This is a neat idea and a good point. However, you may find that you get an OS X situation, where the scheduling works brilliantly for media but is pretty hopeless for tasks like the infamous mySQL database test. I have heard of people who recompile their own scheduling into OS X for use with databases that increases the performance dramatically. Maybe there could be different flavours of Linux distributions - media, or development - that are more suited to each task.
I travelled around Serbia about 10 years ago while they were still 'Communist'. There were often signs around roads, bridges, towns, etc, with 'No Photography' symbols. At the time I really appreciated that we were free from that kind of paranoia and ridiculous restriction in the 'west'.
I don't know if you're still reading this, or if it does what you want:
....for some reason many Mac users don't know about the Apple+Tab shortcut. This scrolls through your active applications. The best thing though, is that the app you just switched from becomes the first app in line the next time you Command+Tab. This makes switching between 2 apps very quick and easy.
Another way - and I haven't tried this - might be to assign shortcut keys to trigger the "Bring All to Front" menu item in the specific apps you use.
I'm not sure exactly what part of the paragraph you disagree with, because in general I agree with what you've written. A big part of getting a office like this to work is having the right office culture and management. If your head guys are locked away in offices while everyone else is stuck in an open plan office - then that actually sends a really bad message to your staff, and they'll probably resent it. It also does nothing for fostering communication and trust within the office. The most successful new office layouts I've seen have gone hand-in-hand with some kind of rethinking of the office hierarchy and structure too - and that means having the head guys out on the floor with everyone else. This doesn't need to lead to a loss of security if done right - there are plenty of huge businesses that operate this way. We don't have the X style workstations either - there are plenty of different ways of arranging desks to suit what ever style team you have.
If the people in your teams can't communicate without booking meeting rooms then you may have other problems in the office - it sounds like people won't communicate/discuss things unless they are required too. Slashdot's probably not the right place for agony aunt discussion about what is right/wrong with your office culture though.
What might be interesting is to hear from someone how Apple or Google have their work places set up - from what I know of Google it's all pretty freeform, which is nice. However if you don't have the cash for huge amounts of space and furniture I still don't see why similar things can't be achieved with workdesks, quiet spaces, and communal spaces. It's all about the balance of each, and to a certain extent - how much you trust your staff to produce results rather than goofing off.
One last point - when I hear people complaining that their office space is too noisy, and too full of interruptions I always take that with a grain of salt. Some people would love nothing more than to be locked up in their own office and not have to speak or deal with anyone else the whole day. Some jobs require this style of working - however that's complete death to most businesses that require staying in front of the field - innovating. There does need to be a balance between interaction and isolation, but often I suspect that people who complain that they don't have enough isolation are actually being made to perform the way their company wants...sharing their knowledge, ideas, and sustaining a cooperative workplace.
I don't know if anyone's still reading this topic, but I do this kind of thing for a living, so I can give you some pointers.
Although the parent posted AC, they are actually good questions. What you need is someone asking questions like this, so you/they can work out what it is that you actually need. It's called developing a brief, and if you're serious about having a fairly innovative office space then you should definitely engage an architect or space-planner with experience in "new office design", who can help with this and with the office layout. Probably the best known group in this field is DEGW - http://www.degw.com/
If you decide to go it alone, then you need to think really rationally about every aspect of your company. Most people here have suggested various layouts of cubes, some of which are pretty good, but you need to go a bit further than that. The one reason that companies are getting interested in changing their workplace design is that the quality of the work place environment is very important to people - especially younger generations - and to attract and retain the best and brightest you need to have an office that appeals to them. The other reason is that you can see tangible benefits by getting staff out of the silo-metality that cubes and single offices generate, and into spaces where they can communicate with each other. This is especially important if your business depends on people working together in teams.
So looking at a really basic level, you need to work our how your business operates. If you have a number of project teams, then you need to get the people in a team together. If your teams change frequently then you might put everything on casters like one other poster suggested. What we do in our own office is have desks without any dividers which are then clustered into groups for each project team. Some outsiders don't like this - because they feel it's too noisy or open - but in reality this is not an issue. With the slight increase in ambient noise, the office doesn't feel as interrupted when a phone rings, or when someone is having a conversation. This actually helps people communicate more freely and openly! - which is a good thing for the kind of work we do. However, if your business relies on lots of individuals doing their own thing - like lawyers or researchers, then you may want a whole load of little offices. This is fine - it's just thinking about a team of 1 rather than a team of say 6. The biggest team you should consider is about 20-30. After this size people won't work together as a single unit.
