Flaming Desks is a blog…

Thanks for the comments we’ve had so far which have been without fail encouraging. Here’s a round up of the most common issues that you’ve raised, and our answers (if we have any) for them:

• What’s going to make people put their desks up? This is undoubtedly one of the big unknowns : this is only going to work if we’ve got enough giving people with desks. We don’t have a solid business argument for it either : let’s be honest, there’s not much of an upside to it, apart from the warm glowing feeling you get from helping someone out, and the chance to meet a new person. And I think that’s what we’ll be focussing on : the feel good factor; sharing because it’s nice thing to do; the sociable element. It’s going to be a challenge for us when we create the brand and set the tone on the site. It has to feel supportive, collaborative (we’ve started well in this respect), and people will need to feel as if they belong to a community with a shared ethos of giving, sharing and not expecting much back in return. [Rob, I've just rambled in a pretty illiterate fashion as you'd expect from a developer : you're a words man - can you say this any more succinctly?]So far the straw poll highlights this challenge : there are far fewer people saying they’d offer their desks than would want to use them. But there are people saying they’d offer desks, and I think we probably do need a lot more people who might use the service than there are desks, so perhaps this split is about right.
• I don’t want to share my office with an axe murderer Yup, as has been suggested by lots of you, one of the first things we’re putting in is a rating system : people who use the desks can rate the desks, people who share their desks can rate their users. Frequent users get great ratings and nice things said about them. Of course at the beginning that’s no help, so then it’s down to sensible precautions. We’ll probably have an information section on the site, setting these out, but they’ll say something like:
  • If you don’t know the person, make sure you speak on the phone before they come in
  • Ask for references if you want [ultimately the reviews of desk users will end up being references, perhaps we should put a 'happy to be contacted as a reference' flag in when they make a review?]
  • Don’t leave people you don’t know in the office on their own
  • Avoid giving people key codes to doors

  The only real security risk that sharing your desk introduces is the stranger in your office.  With most open offices these days, that stranger is going to be surrounded by trusted employees : it’s going to be very difficult for them to get up to any mischief and there are much easier ways of stealing stuff / murdering people than this.

  Open minded employees of larger firms are probably going to find it difficult to get it past the jobsworth facilities manager.  This is something we recognise and we really see this app being embraced by small business offices rather than big firms.  Of course if Google want to get on board, I’ll be the first one trying our their spare desks!

Marcus also pointed out that there might be an environmental angle to exploit.  I’m with you Marcus, it feels like there should be… I’m just not sure what it is yet!