More than a year ago, I handled a half dozen interviews and a couple rewrites on a story for the Inquirer that covered what Philadelphia workplaces will look like in the future. As is sometimes the case, it never found its home in print.

The story’s primary timeliness has been lost, but I think it still has merit. So, with permission from my editor, I share it below, in addition to a slew of extras from the heavy lifting of reporting.

It was meant to be a localized version of a Time magazine cover story that caught my attention.

Below, read the story, see portions of my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece and watch some related video news pieces

*Please note that the facts, figures, quotations and assertions are fact-checked and correct as of June 2009.

THE FUTURE OF THE PHILADELPHIA WORK PLACE

Not that long ago, there was something of a stable existence in retail.

Sheldon Abba

Sheldon Abba worked in a variety of clothing stores, from independent storefronts to big players like Urban Outfitters. He had a marketing and design background and, he thought, a fairly good sense of his future.

And then the bottom fell out.

With the economy on the slide, he was let go from Walnut Street-retailer Stussy in February, and his perception of that future changed.

“When I was in school, I thought I’d get a steady job with a brand and get a regular paycheck,” Abba, 23, said. “When that job evaporated, I started thinking differently. Maybe I could pay bills doing something like it on my own.”

So, with a handful of friends, he launched S. Industries, an ethereal design and retail company that is based wherever Abba and his cohorts are at the moment. He’s finding steady work through word of mouth but will soon take the venture on the Web through an e-commerce site. It’s a far ride from clocking in as a retail day manager.

The U.S. recession has changed lots of plans, like Abba’s. While entrepreneurs, freelancers and telecommuters have long been part of the U.S. workforce, today’s economic climate seems to have put more people in those roles than in recent memory. So much so that some say independent, remote ventures like Abba’s S. Industries are part of a trend for the future of the nation’s workplace.

That trend may fast become a norm in Philadelphia and across the country in the next five years or more, said Thomas Malone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor and author of the 2004 book, The Future of Work. Those who do stick to cubicle life may find their offices becoming smaller, closer to home, more mobile and, believe it or not, more fun in coming years, other experts say — all thanks to advances in communication technologies and increasingly casual work environments.

“The key message here is that I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in work, and it just might be as important a change for business as democracy was for government,” Malone said.

Some worry that the expected continued decline in traditional office employees could leave the new worker short on camaraderie and political social skills.

To curb his isolation, though, Abba has launched his venture with friends. They hold their meetings in bedrooms with a computer and a hard drive, listening to music and laughing.

“That’s a different work environment than any work place,” Abba says. “What I’m doing — finding work and making a schedule — is really valuable learning.”

For those who work from home for established companies, there’s another trend in keeping the best of the office: co-working.

For more than four years, Lori Hylan-Cho worked for software companies in California from 2,800 miles away in her Logan Square home near the Philadelphia Art Museum. The software developer and mom, whose hair is not unknown to be dyed purple on occasion, relished the flexibility but lamented the solitude.

“I was going a little nutty,” she said.

So, after making “a New Year’s resolution to get out of the house,” Hylan-Cho rented out space at Independents Hall, a shared office in Old City that rents workplaces to self-employed or other independent workers.

“In the coming years, the place becomes less important than the tools, and managers become more comfortable with distribution,” said Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who in 2006 opened Indy Hall with University of the Arts professor Geoff DiMassi. “Companies that want to stay ahead of the curve — if they’re open-minded — will need to explore these options in the traditional worker-employer relationship.”

Hylan-Cho, 40, has worked in software development for 11 years and has watched more and more of her co-workers flee the office.

“Working from home let me put in a load of laundry, be home for packages and sometimes meet the kids for lunch,” she said. She kept in touch with work by way of regular video conferences and instant messaging, connecting with co-workers from California to Texas back to Philadelphia.

That extra freedom kept her loyal, one of the more valuable assets of an employee in the future.

“Businesses are quickly finding that one of the most expensive costs of business is turnover,” said Deanna Geddes, an assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. So, the Center City office of the future may increasingly be a more inviting place.

