Latte, wifi and a spot to work

When I was fantasising about leaving formal employment and striking out on my own I imagined spending hours in my local coffee shop with my PowerBook working away for hours on end.  It was almost idyllic and was the way being self-employed was supposed to work.  My reality is somewhat different.  I find I can’t work productively in a coffee shop because I spend more time watching people go by than I do actually working.  Maybe it is a skill that one develops over time?  Maybe I’m just doing the wrong work.

Either way, the coffee shop is a workplace of choice for many entrepreneurs and a new blog launched by Om Malik called the Web Worker Daily has a post about some excellent spots from Seattle to San Francisco.  Extra points go to free wifi, great beverages and good ambience.  Interested in what the blog is about?

Job security, forty hour weeks, two Martini lunches, ties, nylons and handwritten memos are now relics of the past, while freelancing, flex time, lattes, company t-shirts, jeans and email are de rigeur. An ‘office’ now includes idyllic campuses that can be lived in, well, to any sandy beach, rowdy bar or coffee roastery with Internet connections. Either way, you can wear pajamas to work.

Mobile electronics, wireless networks and online applications aren’t just shifting workflow paradigms, but also social etiquette, management policies and business models. A new tribe of bedouin has evolved, with laptops instead of camels, hopping between wifi hotspots like oases. It is high time that net set should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies,and meet the jet set with a manifesto: Web Worker Daily. Because inspiration is meant to be shared.

It looks like quite an exciting blog.  Perhaps it will awaken in me the ability to work, latte style.