|
|
| LYNN BALL, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN |
| Eric Rosenquist has turned down job offers because they involved going to an office. |
Eric Rosenquist admits he sometimes misses coworkers, but the feeling quickly abates after watching the fish swimming in the pond outside his office window or sitting at his grand piano and belting out an Eagles hit. An acute lack of office space six years ago at Entrust Technologies Inc. was the driving force behind the original move to a home office. Mr. Rosenquist now contends it would take an earth-shattering offer to take him from his current arrangement. "I've turned down job offers because they involved going in to an office," says the software programmer. "It's nice to go feed the fish at lunchtime or, if I'm in a bad mood, I'll sit and play some (Russian composer Sergei) Rachmaninoff. It's a good way to clear your mind." Other fringe benefits include zero commuting time, a fully stocked fridge and cooking facilities in a comfortable eating area. Apart from the occasional deer and other wildlife outside his Kanata home; there are few outside disturbances to impede his productivity. And even though office space continues to be in hot demand, Mr. Rosenquist never worries about co-workers encroaching into his ample space: "You wouldn't get an office as big as mine in a work place unless you were an executive, especially with nice big windows and a fish pond outside my window," he insists. "A lot of people in normal offices are doubling up and tripling up." So when Mr. Rosenquist and his wife Leisa decided about two years ago that the best way to incorporate all their desires into a new home would be to design and build one from scratch, a large comfortable home office was high on their priority list. The ground-floor space juts out on one side of the house, overlooking the stone-rimmed fishpond that laps up to the office window. Inside, a desk covered by printer, fax machine and a battery of computers runs along one wall of his office. Opposite from the desk is a small area to meet visitors. "The house we were in before had a decent office in the basement, so I knew what I wanted and it was just a matter of allocating the space," he says. "The big change was that the office was going to be on the main floor in this house."
 |
| LYNN BALL, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN |
| Eric Rosenquist sometimes misses co-workers, but the feeling quickly abates when he looks at the fish swimming in the pond outside the window of his home office. |
Some friends, who recently completed a custom-designed home, suggested the couple contact their builder, Maple Mountain, and look into the concept. After a deciding on a custom home, the software designer and his wife, Leisa Rosenquist, who works for Price Waterhouse, started to do their homework, studying plans for other homes and flipping through design books. "We had already bought the two-acre property and we were looking for someone to come in and do the house - we started planning the house before we started shopping for a builder," he says. "We heard about (Maple Mountain) through word of mouth and once we met them and got to know them a little bit, we had a good feeling." Following months of making lists and eliminating possibilities, they took their final idea to Maple Mountain owner Joe Milroy, who incorporated their preferred elements into a 4,000-square-foot design. A finished basement brings the living space close to 6,000 square feet. Mr. Rosenquist moved into his home office in late July, after the couple took possession of the family home which lies off March Road, about six kilometres northwest of the main high-tech strip in Kanata. The move ended more than two years of planning, designing and refining. While the office is somewhat isolated from the rest of the home, the wall next to the piano room required double insulation to limit the amount of sound that penetrated the work space. Mr. Rosenquist was concerned that the location of his work area might deter his children from their piano practising. The least sound proof part of the office is the double french door entry, but the amount of disturbance is negligible, he says. While the house is wired for high-speed Internet access, there are no service providers offering a fast link to the Web "out in the boonies," he explains. But, once the service is available, the Rosenquist home is ready for action. Each room in the house is wired for an Ethernet connection and fibre-optic cabling was installed in the all the walls for use once high-speed service reaches individual homes. "The room that was set aside as the office has a little more wiring and every room has a networking jack so you can plug in a computer anywhere in the home," he says. "We've also got a nice little PBX-style phone system for intercoms. We can page each other - you don't want to be yelling in a big house. You can try it, but people don't necessarily hear you." The high-tech wiring helps keep him in touch with coworkers and comes in handy when Leisa brings work home from the office, he says. But he often used a more low-tech approach at Entrust to meet the new workers who were constantly appearing at the office. I was usually doing independent projects so I had no idea who 80 per cent of the people were there, so I played on the softball team for a couple of seasons," he says. "People working at the building had no idea who everyone was and softball helped put faces to the names." A few weeks ago, Mr. Rosenquist left Entrust for a similar position with fledgling Mountain View, California network management software company Ponte Communications Ltd. When he accepted the new post, Mr. Rosenquist ensured his employer would allow the previous home office arrangement to continue. As mid-November approaches and his co-workers prepare to cope with a winter commute punctuated by freezing rain, blowing snow, and bone-chilling cold, Mr. Rosenquist has turned his thoughts to readying his favourite diversion for the long, cold months ahead. I've bought this little floating agricultural heater that is used for horse water troughs to stop them from freezing - the fish are hearty and should survive as long as the water doesn't freeze over", he says. "But I'm sure that when it's -20°C in February, just having the water flowing won't be good enough."