hemispherical magic: September 2012

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Romney campaigns in Pennsylvania despite state slipping away (reuters)

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Remarks of Assistant Secretary Strickling at Columbia Institute for ...

Address by Lawrence E. Strickling,
Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information
The State of Telecom ? 2012

Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) and IDATE

New York, New York
September 24, 2012

-As prepared for delivery-

I would like to thank my close friends, Eli Noam and Bob Atkinson, from the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) and Yves Gassot from IDATE for organizing today?s event and inviting me to participate.? Today?s discussion is indeed timely as the international community weighs whether to impose 20^th Century regulations on the 21^st Century Internet. The Obama Administration is committed to fighting back proposals to hobble the Internet with telephone-era regulations and will work to preserve the Internet as a vibrant and growing tool for economic development and social expression.

Over the next few months, countries around the world, including the United States, will be considering their positions on these important issues as they prepare for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), to be held under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Dubai in December. There, member countries will consider updates to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), a multilateral treaty that governs international telephone traffic.? Much is at stake.

Today I will share why the Obama Administration strongly believes that the best way to resolve Internet policy issues, including those associated with investment in broadband networks, is through multistakeholder processes ? not intergovernmental treaties like the ITRs.

Our position is non-partisan. While there?s not much Republicans and Democrats can agree on in Washington, we are united in our embrace of the multistakeholder approach for Internet policymaking. Both party platforms include support for the multistakeholder model and concurrent resolutions approved by both the House and Senate support the approach.

And our support for the multistakeholder model of Internet policymaking is also shared by many countries.? Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) adopted a set of principles for Internet policymaking that strongly endorse multistakeholder cooperation.? The OECD principles state that ?multistakeholder processes have been shown to provide the flexibility and global scalability required to address Internet policy challenges.?? Members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization endorsed these principles last month, broadening this consensus.

The case for preserving and enhancing the multistakeholder model as the preferred tool for dealing with Internet policy issues is a strong one.? Multistakeholder organizations are directly responsible for the Internet?s success.? They have played, and continue to play, a major role in its design and operation.? These multistakeholder processes have succeeded by their very nature of openness and inclusiveness.? They are most capable of attacking issues because they can bring the speed and flexibility required in this rapidly changing Internet environment. ?Maintaining and extending this model is important for ensuring the continued growth and innovation of the Internet.???

A key factor in the success of multistakeholder processes is participation ? the fact that policy development is open to all interested parties.? Such parties can include industry, civil society, government, technical and academic experts and even the general public. Contrast this approach with more traditional telecommunications regulatory processes which, by their very construct, have a more limited set of stakeholders and are often designed to limit direct participation, or at least make it difficult for others to participate.? Top-down regulatory models too often can fall prey to rigid procedures, bureaucracy, capture by incumbents and stalemate.

Internet policy issues, on the other hand, draw a much larger range of stakeholders given that the Internet is a diverse, multi-layered system that thrives only through the cooperation of many different parties.? Solving policy issues in this space requires engaging these different parties. Indeed, by encouraging the participation of all interested parties, multistakeholder processes encourage broader and more creative problem solving. This is essential when markets and technology are changing as rapidly as they are.

Widespread participation by all flavors of stakeholders will be important to the ultimate success of any Internet policy initiative. Our role needs to be one of supporting more inclusion.? We must stand firm against the efforts of one faction or another to allow decisions to be made or unreasonably influenced by only certain stakeholders to tip the outcomes in their favor.

As we turn our attention to Dubai and the upcoming WCIT conference, the world should weigh proposals to add new international regulations against the spectacular progress that the Internet has experienced free of such treaty controls. ?To his credit, Secretary General Hamadoun Toure has promised to run the WCIT on the basis of consensus, and that is as it should be.? Given how well the Internet has grown and flourished over the years, any nation seeking to impose new restrictions on the Internet, no matter how ?light? the regulatory touch, should bear the burden of developing consensus support for such proposals.

One suggestion raising a lot of discussion is a proposal from the European Telecom Network Operators (ETNO) to assign governments the role of ensuring that service providers provide satisfactory quality of service commitments to each other and require providers to negotiate a sustainable system of compensation between providers applying the principle of ?sending network pays.?

