I’m a web worker. Are you?

I fell into it purely as a result of the work I do as a magazine editor. Eventually, print gave way to online publishing, and I found myself working in a virtual world where I no longer needed to linger over the shoulder of a designer putting pages together — we could shuttle URLs back and forth until we were satisfied with the results. And given the economic doldrums in tech during the new millennium, layoffs became common enough that I finally decided it was time to go freelance fulltime and stop depending upon the “kindness of strangers” to keep my future rosy.

That’s why I’m excited to read Connect!, a new book by former Web Worker Daily editor Ann Zelenka. (Full disclosure: I’ve worked with Anne and still do a bit of blogging on WWD.)

Connect! is a manifesto for the new way of working. The knowledge worker of the ’90s — who inhabited a cubicle and worked on a massive project defined by his or her employer alongside other people who worked for the same company — has given way to the web worker, frequently a free agent who works anywhere broadband can be found on “a variety of projects across organization boundaries… [collaborating] with people she’s met on the web on an ad hoc and occasionally more formal basis…”

As Zelenka describes it, desktop-installed software has given way to web-based services . And the work process of building and creating now consists of composing and assembling. The currency of time and money now includes attention: If you can get it, it can have value for you. Our connections aren’t around the espresso machine; they’re online through Twitter and our personal blog comment sections.

I’m looking forward to reading this book specifically for two of the chapters: “Burst Your Productivity,” where I’ll learn “new methods and tools” to help me manage my to-do list, calendar and daily activities (always a challenge!); and “Rethink Your Relationship with Email,” where I’ll “explore different ways of dealing with and relating to [my] email.”

But it may be that you want to learn how to work more effectively with colleagues who aren’t physically in the same offices; or you want to “explode” your career, helping you figure out how to work when, how and where you want.

At any rate, over the next month you’ll find me buried in its pages at the second cubicle near the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature at my local library. They have incredible — and free! — wi-fi there. Now, if they’d only add that cocoa bar, I’d be set…
 

Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by dian