “Why?”
Capitalist says “Because then you’ll have lots of money and you can build a company selling fish.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “Because you can make lots of money.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “So then you can retire.”
Fisherman says “But what would I do then?”
Capitalist says “I don’t know… fish?”
b)The story of stuff, it’s a bit long – 20 mins plus a bit of loading time – but definitely worth watching.

I hate polystyrene packaging. Hate it. I get that it’s cheap and that for packaging cheap is good. But the fact that it takes forever to decompose (if it ever does) and that the environmental concerns around it are vast, to me means that it’s just not a viable product in the earth’s long run. Not only that but the alternatives are just nicer, a paper plate or paper container is not only classier but food, for some unknown to me reason, just tastes better.

So why do places, like Yoshino at the Japan centre, continue to serve there goods in polystyrene? If McDonalds can eliminate its polystyrene containers, why can’t others?

Obviously it’s about the bottom line and maximizing the bottom line. But when commerce acts in a way that’s against the greater good government needs to step in. Some have, some cities in the US have had bans on Polystyrene for nearly 20 years, why has the rest of the world taken so long to catch up?

Personally, I would love to see the UN step in, or heck even the EU or any other multilateral group, call for a ban on Polystyrene. Anyone know someone I can email about this?

UPDATE : Thanks to Natasja, I managed to find a ban polystyrene petition on the PM’s site. Please join me at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/banpolystyrene/

And I’ve created a facebook group calling for the ban, please join!