No, I’m not in San Francisco or Sacramento. If you were in Sacramento, then got into a car and drove north for 4 hours on Interstate 5, you would be where I am now: Mt. Shasta. I’m here visiting my parents and my manager at Xerox has been kind enough to let me work virtually from here two weeks so I can spend more time with my family. I eventually want to transition to full time virtual work so this is a trial run.

This is a picture of my temporary office in downtown Mt. Shasta, you can see the mountain that dominates the landscape here just behind it. My parents live in Weed, a smaller town just north of here, but they have an office space in Mt. Shasta that I can use for most of the time I am here. I know it will be better for me to have an office space that is separate from my home base. I worked from my parent’s house yesterday but found that there were a lot of distractions and it was hard to find a good place to situate myself. I did a lot of catching up on email and some reading (I brought several months worth of Interactions magazine, the ACM’s computer human interaction publication).

I’m quickly discovering the importance of ergonomics in even a temporary office setting. Yesterday I set myself up in front of the picture window in the entryway at home. It was somewhat out of the way and I had a nice view of the yard. The table there is a little high so I sat on a stool for three hours, looking down at my laptop. Needless to say, this was not good for my back or my neck. I had to take some ibuprofen and spent the rest of the afternoon reading on the couch.

This morning I got up and came into the Mt. Shasta office early. I’m also dealing with the 3 hour time difference so most of my regular meetings happen during the first part of the day. I’m not used to getting to work at 8am, but it will probably have to become a regular practice for me out here. I was able to set up my laptop on a desk and there is an adjustable office chair. I raised my laptop up on some phone books so I wasn’t looking down on it as much. I had project-related meetings all morning which I took on my iPhone using my headphones with a microphone built in. For some of the meetings we also used Live Meeting to share screens. Many of the meetings that I have throughout the day are with groups of people that are not co-located (Xerox has research centers in India, France, Canada and California; we also work with development resources in India) so phone conferencing is a standard mode of interaction.

My last meeting today was my weekly one-on-one with my manager Pat. I called her a little bit early because my Dad showed up and wanted me to go to lunch with him. Pat and I decided to forgo the video conferencing through Live Meeting because we had some technical issues with it last week. Pat’s computer has been a little fussy about video sharing. It was nice to hear her voice and check in. After lunch I worked for a few more hours but my back and neck were bothering me again. I’m starting to realize what a nice office setup I have back in Webster, NY. If I plan to do this long term, I’ll need to invest in a comfy chair, as well as a full size keyboard and monitor. Luckily I don’t have many pressing things to do this week so I’m heading home now to read some more Interactions.

A few weekends ago, I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp Toronto 2010 as a representative of Trailmeme, one of my current projects at Xerox. A trail is a way to tell a story with URLs, you can see an example of a trail created for WordCamp Toronto that collects all of the resources from the speakers together in one spot. The trailmeme project has a destination website, as well as a WordPress plugin (called Trailmeme for WordPress or TM4WP for short) that allows users to create trails to connect posts on their blogs. My colleague Venkat and I traveled to Toronto to learn more about the blogging community and to talk to people about the TM4WP plugin.

I have only been to large conferences like that of the American Library Association and huge trade shows like the Fancy Food Show, so the unconference concept was new to me. It was organized by volunteers, it was affordable ($35/ticket) it and allowed 200 or so people to mix, mingle and learn about WordPress in a fun, causal atmosphere. Although I am fundamentally an introvert, I found it easy to meet and talk to people at this event.

Xerox was one of the sponsors, so Venkat and I had the opportunity to attend a pre-Camp event on Friday night to meet the organizers, speakers and other sponsors. We also managed to get some time in the spotlight to talk about our plugin on the second day. The response was pleasantly positive. I often have a hard time explaining the trails concept to people I meet, but the blogging crowd saw a use for it immediately, you can read more about it in Venkat’s post about the response to TM4WP at WordCamp Toronto 2010.

I learned a lot at the event that I can use personally and for the chocolate business. I have a much better understanding of how people are using Twitter, see #wcto2010 on Twitter search. I also got a lot of excellent, practical advice on SEO from one of the presenters Brad Gosse.

I redesigned this site and updated my resume this year to begin looking for a new job. My goal was to be in a new position by March of 2010. I’m happy to report that I have met my goal, in true overachiever style, 5 months early.

One of the milestones in my plan included looking for internal positions at Xerox, my current employer. I didn’t have high hopes for this step because Xerox rarely has a use for someone with my skillset and I have already worked in the most likely groups. Surprisingly, two positions were available to me: User Experience Designer for xerox.com in Wilsonville, OR and Interaction Designer in the research arm of the company here in Webster, NY. I applied and interviewed for both positions. The position in research was a better fit and it allowed me to stay put. I moved into a new office building just down the street from my old one and started work on November 2.

I work in the Xerox Innovation Group (XIG) which contains 4 research centers, including the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), one in Europe, one in Canada and the one I am a part of in Webster, NY. Within the Webster center, I’m in the Document Workflows and Services Lab as part of the Work Practice and Technology group. My role will be to design and evaluate user interfaces for ongoing research projects that explore the future of work and document technologies.

Initially I have two projects to focus on. I’ll be contributing to Open Xerox, a public website for sharing and getting feedback on some in-progress research projects. I’ll be designing the UI for new applications that will be added to the site over the next year, as well as evaluating the usability of the site itself. I’ll also be working on another project called Document Interactions, which is exploring ways to make connections between large collections of artifacts/documents.