Geddes says we might see the rise of the campus workplace for those who, unlike Abba and Hylan-Cho, do stay in the office.

“What successful businesses like Google learned before a lot of others is that people like to hang out, where they can develop friends, and when you have friendships in the workplace, people want to stay,” she said. “The casual campus environment that is more open, with fewer doors and walls, more communal space, games and less restrictive hours, lets people come and go as they please and keeps them invested in the workplace.”

For those who have already left traditional work environments, voluntarily or because of a tightened economy, the recession seems to point work places in a new direction.

“It takes a special kind of person, someone who can separate time and get work done,” Abba said. “That isn’t everyone, but clearly even the old-style offices of the past are going to change.”

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Professor Thomas Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• “We’ll see the economic benefits of very large business, as the same time as the human benefit of very small organizations, the freedom and creativity.”
• “The reason, of course, is a completely new generation of technologies that are reducing the cost of communication to such a low level. A huge number of people can now make sensible decisions for themselves with access to enough information because of the Internet, instead of just following orders.
• “We’ll see more human freedom, more people making more decisions for themselves. We may see more small organizations, where you’re your own boss.”
• A lot of lessons about that future can be taken from the nation’s largest private employer and an online auction behemoth, Malone said. Increasingly, we won’t need or always be able to find a company to employ us.
  “The clerk in Walmart and that seller for eBay represent the difference in what is now and what may come: in how they work, in responsibilities and where and when they have to do them,” Malone said. “Seven hundred thousand people say they make their primary or secondary living on eBay. They are essentially independent store owners with a huge amount of freedom in what they do, what to sell and what prices to set. That’s the future.”
• “Even inside big companies, we’ll see more freedom inside the company, more command and control to coordinate and cultivate. In another meaning of freedom, there will be more choice of when or where they work, with telecommuting for example, we’ll see a decentralization of the workplace. Both of those results are enabled by cheap communication….
• One reason cities grew the way they did was that for many occupations you had to live in a city, near the office to the company you worked for. One of the important trends changed by cheap communication technology is that more and more kinds of work can be done essentially anywhere in the world. What that means, I think, is that people will choose where they live often for reasons other than where their company is because it won’t matter. What that means is the dynamics of cities, i think will change. There are a lot of nice things about living in cities other than just going to work there. So, some people will continue to want to work in cities even though their jobs don’t require them to do so. It’s hard to know what the net impact on a city like Philadelphia will be, but I expect the population of cities may lessen but that the quality of living will go up.
• “The key point is electronic communication is reducing the need to travel to work everyday. You can work at home or near home much of the time. Ten years ago, we used to think that more and more people would become telecommuters. I think that’s not nearly so black and white now. The vast majority of professionals will be telecommuters in the sense that they work some of the time from home or while traveling and surely the professionals who spend all the time working from the office are a minority, but we’ll see a hybrid of office and telecommuting time.
• “If you need an example of a future employee, look at an eBay seller. If those 700,000 people were employees, it would make eBay the second-largest private employer in the country, second only behind Walmart. Of course, they are not employees… That’s all the freedom of any small store owner. It’s on a scale unlike ever before, in any regional or global marketplace. It’s as if an auction company built a retailer — not eBay the company, but eBay the community.
• “In cities, there is a pretty strong division between business and residential neighborhoods. Maybe we’ll see more of a blurring of these distinctions,” Malone, the MIT professor, said. “I think when people don’t have to drive or commute all the way to a downtown of a city, that means they could stay at home. We’ll see more of something I call a neighborhood office building.”It would be a place, Malone said, where telecommuters and freelancers, whose numbers are expected to rise, can work together. It’s a trend called co-working that already has strong roots in Philadelphia.
• ; residential neighborhoods with one or two or more office floors

Professor, Deanna Geddes, human resource management at Temple’s Fox School of Business