After working the team structure out, all these people are going to need somewhere to meet. Meeting spaces are generally noisy, so you want to cluster them away from the general working area rather than mixing everything up. Think about arranging your office into 4 general areas - entry, noisy, workgroup, quiet. The noisy places - meeting areas, kitchens, social spaces - should go near the entry and encourage people to bump into one another. It's amazing how much sharing of ideas and information happens in these areas. You should consider social spaces and kitchens as part of the work-space, and encourage people to use them. The workgroup space is obviously where most of your desks are - arranged in teams or however. It's good to provide some really quiet spaces at the ends of the workgroup zone for people to make private calls, or sit to work on specific work without interruptions.
Ok - so much writing and I've only really begun....which is why I think you should hire an architect! But either way, good luck with your new office.
Errr....any architect worth their fee will be able to do everything that you've mentioned here. Sounds like you've been reading one too many new-age-hippy interior magazines.
Did you think for a moment about your use of the word 'consumers'? Yes, I know it was in the summary as well, and that this is a general trend rather than something specific to Slashdot. We're talking about people uploading (possibly) their OWN CONTENT to YouTube, and we call them 'consumers'? In almost every post on Slashdot these day, when we're talking about a collective group of persons, the word 'consumers' is used.
There used to be some better words - 'people', 'citizens', 'females under 25', etc.
All that this indiscriminate use of the word 'consumers' does is reinforce the notion that your sole purpose in life is to consume.
Stop it with the 'consumers' bullshit. Be people again. Give some respect to all these other individuals in the world by calling them 'people' too.
My mod points have run out, but you have the most insightful and interesting post in the whole discussion. The problem is now that thousands of people who read the summary without even thinking about it will now be running around telling all their friend "everyone's got a common ancestor who lived in 500BC".
You'd think that they could skim a bit of that prize money off to work on their web site before they get excited about our species exploring the universe.
Ok ok. I deserve that for leaving proof reading to the spell checker. Meh!
It's a serious thought though. Many base stations use pretty much a standard laptop card (Lucent, etc). If the hack is making use of an overflow buffer bug - well I would guess it would depend on what what driving the kit - some routers run linux...which may allow for attacks directly on a wired network (against a lot more interesting machines than random laptops).
Some of us - you know - need or expect some uninterrupted sleep after 11pm or before 7am without some random jock sawing up bits of steel outside our windows.
It's because of inconsiderate yobs like you that these laws are passed in the first place. If you had an ounce of respect for anyone other than yourself, and maybe discussed or negotiated with your neighbours for the few days you felt possessed like a madman to be working on 'projects' in your yard before 7-fucking-am, then the world would be a better place with LESS restrictions.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah! That makes so much sense now.
No, that's E3 getting back to how it was originally.
This is a neat idea and a good point. However, you may find that you get an OS X situation, where the scheduling works brilliantly for media but is pretty hopeless for tasks like the infamous mySQL database test. I have heard of people who recompile their own scheduling into OS X for use with databases that increases the performance dramatically. Maybe there could be different flavours of Linux distributions - media, or development - that are more suited to each task.
I travelled around Serbia about 10 years ago while they were still 'Communist'. There were often signs around roads, bridges, towns, etc, with 'No Photography' symbols. At the time I really appreciated that we were free from that kind of paranoia and ridiculous restriction in the 'west'.
Jesus - no one told me I didn't need to get all these tubes.
X-prize for first post!
Another way - and I haven't tried this - might be to assign shortcut keys to trigger the "Bring All to Front" menu item in the specific apps you use.
If the people in your teams can't communicate without booking meeting rooms then you may have other problems in the office - it sounds like people won't communicate/discuss things unless they are required too. Slashdot's probably not the right place for agony aunt discussion about what is right/wrong with your office culture though.
What might be interesting is to hear from someone how Apple or Google have their work places set up - from what I know of Google it's all pretty freeform, which is nice. However if you don't have the cash for huge amounts of space and furniture I still don't see why similar things can't be achieved with workdesks, quiet spaces, and communal spaces. It's all about the balance of each, and to a certain extent - how much you trust your staff to produce results rather than goofing off.
One last point - when I hear people complaining that their office space is too noisy, and too full of interruptions I always take that with a grain of salt. Some people would love nothing more than to be locked up in their own office and not have to speak or deal with anyone else the whole day. Some jobs require this style of working - however that's complete death to most businesses that require staying in front of the field - innovating. There does need to be a balance between interaction and isolation, but often I suspect that people who complain that they don't have enough isolation are actually being made to perform the way their company wants...sharing their knowledge, ideas, and sustaining a cooperative workplace.
