Erlend Wilhelmsen

I'm looking for Pirates

You know who they are. They fight for change. They work on big distruptive ideas. They spend every day fighting for a better life, education, healthcare, and more love - less war. They are hackers. They are the Occupy movemement. They are freedom fighters all over the world. They are sometimes... entrepreneurs.

You love them because they stand for change. They know something is wrong and they will change it. They are willing to step out from the crowd and take a stand. They take risk. They don't always know what to do, but they do something. They don't give up. They stick their heads out - heads that would roll 600 years ago. They are the true heroes. The pirates.

There is so much talent in tech. So much talent in Sillicon Valley. I wonder why so few of the entrepreneurs work on problems that really matter. So few go for the big distruptive ideas. So few dare to take on the big problems. Why is that? Are they afraid? Are they trained to believe that money matters? That being acquired matters? That the world cares about the Techcrunch article?

You will die in the end and no one will care. Unless you change the world. To change the world, you have to become one of them. You have to become a pirate.

You know what you have to do.

Why Co-Working is the future

I believe we will see a Billion entrepreneurs in the next 20 years. I’m not talking about the classic definition of an entrepreneur building a big company – I’m talking about the freelancer, part-timer, and the independent. Yes, corporations will live on, but innovation, disruption, and the future lies in the hands of the entrepreneurs. At the center of this movement - and it's already here - we see major changes in how, when, and where people work. This is the rise of co-working and you should do it too.

So, what is co-working?

It’s quite simple. If you’ve ever spent more than a week working from home, you’ve likely noticed that working from home, or alone, is not as easy and wonderful as it might seem. You get bored. You are a social animal. You need people to feel good. Co-working is just working together and better with others. (If you are new to co-working, check this resource for definitions etc).

For the last twenty years, you’ve noticed more and more people working at coffee shops. If you live in San Francisco or another major tech hub, it seems as if no one has an office anymore. In the last five years, co-working spaces have been popping up all over the world. You can easily find one in this directory. It's easy to get going: You can rent a desk, a room, or just pop in for the day. Most places offer coffee, meeting rooms, and comfy couches.

While in-person co-working is terrific, co-working doesn’t have to be in-person. Loads of people co-work online and cross-borders. It's not as refreshing as the real thing, but the co-working concept is really more about sustainability and community building than anything else.

Why is it so great?

The pure creative energy that comes from co-working is just terrific. You meet new people, collaborate, and you constantly are refreshed by the environment and energy that drives co-working spaces.

Networking is super easy and some of the people in your space might buy or sell services to you – in person. That’s just a superb way of building value, right?

Our next space for Fabric will be a co-working environment. We’re looking at downtown Los Angeles and we’re looking for a street-facing retail space. If you know the perfect space or you want to join in, get in touch. Let’s make it happen!

Your kids will print their own house

Yes, I believe that will happen in my lifetime. It’s called 3D printing and in 10 years, you’ll all be doing it. You’ll print stuff you need at home and, at some point, you’ll just print your own house. Yes, I’m talking about the house you live in. (You'll need a industrial sized printer of course.)

I’ve asked many of my friends if they know that, right now, they can print their own door handles and other items they need from a printer in their own house. I always get the same reaction: “What do you mean by print it?” I mean exactly that. You scan an object into your 3D software on your laptop, then plug in the printer, and print what you need.

Here’s a 3D printer you can buy for $1,299. You can use it to print solid objects in a few hours.

Naturally, you need to buy the material (think of it as a printing cartridge) and, for now, there are limits to what kind of material you can use at home for printing objects. You can print with a vinyl type material, but there is no reason you can't print from different chemical compounds, mixed on the fly, to create different types of material – all in your house. No more factories. No more transportation.

How about printing edible food? Yes, you don't even have to go to the grocery store. Perfect. You can just stay at home and eat your printed food. (Just what we need in America.)

Within ten years, I’m certain you’ll see 3D printing enabling new markets and even whole economies. While it may be a few years before 3D printers really enter the mass market and make their way into every household, think of the opportunities! What if 10,000 Ebay and Etsy sellers owned their own printers? They would create amazing custom made-to-order products for all of us. It’s not far away.

Eventually, hospitals will print blood vessels and other body parts. You say that’s nuts. Possibly, but it’s already happening right now:

What will you print? New parents? Kids?

Jobs are not coming back. What are we going to do?

Your leaders are not telling the truth. (Surprise!) Your jobs are not coming back. Unemployment will remain high. I know this for certain. Why? It's not the recession. It's not outsourcing. It's not because industries are dying or shrinking. Those are all real challenges of course, but the real reason? Machines and software.