• This is a time to play to our strengths as a region. research and biotech, biomedic
• Companies without the sophisticated IT for corporate to retain employees may suffer.
• We might see more choice, allowing younger people to come in at 10 a.m. and work through 8 or stay on to 9.
• Center City could become the place for more campus-orientated workplaces. It’s cheaper to build out of the existing city.
• Taking a mantra from education in 1990s, clicks not bricks. We don’t need all the institutions.
• Work flexibility will be key.
• More and more employees are looking for flexibility. work-life issues and boredom go even further.
• There’s nothing more valuable than a good idea.
• More people want a job that first their lifestyle,  not just someplace to punch a time card.”
• “There will always be a place for corporate headquarters. They may change, get smaller and more casual, but they won’t go away entirely.”
• “There will always be a place for the cubicle jungle,” Geddes, the Temple professor, said. “But we won’t go as much and might not have to travel as far.”

Web designer Alex Hillman, co-founder of Independents Hall

• “What happens when a company is based outside the city, and the employee lives outside the city, but they come to the city to work in a physical space, like a coffee shop or sitting in a park using Wi Fi?” Place starts to breakdown.
• “The risk is low, as it’s a fairly cheap big city. There are a lot of industries and for so long Philly has just been a good place to try new things. It’s in our city’s history.”
• “With some trust for telecommuting or greater freedom and be valuable to the long-term relationship.
• “People react to distractions differently, but ultimately being completely isolated can’t be healthy,” said Hillman. “A combination of factors affect the distribution of the workplace.”
• In 2006, Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who caught cabin fever from too many lonely work sessions at home, and Geoff DiMassi, a University of the Arts professor, opened Indy Hall.
• See Technically Philly coverage of Alex Hillman.

Software engineer Lori Hylan-Cho, telecommuter and Indy Hall member

• 
• “Ditching the commute is a big thing. It’s not just that you’re stuck in traffic or on a train, but you’re not with a family. could productive worrk time, but not family time.”
• It was awesome. But it puts a strain on communication. You have to be a very active communicator. You have to make sure you’re around.”
• “I’m used to working with a lot of men, certainly in technical positions,” she said.
• The worst recession in a generation or more has brought on a slew of attention to the future of business and our friendly workplace confines. In the view of some experts, the Web-literate telecommuter is a sign of things to come.
• It’s invaluable for life balance, as you have kids, your job can be more portable giving you a chance to be with your family.”
• “It was a great way to have a job that I love and live where I want to live,” Hylan-Cho, 40, said.
• So, if Hylan-Cho lands another gig that brings her to an office, she might meet with colleagues there for regular meetings, if not traditional full days. Still, she said it’ll be hard to give up the flexibility she’s had for the past few years.
• But, she now no longer telecommutes for that California company. In fact, she says she might look for another chance at the collaboration of a traditional office.
• “I don’t know if it’s the future,” Hylan-Cho said. “But it’s worked well for me.”

Helpful U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics information for Philadelphia employment:

• BLS Mid-Atlantic Information Office
• Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), 2008-09 Edition
• Employment Projections
• Regional Employment and Unemployment News
• Regional Employment Statistical Data
• Pennsylvania County Employment and Wages presser

Photo: NICOLAUS CZARNECKI/METRO

I contributed to one and grabbed a byline on another in a small package for Metro on talk of closing Philadelphia post offices in response to lagging volume.

With mail volume down, jobs dwindling and the highest deficit in agency history, technology has brought the United States Postal Service into its darkest days.

Read the rest here.

Below some quotations that didn’t make it into the piece.

Gwen Ivey, the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Pa. Area Local American Postal Workers Union.

• “The postal office is really short employees,” Ivey said. “Go into the average neighborhood postal office and you’ll see a single clerk and a line out the door.”
• “Management is riding the wave of a sour economy to get support behind making cuts that don’t need to be made,” she said. “There is far greater waste on the administrative level than in most offices.”
• “You have to think of the community that uses the post office, and that’s not necessarily someone who uses a computer.”
• Ivey also made mention of the lost revenue from P.O. boxes that will lost when offices are shuttered.
• The APWU promises to be in force at the Labor Day parade on Delaware Avenue on Monday.