Let me be clear:? the United States government is unequivocally opposed to this proposal for two reasons.? First, a treaty conference where only member states have a vote is the wrong place to debate a change of this magnitude.? Second, the proposal is a bad idea.? It is a solution in search of a problem and it most likely would disadvantage the developing world which has the most to gain from continued growth and expansion of the Internet.

On the first point, I have already described the benefits of the multistakeholder approach to dealing with Internet issues.? Contrast that open, inclusive approach with what will happen at the WCIT.? Only the member states will have a vote.? Industry, civil society and other organizations may observe and may have a chance to speak, but at the end of the day, this is no multistakeholder process where our interests are fairly represented.

Moreover, a treaty conference based on regulations written in another era is hardly an appropriate forum in which to discuss issues that are fundamentally different from the circuit-switched voice telecommunications that were the basis of the 1988 ITRs.

The ITU was established as the International Telegraph Union in 1865 to facilitate the interconnection of nationally administered telegraph networks.? As communications evolved, the ITU changed its names in 1932 to once again facilitate interconnection of national networks, this time the circuit-switched telephone networks based on national borders.? The definition of telecommunications used by the ITU today was adopted in Geneva in 1959, more than 50 years ago.? Throughout this history leading up to and including the 1988 conference, the focus was on the country-to-country exchange of traffic between government-owned or monopoly networks.

Over time, the relevance of the ITRs negotiated in 1988 has steadily dwindled.? A recent study reported that less than two percent of the international voice traffic of US operators is terminated under the traditional settlements arrangements of the 1988 ITRs.? So we have a situation where 98% of this traffic is exchanged without reference to the ITRs, yet a group of incumbent carriers now wants to extend this regime to Internet traffic?

The Internet does not operate under the anachronistic model of monopoly telephone providers that control all aspects of their networks within their countries.? Rather, it is a diverse, multi-layered system that thrives only through the cooperation of many different parties.? All of these parties together from the ?network of networks? that we call the Internet.? But the magic is that the system works without requiring all of these parties to have a commercial relationship with each other or even to know everyone else involved in a given communications.

Just as important is the fact that international treaty organizations, indeed most government bureaucracies, are not engineered to move with much speed and flexibility.? In January and February of this year, ITU held the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva where one of the most hotly debated issues was what should be on the agenda of the next conference in 2015.? Do we really want to subject the Internet to the glacial pace of decision-making that takes place in international treaty organizations?

Turning to the substance of the proposal, it simply is not a good idea.? First, what is the problem the proposal purports to solve?? Private negotiations between providers of peering and transit agreements have worked well on the whole in the absence of international treaty requirements.? There should be a compelling showing of how the current system is not working before this matter is taken up in treaty negotiations, and that case simply has not been made.? It may be the case that the regulatory framework the European incumbent carriers live under constrains their returns in a manner that reduces their incentive to invest ? I have not studied the matter and have no opinion on that.? But even if that is the case, that is no justification for upsetting the well-settled Internet interconnection regime with a proposal to raise revenues from other providers in the communications pathways as opposed to addressing the problem at its source.

Second, the proposal is a relic of an industry and network structure that no longer exists.? I understand ETNO takes issue with the fact that critics of its proposal have raised the concern that the proposal will impose new burdens throughout the chain of Internet connections, reaching both content providers and end users.? But that almost certainly will be the case since any company facing increased costs in the form of an access charge will seek to recover that cost from its customers, including other providers, content creators and end users.? To think otherwise is to ignore the massive transformation that has occurred in the industry since 1988.

Implementing a sending-party-pays regime would require a cascading series of payments across all involved networks.? A new study by Michael Kende at Analysis Mason demonstrates what will happen next and the news is not good for developing countries.? Foreign operators ?would likely raise the price of hosting websites serving countries with high settlement rates, which might lead websites to develop less content targeted at a particular country in order to limit their costs.?[1]? The report goes on to conclude that ?providers would be reluctant to invest in providing infrastructure to a particular country to which it is expensive to deliver traffic.?[2]

And we have not even talked about the issues of attempting to meter and bill for Internet traffic, what happens to network performance if such a system is grated onto the Internet, and the likely reduction of overall Internet usage that might result.? The potential harm this proposal could cause, particularly when balanced against the absolute failure of the proponents to make a case for why change is needed, demonstrates how foolhardy it would be for nations to take this proposal seriously at the WCIT.

