One week of wifi: could you do it?
Is it possible to work full-time without an office, simply taking advantage of free wifi offerings? To find out, I intend to spend one week trying it. And I call on others to do the same.
The dates are yet to be confirmed, but I hope to try and work for a full five days (in my case, Mon-Fri 9-5.30).
I suspect that it’s more or less possible here in Birmingham, but what about other cities? I certainly had a hard time trying to find free wifi around Pariliament.
So if you’re in a job that allows it, why not take up my challenge of trying to do a full week’s work in your local town centre?
The basic rules are:
- Wifi must be free at point of use (I haven’t decided if requiring a purchase first is acceptable or not for this exercise; probably not)
- Wifi must be advertised as for public use (so no persuading an establishment to let you use their private network)
If you do this it would be great to hear of your experience: how much did you have to spend on coffee, how conducive to working was the atmosphere, were there power sockets, did the funiture lend itself to laptop use, etc.
I may get around to setting up a dedicated blog, but in the meantime do contact me if you’re interested in collaborating on this.
(Thanks a million to Nicky Getgood for suggesting I do this! 
)
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Funny I was talking yesterday with Paul Bradshaw about this: one of his ideas for the MA Online Journalism (and the Social Media one for that matter) is that we should be able to do classes out in the field. But you might be about to prove that that won’t work.
Obviously those who need to do it get a 3g stick, or hook up via their phone, or have friendly spaces that they head towards – I always gravitate towards the Coffee Lounge (aka We Share Stuff towers) when I’m in Brum for example.
It’s amazing that more places don’t see the benefit of a cheap and cheerful Wi-Fi hot spot: I wonder how much business Coffee Lounge picks up from Brum’s social media scene simply because of the wifi?
Final point from me: when I was in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur you got the impression that no one did offices, they did coffee shops and this was because they’re wifi was so good.
Would be interested – need to know more free wifi spaces and this may prompt me. Keep me informed!
I travel a lot with my job and juggle work around being the family taxi service. I would be lost without the “free” wifi in certain coffee chains, recently spent a few days in Northampton and had to go wifi “cold turkey” as hotel charges were a nightmare and I had forgotten the lead to connect my phone to my laptop. The only coffee shop with wifi (£2 an hour) didn’t do fairtrade and closed early. Good luck with your challenge, I’ll be interested to see how it works for you. Working in my favourite cafe is a pleasure – decent latte, free wifi and friendly staff who don’t mind the odd meeting being conducted on their comfy sofas – it certainly beats my office!
This sounds like the kind of thing Web Worker Daily might have some prior examples of.