Dane Dave of West Oak Lane

• “There is absolutely waste with this government spending. A lot of what we do get in the mail — magazines, bills and junk mail — can be replaced online or we really don’t need at all.”

Theresa Nieto, of New Jersey

• “I think about old people and low income people who might not have a computer or be able to afford one or Internet access. We still depend on post offices.”

Dean Ruble of New Jersey

• “There are two post offices within a mile of each other, and I’ve always wondered why. Post offices are still needed for someone like an elderly person who isn’t going to go online, but [with decreased volume] there probably needs to be [fewer offices] out there.”

At Orianna Hill Park in Northern Liberties, Basil is petted by owners Lisa Lee, center, and Scott Nealy as Marie Barnes watches. As the neighborhood has become trendier, the pets have proliferated. (RON TARVER / Inquirer Photographer)

Why an influx of dogs are often a sign of a neighborhood in change is the focus of my story for the Style & Soul section of today’s Inquirer.

Dogs may not have caused Northern Liberties to change from blighted to trendy, but they sure were a sign that change was coming.

Twenty years ago, when Frances Robb first moved to the neighborhood north of Old City, dogs were about as rare as a parked BMW. But as Northern Liberties went from edgy to trendy, the canine pack grew. Read the rest here.

Read the full story, comment and then come back for what didn’t make it in.

Robin Broughton-Smith, owner Wag N Style in East Falls

• Broughton-Smith moved from Old City with her husband and bought their house in East Falls at the end of last April. They are still learning the feel of the house and neighborhood.
• There are people here who follow trend and who love their dogs.
• There are young couples with small children and dogs who want things for their dogs and their children, at the same level.
• Broughton-Smith’s dog is a Habanese named Roxy. She got her for Christmas five years ago in December 2003.
• Robin Broughton-Smith is one of those people who take her dog-care very seriously.
• “To get my dog groomed, I literally would drive miles, hours to get her groomed, like she is a child going to see a specialist. I have babysitters for my dog. I definitely treat my dog like a person.”
• She is opening an eco-friendly, pet boutique with lots of healthy foods and treats.
• Wag N Style is on Midvale Street, just off Ridge Avenue and across from Johnny Manana’s, part of an East Falls restaurant scene that might likely use a shopping district.
• “The pet industry has changed and broadened so much. People are seeing these things are offered, especially for the dogs, and they want to join in.”
• She is an accountant and her husband works for the state department.
• They will use family members to help run the story, which they hope to open May 16.
• “There’s so much offered for pets now, especially dogs. There are people who go to PetSmart and think that’s all that’s there, but we can broaden those horizons,” Broughton-Smith said.

