Getting out of the office and giving away TELUS swag

The folks at TELUS asked me to participate in their “Work Shift, Work Styles, Work Anywhere – Flexible Work across Canada” summer blog series and my post appeared on their TELUS Talks Business site today.

As the Editor-in-Chief of Techvibes.com, a hyper-local Canadian technology blog, I meet with (and get pitched by) plenty of tech startups every week. These meetings tend to take place in coffee shops and cafes throughout downtown Vancouver and usually include a laptop or an iPad.

With over 300 Starbucks locations in Vancouver’s lower mainland (and two kitty-corner on Robson Street), you’d think that I’d end up in the Seattle-born chain more often than anywhere else especially since they offer free Wi-Fi access. Not the case though. I find myself taking most of my meetings at a Vancouver-based coffee chain that prides itself in NOT offering complimentary Wi-Fi.

JJ Bean Coffee Roasters just opened it’s 10th location and they’re giving the big chains a run for the money in Vancouver. JJ Bean’s Yaletown location is at the corner of Homer & Davie street and accessing the Web on the fly isn’t a problem for me thanks to my trusty Mobile Internet Key.

With my latte set next to my MacBook, “pitches” turn into blog posts on the fly and I usually find myself diving into my regular daily activities before closing my laptop and heading back to the office.

At Techvibes, we do everything on the web – our email runs on Google Apps and we track our web stats with Google Analytics. We tweet all of our blog posts to the world and communicate internally with Yammer. We track customers on Salesforce, invoice them with FreshBooks, and then check our bank balances online.

As I type this blog post from my favourite coffee shop at summer’s end on September 1st, I wonder if I’ll be feeling so mobile when Vancouver’s wet weather hits. Just in case I retreat to my office this Fall, come on by and say Hi at JJ Bean today. I’ll be here from 11:00am until noon PST and have some sweet swag for the first few to find me.