Yes, the real reason you are out of a job is that we've focused on building software that reduce the total amount of output required by humans to produce what we need. This is what thousand of software engineers do every day. They work hard at finding ways to remove you from work. They've gotten pretty good at it, don't you think?

That's not to say we don't need work. Humans need work like we need water, air, and food. We need work because we must have some sense of purpose. We need to be creative. We need to learn. We work to make money.

Your problem, in 2011, is that you - the worker - is caught in the middle of a torrent of software-driven innovation in an open world. As the fast moving matrix of supply and demand drives labor to real-time  the "regular" full-time jobs will no longer be available to many people.

"No, we don't need you at the office for 40 hours this week. Maybe we need 14 hours. Then we need you for 60 hours next week when the demand is high"

So, if the regular full-time jobs are gone and not coming back. What's next? I've been thinking about this for some time and I think the future is clear.

Self employment will continue to rise

You will live and work independently of corporate structures. Of course, many people will continue to work for companies and large organizations, I'm not saying those are going away any time soon, but, more and more people will follow the entrepreneurial model. You will have to find and do work on your own.

You won't have one job. You'll have many. You'll work with small groups or teams and you'll build your reputation in the open social environment. You'll be a free agent and you'll pick up small jobs from companies, organizations, and sometimes from other people just like you (the peer-to-peer model). You will build your reputation - one small job at a time.

Your reputation is key

To survive you have to be creative and you have to be networked. You must focus your skill set and develop your reputation. Your "resume" is built one small job at the time. People trust you because of the jobs you've done for others in an open environment. You have a rating, just like your local restaurant, and that rating improves with the quality of your work, your creativity, and your ability to deliver value. It's not, as now, locked in your MS Word version of your resume/CV.

Your resume replaced by the "Digital Work Card"

To replace your resume/CV, you will have a Digital Work Card - a data profile of all work related activity. As a student fresh out of college (if you go to College at all) you won't have an empty resume, you'll have a Digital Work Card connected to all the people you've done small jobs for with ratings and comments about your work. This is who you are. This is your reputation card.

If you think about it, this makes more sense. (I wrote about it here). I should not have more information and data about my local restaurant than I do of the person I hire. It's not a privacy thing. You can keep some information private if you like, but if you are good, and that is of course a requirement, you want that data surfaced to people who can give you work. Yes, you can put your semi-professional or professional profile on LinkedIn or Yelp or Redbeacon, but that's not the point. The point is that you should just have that data - it should be yours - just like your CV is yours and it should be updated automatically when you do small jobs. You should carry it with you - on your mobile - it should not be vertically locked on any website. 

Labor as utility

Companies will tap this fluid mass of talented workers like water. You see it now with Elance, Etsy, E-Bay and some late attempts in start-ups like Gigwalk and Taskrabbit. In San Francisco, you can see the latest iteration of this open small jobs marketplace with Coffee & Power from Second Life Founder Philip Rosedale.

Why is this happening now

The missing pieces are in place now. Smart phones is (becoming) the digital wallet and the communication platform on which we can build all this. It's easy to connect the network now. LinkedIn adds a bit of reputation and data around individual expertise and new services such as BranchOut connects this to Facebook and social. The payment frameworks to power it all are established (PayPal) and new distruptions through services like Square is making CC payments in-person easy and frictionless.

How do we accelerate it

What's missing is the social layer and open data portability between the different networks. For instance, you - as an independent agent - should be able to "carry" your Digital Work Card with you cross networks. When you earn money, credits, or trust on one platform you should be able to port it - or rather you should own that data and carry it with you to other networks and platforms. You should never have to update your bio or CV... it's just with you. When you do a job for me, the review and rating I give you should go into your Digital Work card and be available to all other networks.

We need to build the network and open it up. We have to design fluid systems for managing small bite sized chunks of work. We need a trust standard and we need more people to help build this future.

The global nomad digital worker is real and she's ready. All we need to do is connect the dots. She'll join us and so will you.

Resistance is futile.

Home Depot should connect me to trusted people for DYI help

Most times, when I visit HomeDepot I have some jobs to be done at the house. I've considered bringing with me some of the lads outside, but I've never done it. Several reasons really: I don't know them. They don't speak English and my Spanish is not great. I can't tell if they have any skills or if it will just be more work managing them than doing it myself. Also, I don't enjoy negotiating with people that speak a different language.

I can easily imagine that most women would not bring workers to their home because they don't feel comfortable with the idea of inviting these unknown men without identites to their house. How many women would take the help if it was offered by someone they could trust? How big is this market? How big could it be?

What are your thoughts on this? Can the current status be disrupted?