Apart from the ETNO proposal, Secretary General Toure has raised the question of the sustainability of the Internet and the need for more investment, particularly in developing countries.? That is an important debate we should have, but it should be held in a venue where all stakeholders can participate and where all issues can be discussed.

For example, several months ago, UNESCO, OECD and the Internet Society released an important study on the relationship between local content, Internet development and access prices.[3] ?The report found a strong correlation between the growth of local content and the development of network infrastructure.? While the study reaches no conclusion as to causality, if the development of local content is a key factor in growing the Internet in developing nations, perhaps the global Internet community should be focusing on how to encourage content development in such countries, and not how to gum up the plumbing of the Internet.? That?s not a matter for discussion at WCIT and it?s not a discussion that only governments should have among themselves.? But it is an appropriate discussion for the global Internet community and we should work to determine where and how this important issue can be developed.

Stepping back from the specifics of the ETNO proposal, what the WCIT brings into stark relief is the fact that our international institutions originally designed for a world of monopoly providers operating within national borders do not work well in the borderless, global, multi-layered world of the Internet.? And governments quite naturally are struggling with how to define their roles in this new reality.? It is critical to the future of Internet freedom and openness that multistakeholder institutions demonstrate to governments that they can be heard and their issues dealt with in the multistakeholder process.? I believe increasing the meaningful engagement of governments in multistakeholder organizations is one of the strongest arguments we have, and indeed is a necessary precondition, to opposing the views of some nations to have international intergovernmental bodies replace multistakeholder organizations in important areas of Internet governance.

Although, as Secretary General Toure will tell you in his remarks this afternoon, the issues of ICANN and the governance of the domain name system are not today on the WCIT agenda, we in the Obama Administration have been thinking about the idea of ?enhanced cooperation? and the need to find ways for the global Internet community to have a more direct say in matters of Internet governance where historically he United States has a played a more central role.? In fact, we have made great strides in the last three years to ?internationalize? ICANN.? In 2009, the United States executed the Affirmation of Commitments with ICANN.? This agreement provides a model of enhanced cooperation by establishing mechanisms and timelines for the multistakeholder review of ICANN?s performance of its core tasks.? We expanded what had once been a unique role for the U.S. government to include the participation of the international community through review teams.

In 2010, I served on the first of these review teams which focused on evaluating ICANN?s accountability and transparency. Our team, which included representatives from the governments of China and Egypt as well as representatives from South America, Europe and Australia, made a series of recommendations to the board, all of which the Board adopted last year in Singapore.? The new CEO of ICANN, Fadi Chehade, has committed to complete the implementation of all but one of the recommendations by next month?s meeting in Toronto, which will provide a good start for the next review team, which will begin its work in January.

More recently, we made a concerted effort to employ the principle of enhanced cooperation and expanding international participation in Internet governance with respect to the IANA functions contract.? Last year, in anticipation of the expiration of the IANA functions contract, NTIA undertook two consultations of stakeholders, both domestic and international, on how to best enhance the performance of the functions. Based on input received from stakeholders around the world, we added new requirements, such as the need for a robust conflict of interest policy, to exercise heightened respect for local country laws and to increase transparency and accountability.

This spring, we took the unprecedented action of cancelling the initial request for proposals (RFP) because we received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community.? We then reissued the RFP and at the end of June. ?We awarded the contract to ICANN, whose submission in response to the reissued RFP did adequately meet the new requirements.? This contract is consistent with the global community?s input and will provide all stakeholders greater visibility into the performance of the IANA functions.? One priority task for ICANN, Verisign and NTIA will be to automate the root zone management system over the next several months, which will be important as we face the prospect of a large influx of new global top level domain names.

This brief summary demonstrates that multistakeholder organizations have the ability to move quickly to respond and evolve to better meeting the needs of governments without abandoning the model and should serve as guidance to all of us as we continue to face calls to ?regulate? the Internet through international treaty language.

Finally, I would like to close on a note of caution as the world prepares for Dubai.? Earlier this year in July, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a landmark resolution on the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.? The Council affirmed that the same rights people have offline must also be protected online, in particular, freedom of expression.[4]? Moreover, the Council recognized that the ?global and open nature of the Internet? is a ?driving force towards development.?? We all need to remember that the issues some countries wish to present at WCIT may be styled as matters of economics. But given how the Internet affects so much of our lives, they are just as much matters of human rights and freedom.

