The area that I live in Colorado (Boulder County) has one of the highest home working rates in the country.  For the many home based people around here the state-wide lock down order won’t truly affect our regular work experiences.  Maybe coffee shop dwellers will have to sit at their kitchen table more.  Maybe people will need to be out and walking around more than they used to.  We use Skype, Slack, email and SMS a ton already, so the methods of communication will be used like normal –We just aren’t vastly affected by the state wide lock down.

However, there are many, many more that are new to this lifestyle.  Will they be able to adjust? I originally thought that most anyone could adapt to this lifestyle.  After all, what’s to argue with?  I work when I feel the best, I can think about different mechanics and the ‘interconnectedness‘ of systems when it best suits me, and  I can work late at night when I know that I wont be interrupted.  For me, this is work nirvana.  Ok, I do realize that not everyone get’s the flexibility that I do. Someone that works in a call center can work from home using a modern VOIP system, but they have to be available without distraction on a set schedule… but hey, they don’t even have to put pants on if they don’t want to.  That’s a major plus!

About 20 minutes ago I was out on a walk through the greenway behind my house. I have been doing that a lot lately.  The greenway runs along a ditch for about 3/4 of a mile, with pathways on both sides of the water.  Of course, these days there are plenty of other people walking around, simply needing to see the daylight.  Usually it’s a family walking the dog, a couple just slowly ambling about, or a jogger speeding by.  I usually am listening to a book or podcast, with my camera in hand in case there is something interesting to be seen.  I had just finished the book, and took out my earpieces when a couple of men walked by.  One was complaining to the other that they haven’t been able to get any work done for the past week.  The wife wouldn’t leave them alone, and the kids were constantly distracting.

Intuitively I knew that I am in a luckier situation as I have just one 10 year old at home (who self-entertains quite well).  I didn’t think about it any more than that.  About 10 minutes later two women were walking towards me, one speaking loudly.  She was obviously irritated, and didn’t care who heard her on the edge of a rant. She said damn near the same things the first man spoke about.  She can’t get anything done, get on a call, or be productive because her husband wanted her to keep the kids busy while he worked.   Maybe the people I overheard were actually married to each other, but the age difference would have been suspiciously wide.

Overhearing both of these people within a few minutes of each other, with the same complaints, started making me wonder how long it would take someone that is a classic ‘office drone’ to adjust to this lifestyle.  People like patterns. Many people like knowing that 5:30 PM means standing up and walking away. Those people aren’t used to having segments of their life overlap –our society traditionally enables the siloing of our activities.

The newly unemployed, of course, will start looking at other working opportunities.  It doesn’t really matter if they want to be a remote call center operator, they will do it because they just have to.  They are in a situation that they will adjust to as required to survive.  This will make new life patterns for them, and they will adapt.  But will the still-gainfully-employed adapt as easily?  Let’s say someone is a project manager in a local engineering firm –can they figure out how to track work and deliverables without being near the people under them?  Are they panicked enough to be willing to instantly adjust to an entirely new information flow and feedback model? What happens if they aren’t able to adapt?

Covid-19 is about to bring a world of change and exposure to the modern workplace. People able to adapt to a new workplace (or lack thereof) will be more valuable than ever. People that may have been excellent in a classic office scenario, but couldn’t cleanly adapt, will become relics. Once remote working mechanics have been tested and proven to work to a larger set of the employing companies and agencies, I think there is going to be a major change in how businesses see the value in having all of the work they need done in a specific locale.  Some jobs will never change (e.g. manufacturing), but in the modern information based economy those jobs are fewer than ever.

This will be interesting to watch.

The post The Great Work From Home Experiment. appeared first on Ultradeluxxe.

At one point I made a contact that wanted me to do a whole lot of art asset production, and that’s the point where I formed a corporation.  Things progressed, and work was done.  The personal reference system continued and has snowballed ever since.  On LinkedIn I get the (more and more frequent) recruiter looking to get a call together and inevitably asks for a CV.  They are always stunned when I don’t have one.

Some time ago I was talking to a person that I regularly work with about resumes and curriculum vitae’s and professional references.  He was in the process of updating his information, and wanted some feedback about his format and content flow. I took a look, but I really didn’t have anything to say.  After all, I have never had a resume.  Again, he couldn’t believe it.

I decided to try and make one, as it’s an exercise that I have never approached. When you have worked in very unusual industries, it’s tough to put together a realistic description of the work involved without numbing the reader out.  After I felt that I had come to a reasonably approachable list of efforts and accomplishments, I decided to use it as a template for my website.  I have been using a standard arts-style portfolio mechanic since…. 2000?  2001? But my work has changed, and so the format must as well.

https://ultradeluxxe.com/curriculum-vitae-resume/

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This changed last week.  I flew out to Seattle for an array of meetings and idea sessions.  My cohorts and I met with some interesting people doing interesting things in game production and data management.  Seeing how their system could be integrated with the works that I have been doing over the past few years with Gift Surplus was the cause for an explosion of ideas from the group.  It was hard to digest and make sense of all the solid concepts that flooded out.

I landed back in Denver on a Thursday night and started writing.  I kept writing until very, very late Tuesday morning. I delivered about 40 pages of documents for a meeting that would take place about 5 hours later.   The docs spanned user interaction methods, platform development, player value propositions and mechanics that I had never had a reason to think about before.  It was awesome.