Frances Robb, co-owner of Canine Couture in Northern Liberties

• “When I first got to Northern Liberties it was like ‘Good Morning Vietnam.’ It wasn’t exactly the most desirable place to be, but it had this fabulous old Ukrainian element still.”
• She and her friend launched Canine Couture in 1996.”There are two groups who always seem to be dog owners, younger people who might be newly married — they have the kid and the dog — and then the empty-nesters,” said Robb. “Those young people are also some of the first people to live in a changing neighborhood just because it’s affordable. They all seem to have dogs now… so shops follow them. The empty-nesters come later and bring stability.”
• It’s really nice in many ways that it has become gentrified, but on the other hand you kind of miss that other element. That whole more eclectic group. I came into one neighborhood 20 years ago and now I’ve ended up with BMWs parked on the street.”
• “There’s a certain loss, when it becomes yuppier.” There is a different feeling. Some of it is very positive, some of the dog population has been growing with it. A few years ago I was stunned to see five or six in a block, but in the last five years, fairly recently, it seems overnight there are a gazillion.”
• In December 2005, Doggie World Day Care at Third and Poplar streets had a pit bull  left outside its doors. Robb alerted the doggie daycare center and a new resident was happy to take the pup in — even after they found he was blind. The new owner named him Stevie Wonder, and now, Robb says, they are an inseparable part of a new Northern Liberties.
• “Years before that, if you think there was anyone living in Northern Liberties was willing to just take in a dog, particularly a pit bull, then you’re crazy. This is a dog neighborhood now.”
• I am astounded at the number of dogs walking in Oriena Park.
• “The empty-nesters who come in have more disposable income, and they’re replacing their children with dogs, so some of these people are way over the top. These people are moving back to the city in the neighborhoods that the young people have already made feel safe again. They want to be in a neighborhood again with restaurants and places to walk. Northern Liberties has those things now. And lots of dogs.”
• Robb says though she saw more and more dogs during the years, there has been a real explosion in the last five years. She pointed to another crush of new homeowners and the “bazillion apartments” that noted NoLibs developer Bart Blatstein has brought along the 2nd Street district. But Chic Petique was the first,the real anchor of Liberties Walk.”
• “Ten or twelve years ago, you could have bought a house for $50 or $60,000. That’s not so anymore.”
• “The faces get younger and they often have a leash with something attached to it.”
  “We see dogwalkers in Northern Liberties now.”
• “You get younger people who are first time home buyers who want to live in a certain type of neighborhood. That spot a few years ago was Old City after Society Hill got too expensive. Then, Old City was out of reach, so Northern Liberties became that place,” Frances Robb said. “A house was built across the street from me — it was for $800,000 — so it’s happening elsewhere now.”
• Robb said: “They all make it seem safer and then those empty-nesters can come in, with a dog who is replacing their kid.”

Kristoffer Reiter, District Manager of Doggie style

• “We are looking at a lot of upcoming areas.”
• “A Doggie Style store should be a neighborhood store, just like a grocery store. At a doggie boutique, you’re buying things like you would at a grocery story. Our customers come every week.
• When an area grows up and becomes stable, that’s where we want to be. People taking care of their houses, the streets are clean.
• “Our two landmark locations are largely used by tourists.”
• “We don’t believe in big box like Pet Co or PetSmart.”
• “We’re dealing with the problem of any young [franchise], wondering how close can you be without hurting the business of an existing store.”
• The people who come to a pet boutique come for their passion for their pets
• While Northern Liberties is too close to their Old City location, Fishtown might not be.
• “Right now Fishtown is still a high risk. When we have condo owners in their 20s and 30s with no kids — they have pets with double incomes — that’s interesting to us.”

David Elesh, Temple University sociology professor

• “Fewer people are marrying or are delaying marriage, when they do, they’re having fewer children, but people are still desirous of companionship,” said David Elesh, a Temple University sociology professor who studies urban neighborhood trends. “Pets offer the ability to have companionship but be less demanding than a children or even a spouse.”
• “Our society is have fewer and fewer children, the only population subgroup above net return rate is Hispanics. Seventy percent of women are now working, that’s less time to devote to families, so, yes, there are fewer and fewer traditional families in the United States, that’s particularly so in cities.”
• “Traditional methods of companionship through marriage and children is diminishing, and a dog or another pet is not unlike the commitment of a child.”
• “Higher end pet shops show people have a desire to endow those pets with a great deal of time and money for appearances.”
• “New breeds of dogs are being introduced that require less care, bred with poodles who won’t shed. “That’s tailoring the dogs to the lifestyle.
• “The interest in exotic pets show a conspicuous display, showing I can get and care for this exotic pet.”
• Young professionals and empty nesters – often early adopters to growing city communities – give their new homes a try with furry companions.

Cut text

• There are any number of indicators of a neighborhood in change, but none seem to define a success better than the first high-end boutique. In recent years, the United States has seen a pet craze. Now, often the first boutique that can survive in a changing neighborhood is a pet boutique, brought there by a crush of new residents, dogs in tow.
• The change is that the young people who are often the first new residents in a changing neighborhood are also delaying marriage, children and other serious relationships and getting a dog instead, Elesh said. You can spot the young people poised to flip a neighborhood by the leashes in their hands. Then, once the first retailer moves in to serve this most present and newest neighborhood demographic, the inevitable onrush of retail and nightlife seems almost destined.
• Northern Liberties flew from blight to working class to hipster heaven to full-blown, trendy nightlife destination.