Last Thursday, I had the privilege to hear the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, speak at the annual Freedom House awards dinner.? His topic was the ?universals of democracy and despotism? yet he reserved his closing remarks for a discussion of WCIT.? Here is a little of what he said:

The enemies of open society prefer the imposition of a regulatory system [on the Internet]. . . . The authoritarians will present proposals that would undermine the current multistakeholder model of the Internet, replacing it with a scheme that would allow them to expand control of their own populations and economies, extending their control to undermine the freedom and openness we value today.[5]

He closed with the words: ?Let?s not let them do it.?? It?s a call to action that the United States and all freedom-loving nations should follow.? Thank you.

[3] See Internet Society, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, The relationship between local content, internet development and access prices, 2012.? Available at http://www.internetsociety.org/localcontent (last accessed 20 September 2012)

[5] President of the Republic of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves, ?The universals of democracy and despotism? (Speech delivered at the Freedom House Annual Awards Dinner, Washington DC, 20 September, 2012).

Source: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/speechtestimony/2012/remarks-assistant-secretary-strickling-columbia-institute-tele-information

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Enjoying our last few days as a family of three! - Surviving Motherhood

by Kimberly on September 26, 2012

We have SO been looking forward to the cooler weather this Fall and with the change of Seasons comes lots of fun Fall family activities! Lindsay has been talking about how much fun her kiddos had recently apple picking and sharing delicious recipes for all things Autumn has to offer!

We had a fun weekend recently and decided to head over to Irons Fruit Farm and enjoy our last few days of being a ?family of three?! This year, because of the frost, they aren?t offering u-pick apples but what I do love about Iron?s is the fact that they don?t nickel and dime you during your visit. The hay ride to pick your own pumpkin out from the field is free, you just pay by the pound for whatever pumpkin you choose. I also love all the yummy treats they have on offer, no one beats their home made apple spice donuts! YUM! The cider is also great and so is their offering of a ?whacked apple? which includes a fresh apple, warm caramel, whipped cream and topped with nuts!

The boys loved it!

I was planning to get a bag of apples but decided to wait for now, I have a hankering (errr?the last of my pregnancy cravings?) for apple pie and vanilla ice cream. This might be on my ?list? of food to ask my mom to bring over once the baby arrives!

Check out that baby BUMP! We are 40 weeks officially when we took this pic and now a couple days overdue so she will be getting an eviction notice soon! We?re in no rush for her arrival, just thrilled and excited to meet her! We will have an ultrasound next week and if all continues to look well we?ll wait two weeks before talking about possible induction. I think she will be like her big bro and be a few days late so we will see!
What are your favorite Fall activities to do with the Family?! Any fun Autumn traditions??

AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen

A Syrian child stands next to rebel fighters checking a house that was damaged in bombing by government forces in Marea, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012.

By Ian Johnston, NBC News

Syria?s children are regularly the victims or witnesses of ?senseless acts of torture and violence,? according to a report Tuesday by a leading charity.

Save the Children?s report called ?Untold Atrocities, The Stories of Syria?s Children? details horrific accounts from Syrian refugees such as 9-year-old Nur, who said, ?I used to like hiding. Hiding is better than dying,? and Munther, 10, who told charity workers how a boy standing next to him was shot dead outside a school and he was hit in the neck.

Thousands of children have died in the conflict and ?many more have been injured, traumatized or forced to flee their homes,? the report said. ?Boys and girls continue to be killed, maimed and tortured. These appalling violations against children must stop and those carrying them out held to account.?

It added that the testimonies ?corroborate violations documented by the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.?

?The acts described are consistent, recurring and appalling,? it said. The organization deals with children and families in both Lebanon and Jordan.

The charity is asking people to sign a petition, "Stop the Crimes Against Syria's Children" to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

?Horrific acts of violence are being committed against children in Syria,? Carolyn Miles, Save the Children?s president and CEO, said in a press release. ?These children need specialist care now to help them recover from their shocking experiences. Their testimonies should also be documented so that these violent acts against children are not committed with impunity.?

