This book is for those that do their first steps toward moving to work in the virtual workplace. But what does it mean “Virtual Workplace” and what does it mean - moving to work into it? In this book we will try to answer these questions, not by constructing an academic point of view but by collecting pieces of information from actual experience of members from all around this community. By pasting pieces of information side by side we will finally get to multiplicity we can then call Virtual Workplace.

There is not a single definition to the term Virtual Workplace. Some will describe it as a process of moving office facilities into Internet so that employees can do their work from home, while other will describe a completely new form of workplace sociology, occur on top of Internet collaborative platforms, where relationships between participants is not of employer-employee but more like partnership on some case and service-providing in other case.

While these two approaches (and there are other approaches of course...) describe two different images of a Virtual Workplace, they both start their point of view from the paradigm associated with the overall concept of the term “workplace”. While first approach describe a different workplace-environment but without changing the paradigm of what can be defined as the modern-firm, the second approach describe a completely different paradigm in which power is horizontally spread among participants.

This book we will gives place for many approaches and let them merge with each other as well as drawing their own unique lines while trying to capture the multiplicity from which they drawn their existence.

Yet, there is another aspect fly around as leitmotiv for this book – the digital world. This is the world underlie the Internet. If you tear the “clothes” of the Web you will reach a layer that is all made by software and hardware. Some of us are very close , or even “live” within this layer while some other are so terrify about what can be found there so they intensively reject even the slightest exposure.
(Sorry for putting those two terms in the same layer, these are actually two different layers, but I am trying to get into some point here...).

Well, whether you like it or not, the digital world, and its child “Internet” are not going to be less digital! While user-experience of services is keeping improve, by bringing user nearer to the pure functional level of a service, those same services get more and more sophisticated behind the scene. The gap between the end user and the “internals” of a service keep growing. It will not be exaggeration to say that there no more professionals – instead there are learners. Proliferation of possibilities is so intensive that terms like “expert for...” or “professional” are not more then a local phenomenon. Let me be lyric and say that under the umbrella of our great knowledge we doomed to be ignorant. All we can do to fight this is to choose the ethic the the “continuous learner”.

Well as long as we use the Internet for entertainment there is no problem at all! All we want to to is to get some pleasure of using our PC, so why bother our minds fight to learn how to use the “letters” of this world while all we have to do is to listen to “stories” tell to us by various service provider? But when things come to our work, can we still hold this position?

The difference is of course when “efficiency” factor get into the picture. We may expect from ourself to be at least somewhat efficient... isn't it? Therefore we need to learn the basic! Isn't it?

I don't know what about you but this what my mother taught me - “you should learn the basics....”

This book, is not trying to make you an expert (local one), and not the “master of the bit” only to show you the basics of the Virtual Workplace. This is all about feeling comfortable within digital-world atmosphere, so you can freely walk on it and fill that even when you don't understand, you still have some ground underneath to produce the essential force for moving forward. In other words, knowing the language of a new place, makes it easier to move around freely and ask for help, or in terms of virtual-workplace, collaborate with other and produce some “application”.

Finally, who can contribute to this book?
The answer is simple - any member can add pages to this book. Pages will be examined and as long as those pages are relevant and appropriate, they will be kept as part of this book. One request - while you can use the Blog for promoting your links, please avoid from doing this in this book.

Good luck...