For me, one of the dreams of the information age, when we were still working on all the pieces that make it possible, (Circa 1987) was the promise of working from anywhere, being as comfortable as in your living room, and being more productive than you could ever be in an office.

Over the next 35 years, the IT industry has made good on that promise with devices, protocols, software development languages and frameworks, and video calling that we didn’t even dare dream when I was coming up in this industry.

In the last 3 years, I have realized two important things.
1. We have arrived. We have collectively, through science, software, and the hard work of some very smart people, we have effectively fulfilled all the promises we were able to imagine when I was in school, learning about computers.
2. Bosses will never let us go. The need for control, and the repression of information workers can ONLY happen if they are overworked, micromanaged, and waste a couple of hours coming and going from home to the office for the privilege of being “monitored closely” by people whose ONLY job is to make sure employees have no time to think, imagine, or find a job with better conditions.

I believe it is time to reject the calls to return to that, and those of us who have the skills and indispensable abilities, should absolutely do so.

Not only will workers be more productive, when measured by their delivered results rather than hours in the seats, more relaxed, by working in the environments they themselves shaped for comfort, and more effective, by working on flexible schedules. They will also be happier to be working for the companies that truly recognize their efforts, treat them as if their lives are also important, and reward them appropriately for a job well done.

Now that I’ve decided to take this streaming thing a bit more seriously, I’ve finished setting up Streamlabs OBS. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and it took a while to get it the way I want it.

I set it up initially months ago, but I just couldn’t get it to do what I had in mind. I tried another program “Action!” which is great for local disk recording but the streaming function was simple at best.

So heading back to Streamlabs OBS was the way to go. I have the interface the way I want it, and now I just need the practice to get it to do what I need it to do. Should be pretty much OK after that.

Check out my stream at http://twitch.tv/dracosalpha and if you can think of a way I can do something better please let me know in the comments here, or on any of my social media accounts.

Before you ask, yes, of course comments will be moderated. I’m not a complete moron.