For all the reports of doom and disaster Hurricane Irene proved pretty manageable. It was certainly noisy in the night and we had a few leaks to contend with but it wasn’t the destruction forecast.

It highlighted for me an advantage of working from home and having a network approach to business – we had no issues with transport or closed offices and with the hurricane so well signposted it was easy for us to shift work from those on the East Coast to others not affected so our clients wouldn’t have seen any disruption.

And on a lighter note, I can’t help but think of that Dexy’s Midnight Runners classic that was going to be the theme to our Come On Irene Hurricane Party…

Yurii duly arrived and we had a great time. We could communicate after all (although not without some difficulties now and then!) and we worked together at his home before walking around Kharkov and going to a restaurant.

I have a photo and when I get to download load it I’ll post it.

Looking back at my trip to the Ukraine to meet and work with Yurii I think I learnt two things:

• Yes, the world might be flat, as Thomas Friedman would have us believe, but in a funny kind of way mine has become more diverse because of it. Had I stayed in the corporate world there is no way Yurii and I would work together:  the corporate environment filters people out and makes for a very homogenous work place. People might have varied ethnic backgrounds and all but the selection process means that everyone who gets a job has the right sort of degree, the right sort of language and communication skills, and the right sort of attitude and so on.But with Yurii, none of that has happened; he was selected for one thing alone –his ability to develop a software system.   Virtual working means we have in Yurii someone who would fail at all the standard corporate filters but in the one thing that matters, he excels.Our virtual team is way more diverse than anything imaginable in the corporate world and I think this is a good thing.

• My other thought is that because we worked together for so long without meeting or talking, finally meeting up was more meaningful.It took a fair amount of effort for both of us – I traveled to Kiev then took a 6 hour train to Kharkov and he had to talk to me in English, something he wasn’t comfortable to do. It could easily have gone wrong – we might have been unable to understand each other, or not got on etc, so there was some risk to it. This doesn’t happen in a regular workplace where work relationships evolve gradually.We met only for a day but the bond established is stronger than many of the bonds I established in the corporate world where I daily met and interacted with people. I had a good working relationship with most of my corporate friends but I learnt little about their private lives and our relationships didn’t extend much beyond the workplace.But in the short time I was with Yurii I met his family, worked at his home with him, walked his dog and generally got a good insight into his life and how our work fits into it.  I rarely attained this level of understanding in the corporate environment and feel it has to enhance the working relationship that Yurii and I have.