Last week I was on holiday in Scotland and on a rainy Thursday I decided to spend the morning on the WIFI catching up emails, blogs and twitter. It was Hull Digital week last week. There was an event on the Thursday 15th October that a lot of people I follow were tweeting about. So I happily kept reading the tweets whilst I slurped my coffee and visited the links that were being sent.

One that really caught my eye was Noded Working. What’s that about then I thought….. and downloaded the PDF. Being stuck on a Virgin Train on Thursday 23rd October with no WIFI, I decided it was time to read that PDF. I have to say it was the best use of the train journey in a long time.

So what is Noded Network / Team?
‘A group of individuals, often but not necessarily geographically distant, that come together to form temporary or recurring project teams. Unlike ‘distributed teams’

Noded teams work for a wide range of clients and any member of a Noded team can take the lead to bring in work, manage work and choose their team members.’

Since I left Pollenation this is very much how I’ve been working. Collaborating with a number of people that I’ve kept in touch with over years. Working on projects together and sharing the benefits.

There were certain parts of the book which really resonated with me and reflect why I’ve set up a small agency and use my network of freelancers to help out on projects:

The Noded Personality
‘The main characteristic of us Noded type professionals is our desire to set our own goals, and build businesses based on our own values.’ That certain rings true with me. I certainly have found that compromising your personal values and beliefs when working for another company leaves you feeling de-motivated and de-valued. So this engaged me even further – there’s others like me out there?!

Noded means business
‘Noded means business. In fact it’s all about business: doing a fantastic job for clients, growing and learning as individuals and professionals, loving what we do, and being able to make a living out of it. Noded is about business, but with you the individual, your goals and your way of doing it, at the heart of it all.’

I would probably say I’ve got at least 3 different Node networks that I work with. There are some overlap of individuals, but the important thing is we all bring different skills and strengths to the network. So we all complement each others strengths, weakness and and skills. The client / project is at the core of the team with everyone working to achieving that.

Tell me about your noded team experience and how this has benefited you.