Monday, January 25, 2010

My SXSWi panel: What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work

Some of you may have been following my research on coworking in Austin, part of a larger arc of research into loose organizations that perform knowledge work. I'm happy to announce that my South by Southwest Interactive panel has been accepted. We'll be presenting on "What Coworking Tells Us about the Future of Work" on March 15 here in Austin.

Besides me, the panel includes:

Drew Jones

Drew is a trained anthropologist and consultant who has been studying how work is changing as Gen Y takes over the workforce. He's involved in a consuntancy, Shift101, and a related coworking space, Shift Workspace. Drew literally (co)wrote the book on coworking and another on innovation.

Gary Swart

Gary is CEO of oDesk Corporation. oDesk facilitates connecting, maintaining, and building trust among online workteams. Gary will talk about the practical challenges of "loosely coupled, highly aligned teams working remotely, including our own use case of 70+ remote resources working directly for oDesk from around the world."

Liz Elam

Liz is a former global account manager at Dell, but now she is about to unveil her own coworking space in Austin. Liz brings a hard-nosed business sensibility to coworking and seeks to accommodate teleworkers at large local companies. Whereas Drew has examined coworking as an anthropological phenomenon, Liz has researched it thoroughly from a for-profit business perspective.

I'm really thrilled about the panel. Hope you can make it.

UPDATE: The panel is scheduled for 11am in Hilton H.

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