I got a tweet from my buddy and Reading Eagle designer Chris Reber a few weeks ago.

is attribution dead?

That came not long after, Vince Fumo, the embattled Pennsylvania state senator and legendary South Philly politician, was convicted on all 137 counts in his federal corruption trial.

In what was another great stand for an old friend, the Inquirer was all over the Fumo case (not long after another evergreen package on the city’s Please Touch Museum, which won it a national headliner award.

Beyond collecting all the Fumo history and details and using social media, reporter Bob Moran live blogged the March 16 pronouncement of guilt. Fox29 hack Steve Keeley thought the Inqy was doing such a good job that Keeley began reading Moran’s reports live on air, without attributing him or the Inqy.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMJXSeaKKmU]

A minor outrage followed, not the least led by Inqy freelancer Amy Quinn, who tweeted again and again and again on the subject. But what else is there to learn, in an age where some say attribution is falling to the wayside?

With the speed information travels, it’s easy to swipe someone’s reporting, turn things around and call it your own.

In media, there is often two camps, those who don’t believe or don’t want to believe technology is swelling and growing and changing revenue and readership models and there are those so caught up in the changes that they don’t realize not everyone knows about RSS, cares about social media or even reads blogs.

The problems with the first group are often discussed but the second often benefit by ignoring how many readers don’t understand even the simple measures used by journalists. For many, if not most viewers, nothing seemed strange about Keeley’s in-court reporting despite being, um, well, out of the courtroom.

Moran and the Inqy got the bullrush.

But, christ, wasn’t Keeley just aggregating content?

Folks are realizing that the cost of content creation can’t compare with the cost-effective role of content aggregators, like Digg does for news, Academic Earth does for education and many others.

Of course, there is a difference that in my opinion can make aggregation – like I do on this site – OK. New media old heads like Jeff Jarvis talk about the link economy, something I buy into. That’s the concept that a link – and the requisite traffic – can pay for swiping a quote or a graf.

I think we’ll come to clearer rules about how much is too much, but my personal governance leaves me to try to always include the publication or source name, in addition to key words in the link, though I often also will use [Source] for a pull quote.

Let me give you an example from a recent post of mine.

As I wrote in an essay for the Columbia Journalism Review last month:

As long as the current generation is here to pass the search of justice onto its successor, the rest is just details we’ll sweat over for the next few years. [Source]

My initial link included the CJR name, though I also made it clear afterward. That’s a good link, though CJR doesn’t really need me for SEO. The ethical point is made, though. Blogs that just grab and don’t link or even the many whom I don’t think link adequately or swipe too much are unethical.

Keeley broke a ton of rules, though. He took way too much. He didn’t link out, or in old media, stand-up parlance, he didn’t attribute. I’m not even sure a casual reference to the Inqy would have been a good enough link for all that he took.

There are a host of sites collecting free content, repackaging it and making a profit without any monetary compensation for the content creators, like the Huffington Post and others.

All this doesn’t mean attribution is dead, though.

We’ll have to come to some more established rules in this game, but it’s about ruling with an understanding.

Over at TechnicallyPhilly.com – a blog covering the city’s tech scene that me and two colleagues launched in February – as we flesh out our own sources and schedules, we have occasionally leaned on the Inqy and the Philadelphia Business Journal. But, we make it a point to link out with key words. In the rare occasion that we haven’t added our own value or packaged a number of sources together but rather relied on a single publication, we are sure to be bold about giving its name in the link. See here and here.

So, if you think you’re a good guy, act like it.

In the link economy, you do what you do best and link out to the rest. That’s attribution, and it’s effective, so long as the link’s a good one and the attribution is fair.

I hope Steve Keeley can learn something.