The meeting (which I was not present at) appeared to go over very well, with some modifications to the plans from upper management (of course!), but largely it’s a go.   The docs played it up well.  ‘It’ being a lot of stuff.  A lot of interesting stuff. I will be working with a lot of people making a lot of this interesting stuff, and it’s got my interest piqued unlike anything in a long time.

Sure, there’s some serious drudgery to plod through during the current planning phase, but I am lucky enough to be working with people who just want to make it happen.  Man I wish I could say more, but I will have to save that for another day.

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I am still working on systems design, and helping out those that I can with their websites as well.  MarksCoffee.com and Still cellars.com are the most active, and have recently just finished  site updates for both.  I have some others as well that are due soon.  Like, Real Soon Now™.

The real work is still focused on the Gift Surplus website and backend mechanisms.  Of course, that has blown up more than regular eCommerce, as there are many, many subsystems to contend with.  I have been the principal designer, graphics and system-wise, and somehow now work with people on 4 continents and 7 timezones.  I never thought that I would ever find myself directing others and overseeing the work output in a managerial sense, but it has been surprisingly refreshing –over the past two years it has become the focus of my days.

One of the projects that has been both the most challenging and the most fun is the Gift Surplus games subsystem.  I designed, planned, directed and documented a system that integrates traditional eCommerce with our custom credit management system, and then allow interaction with online games.  The whole project has involved 5 different groups of developers and I gotta admit… we did a pretty damn good job. We have an API that can integrate a variety of platforms and have plans on expanding the scope even further.

There a lot more projects in progress now and coming up soon. Maybe i wil have time to update this site before 2017.

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Really, I just can’t imagine how I would even begin talking to people that I haven seen in 20 years about who I am now, and what I do for work or fun (often the same thing).  I was thinking about the idea of what 20 years means, and how things change and the things you do.  I started to plot out what 20 years looks like for me, in simple terms.  Work, travel, people, pets and places I have lived. I am leaving out all sorts of things, of course, but these seem the easiest to navigate.

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I need a series of images that would encompass the concepts of large structure, refinement, and process. They didn’t want anything old, per se, but something forward looking. I stumbled across assets for an old per project that I never had the time to do anything with, and I thought it matched what they needed. They are definitely not your normal ‘consultancy’ images, but I think they fit the bill.

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I have been doing a website about every two weeks for promotional affect –kind like business cards for the modern era.  A website is just one of those things you need to have these days, no matter what you do.  Even if it doesn’t actually say much… even if it doesn’t give concrete evidence to your abilities you gotta have something out there.  That’s OK by me.

On top of the websites I have been putting together some photos and marketing materials for some friends of mine over at stillcellars.com.  They started a certified organic distillery here in town and have just opened their tasting room to the public.  It’s good stuff.

Otherwise there’s been a lot of the same old tech support, marketing stuffs, and photography.  On an unusual note…  I actually tried to draw something (!).  I haven’t attempted a drawing in.. 10 years? 15?  Hard to tell anymore.  It’s amazing how  bad your hands can be after away from it for that long.

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1. I created an encryption system to make ‘win codes’ portable for a gambling system.  Yeah… that’s not what I really do, but hey, thems the breaks.  I am writing up the patent information now, and hopefully will be licensing it out beyond the original contract soon.

2. I got a project through BMM.   I just got the notice a couple of days ago that a brand new gambling platform was put through the labs and made legal for sale in the US, in 90 days.  90.  That’s crazy fast. Like… ridiculous fast.

3. I have made a few websites. Mostly nothing really remarkable, but hey… the clients are happy and Google is liking them, so that’s what counts.

4. Still working (very part-time) at Havana Manor, here in Longmont, Colorado but that’s more of a “guaranteed down time” from email and conference calls.

5. Still doing some visual assets and organization for Iron Ridge Arms Company, also in Longmont.  Admittedly less than usual, but time is precious these days.

6. Random projects (like this) come up, but they only take a couple hours to complete (which is kind of hardly a distraction at all).

Overall the projects have been getting bigger and bigger, but I a part of results that are grander and grander.  But hey, being a 10 year veteran of freelancing, that’s pretty hard to argue with, isn’t it?

The post It’s been 5 months. appeared first on Ultradeluxxe.

• Wrapping up a standard Ecommerce site.
• Corporate media site for gambling platform.
• Continued work on a distributed sweepstakes mechanic.
• Ramping up Development on a multimedia scratch card program.
• Marketing assets for an Ecommerce service venture.
• Documentation for a mobile gaming platform.
• Project management for a custom ecommerce platform targeted at licensees.
• Lab Prep for a custom gaming platform.
• Development planning for the above gaming platform.
• Brand/media blog for a local restaurant
• Continued bookkeeping/tech support for a gun manufacturer.
• Short shifts at a cigar shop.
• Assisting with ‘mobilifying’ a custom CMS and advertising platform.
• Page layout for a whitepaper series.
• Assisting at a law office during tax season.

Those are my current projects right now.  Those do not include things I would like to do.  Am I qualified to do all of it? Nope.  Do I think I can do all of those things?  Yup.  Will all of them get done in a timely manner?  I sure hope so.

I know for a fact that i am going to be heavily discounting 2 of those items since I haven’t been able to meet deadlines.  Sure, they were warned when I was brought on, but it’s only fair.

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