By: Jason Warner.
Here we go again. More restrictions, more anxiety, more need to find outlets to keep us from going insane. Enter a new era of the Home on the Edge. For those who have the room, the ability to create micro-environments in your home is proving beneficial for times of lockdowns. We hope this time passes but it is also dramatically changing how we address future pandemics or crises. Looking at some of the new innovations for living in today’s reality, we have some ideas that can prepare you for the future.
The Learning Space
Whether for your children or yourself, dedicated learning spaces provide a way to separate activities from the relaxing aspect of home life. A couple of ideas to consider:
- A green screen wall. Imagine your kids creating school projects with video and custom imagery behind them. With a green screen or even green painted wall, you can learn a new way to be creative.
- A dedicated Virtual Reality experience space. Learning is using VR like never before and it is proving to provide significant advancements in understanding through simulation. The room does not have to be large but should have a standing and a sitting section. The standing section is for activities like sports or gaming while the sitting section provides stability and the ability to spin in your seat to experience the 360° view around you. This space can also double up for VR company meetings and be supportive of your work-at-home needs.
- Large projection screen for video classes. There is nothing more tedious than being in Zoom conferences for 6-8 hours a day. By projecting to a large screen, we take the learner out of a concentration on the little screen to the immersion of a larger experience, getting just a little closer to the real-life size of real classmates.
The Working Space
Similar to learning spaces, the working space needs to have a Zen feel about it. Let’s face it, work is work and you probably won’t come out from a day in the basement feeling extra charged up. And if you do, it may just be the 10 cups of coffee you drank. But by structuring your place to have a level of comfort that supports you, the day can pass pretty well.
Bottom line, unless you are in a small apartment, try not to do all your work at the kitchen table. Separation of work and home add to your enjoyment of life.
- Declutter and clean up all of the stuff around you. Less is more in this case. It makes you feel more in control when you don’t have to go down or up to a mess around your workspace.
- Use the green screen with custom background rather than the Zoom or other web conference tools with a graphic behind you. Those halos are old news. But don’t overdo the use of a green screen because in many cases, people want to identify with you by your backgrounds. Pay attention to your space. I often wonder why the professional news guy is clearly using a sheet to cover his exposed basement unframed walls and has a half dead plant next to the TV behind him. Think about it.
- Also, you might like gin or vodka but having your liquor shelf behind your desk doesn’t work for most of us. Or it drives us to our own too soon in the day!
- Connect your office to a wired internet connection and plug your computer into that. You will most likely see a huge improvement in call quality. The people on the opposite side of your conference will thank you.
The Work Out Space
This is probably one of the most difficult for most of us to take out of our living rooms and into a dedicated space. But a space to leave your mats and set of free weights and machines can take the pressure off having to lay out a floor for a T-25 workout. However, do what you have to do to get the exercise in. It is proven that life is better long term fit than fat.
- Keep the middle of the space open with at least one side clear to a wall with mirrors. Some of us hate mirrors but there is a reason you see them in gyms and dojos.
- Get a good system for watching the workout videos or the news if that is what you prefer. With large screen monitors and TV’s being quite cheap today, get at least a 40” monitor or TV. That way, you don’t have to move your elliptical across the room to get close every time you use it.
- Set up a dedicated input device for logging your workouts. That old iPad or laptop works great as long as it doesn’t take 10 minutes to boot up.
The Digital Heartbeat of Your Home
Finally, take some time to research setting up a mini datacenter in your home. The future is about controlling the data that is being created by you before sending it out to the cloud for others to harvest. At Fortress Data Centers, we are bridging the needs for Edge Computing with hybrid cloud systems. We are local ourselves and we bring a holistic approach toward providing our clients and their customers with data interconnectivity. We believe in the power of Edge and We are Here to help it benefit all of you.
Disclaimer – these opinions are my own, but they come from experience. Use them as you will and happy holidays.