Although the parent posted AC, they are actually good questions. What you need is someone asking questions like this, so you/they can work out what it is that you actually need. It's called developing a brief, and if you're serious about having a fairly innovative office space then you should definitely engage an architect or space-planner with experience in "new office design", who can help with this and with the office layout. Probably the best known group in this field is DEGW - http://www.degw.com/
If you decide to go it alone, then you need to think really rationally about every aspect of your company. Most people here have suggested various layouts of cubes, some of which are pretty good, but you need to go a bit further than that. The one reason that companies are getting interested in changing their workplace design is that the quality of the work place environment is very important to people - especially younger generations - and to attract and retain the best and brightest you need to have an office that appeals to them. The other reason is that you can see tangible benefits by getting staff out of the silo-metality that cubes and single offices generate, and into spaces where they can communicate with each other. This is especially important if your business depends on people working together in teams.
So looking at a really basic level, you need to work our how your business operates. If you have a number of project teams, then you need to get the people in a team together. If your teams change frequently then you might put everything on casters like one other poster suggested. What we do in our own office is have desks without any dividers which are then clustered into groups for each project team. Some outsiders don't like this - because they feel it's too noisy or open - but in reality this is not an issue. With the slight increase in ambient noise, the office doesn't feel as interrupted when a phone rings, or when someone is having a conversation. This actually helps people communicate more freely and openly! - which is a good thing for the kind of work we do. However, if your business relies on lots of individuals doing their own thing - like lawyers or researchers, then you may want a whole load of little offices. This is fine - it's just thinking about a team of 1 rather than a team of say 6. The biggest team you should consider is about 20-30. After this size people won't work together as a single unit.
After working the team structure out, all these people are going to need somewhere to meet. Meeting spaces are generally noisy, so you want to cluster them away from the general working area rather than mixing everything up. Think about arranging your office into 4 general areas - entry, noisy, workgroup, quiet. The noisy places - meeting areas, kitchens, social spaces - should go near the entry and encourage people to bump into one another. It's amazing how much sharing of ideas and information happens in these areas. You should consider social spaces and kitchens as part of the work-space, and encourage people to use them. The workgroup space is obviously where most of your desks are - arranged in teams or however. It's good to provide some really quiet spaces at the ends of the workgroup zone for people to make private calls, or sit to work on specific work without interruptions.
Ok - so much writing and I've only really begun....which is why I think you should hire an architect! But either way, good luck with your new office.
Errr....any architect worth their fee will be able to do everything that you've mentioned here. Sounds like you've been reading one too many new-age-hippy interior magazines.
Well how the hell then could you sue a company?! This is how the who discussion started.
There used to be some better words - 'people', 'citizens', 'females under 25', etc.
All that this indiscriminate use of the word 'consumers' does is reinforce the notion that your sole purpose in life is to consume.
Stop it with the 'consumers' bullshit. Be people again. Give some respect to all these other individuals in the world by calling them 'people' too.
How long until this becomes a reality, at least for people who can't afford Akamai (surely Myspace could...?)
OK! Forgiven!
My mod points have run out, but you have the most insightful and interesting post in the whole discussion. The problem is now that thousands of people who read the summary without even thinking about it will now be running around telling all their friend "everyone's got a common ancestor who lived in 500BC".
(only half joking).
You'd think that they could skim a bit of that prize money off to work on their web site before they get excited about our species exploring the universe.
Brilliant find. Thanks for sharing.
It's a serious thought though. Many base stations use pretty much a standard laptop card (Lucent, etc). If the hack is making use of an overflow buffer bug - well I would guess it would depend on what what driving the kit - some routers run linux...which may allow for attacks directly on a wired network (against a lot more interesting machines than random laptops).
I wonder if this could be used to attack a wired network through a venerable basestation?
No, he was probably lying. This is a far too common occurrence, and is due mostly to 'retention bonuses'.
It's because of inconsiderate yobs like you that these laws are passed in the first place. If you had an ounce of respect for anyone other than yourself, and maybe discussed or negotiated with your neighbours for the few days you felt possessed like a madman to be working on 'projects' in your yard before 7-fucking-am, then the world would be a better place with LESS restrictions.
Ever heard of Warp Records and their music store - http://bleep.com/ ?
Ohh...none?!