To many people, the notion of a missed opportunity is a pessimistic one. However, for the past several years, I have been intrigued by missed opportunities of a different kind. Namely, those opportunities that exist all around you, but that you don't act upon simply because you never knew they existed in the first place. For example, not knowing that the person commuting next to you on the train is also looking for a tennis partner. Your life is not any worse off by not knowing this, but if you had known, it could have, at the very least, led to an interesting conversation and possibly a game of tennis with a new friend.
I first tried to tackle this idea from the purely physical proximity standpoint with my previous startup, sixsense.com. And in founding Worksona, I again hope to address this concept of "missed
opportunities", albeit in a slightly different manner. To most, work is just a place where you report in, perform your specific duties, and earn a salary. But the workplace is really a community, a
place where you spend a third of your day sitting in close proximity to hundreds if not thousands of other people with whom you share at least one thing in common. And yet, most people only know the people on their immediate team.
But what if you knew that Fred from the down the hall is also interested in starting a Toastmasters club, or that someone from upstairs is working on a project similar to yours, or that there are 3 people in the building who have the particular skillset to answer your questions? To me, Worksona is about building this community, letting you find people who can help you get your job done faster and better, and even finding people whom you want to interact with outside of work. So join us, join your Worksona community, and build up your persona at work (work persona... worksona... get it?), and together we can start taking advantage of the opportunities around us.
- Mike
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