Small office, home office, no office

With 5 million UK small businesses, there are more and more people working outside of traditional offices.

What was once called the SOHO - small office, home office sector was still a dedicated space in a home, or shed, but today for many workers the office is actually an iBook or lap top plus iPhone. The home office has its problems - typically other residents scheduling deliveries for example. Very disruptive to concentration to break off and deal with someone's Amazon shipment, often a neighbour's as the delivery guys have figured out people working from home. So it was time to road test the iBook office.

There was a fair amount of planning to ensure communications would be as smooth as possible, starting with organising an Internet connection in Spain. Checking on to the Ryanair flight at Luton with a bar code on my iPhone - printed documents were not required any more than I needed a printer. I did back up all my client files on a portable drive and that was it to run the business offshore for three weeks.

The age of the NO - No Office - is here!