Muhammed Muheisen, AP

Syrian child, Taybah Al-Hajji, 1, whose family fled their home in Aleppo due to Syrian government shelling, sits next to her one-month-old brother Abdulghani, at the Bab Al-Salameh border crossing near Turkey.

Miles is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly hearings this week. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama condemned Syrian President Bashar Assad as ?a dictator who massacres his people? in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Kathryn Bolles, the charity's senior director of emergency health and nutrition, told NBC News by phone that atrocities against children were being carried out by all sides.

She said that the stories in the report, detailed below, were illustrative and that there were "hundreds of thousands of families that are going through this."?Bolles added that some of the names had been changed to protect the children and their families.

NYT:?In Arab Spring, Obama finds harsh lessons on diplomacy

Nur, who is now living with her family in the Za?atari refugee camp in Jordan, told the charity that she did not play. ?Why? Because I am not young anymore. I go to the bathroom, take a shower and then sleep. That is all,? she said.

Jonathan Hyams/Save the Children

Nur, nine, came to Jordan with her family to escape the violence in Syria. She now lives in a tent with her family in Za'atari refugee camp in the desert of northern Jordan where conditions are harsh and the camp authorities are underfunded and struggling to meet the basic needs of the overwhelming numbers of refugees arriving each day.

She said she had once been happy in Syria. ?Then the violence started and they started to make us suffer. There was nothing that they did not use to hurt us with,? she said.

The Arab Spring is dead -- and Syria is writing its obituary

Nur spoke of Syrian forces using airstrikes, bombings, missiles and ?every weapon you could think? against people in her home village.

?I was terrified. Us along with my cousins, neighbours, aunts and people we know used ?to go to the shelter to hide. I used to like hiding. Hiding is better than dying,? she said.

'I ran and I cried'
Ten-year-old Ala?a told how he ran ?so fast? when shells started to fall. ?I ran and I cried at the same time,? he said.

?When we were being bombed we had nothing. No food, no water, no toys ? nothing,? he said.

??One day men with guns broke into our house. They pulled out our food, threw it on the floor and stamped on it, so it would be too dirty to eat. Then we had nothing at all. Soon after that we came here.?

NBC's Richard Engel, who has just returned from his third trip inside Syria, since the uprising began, joins Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss the situation on the ground.

Syria activist: Hundreds feared dead as Assad escalates airstrikes

Ala?a's father, Nabil, said his son ?cries a lot without telling us why and he?s started sleepwalking. My other child has started to stutter.?

?The younger children still cry when a plane goes overhead or a pot falls to the ground,? he said. ?They?re traumatized. I?ve spoken to lots of parents and they say the same thing. No child has escaped this. Children aren?t children anymore. Watch any child. They play and look normal, but they can only keep this up for a while, and then they become sad again.?

He said he had seen children used as human shields in the village of Saydeh. ?When two tanks came into the village I saw children attached to them, tied up by their hands and feet, and by their torsos. The tanks came through the village and no one stood in their way or fought because we knew we would kill the children,? he said.

?After that happened I cried like a woman. I was close to losing my mind. I have never felt so helpless as the moment I saw those children strapped to those tanks,? he added. ?? Let everyone know this is where this terrible thing happened.?

'She died feeling sad'
Omar, 11, who also lives in the Za?atari refugee camp, told the charity workers that one day he was playing with his brother, and the two boys were teasing their cousin.

?She was upset. She left us and went to her house. That night, a shell destroyed my nine-year-old cousin?s house ? the one we?d upset during the day. I regret that she died feeling sad,? he said.

Mission 'nearly impossible': Syria envoy downbeat on new job

The report said 10-year-old Munther, who said he wanted to be a doctor, had two bullet-sized wounds on his neck.

?I was on the street when the bullets were first fired. We were standing outside a school ? we?d just posed for a photo. There were lots of children around,? he said.

?Then the shooting started. There was chaos. Everyone was screaming. There were bullets and blood everywhere. A boy called Amjad was standing next to me. He was shot in the head. I didn?t realize at first that he was dead. He fell forward on his knees, in a praying position. He was 15,? he added.

?Then I felt a terrible pain. I?d been shot too ? in my neck. Here, see my scars ? Luckily I was with my friend?s mother. She picked me up and took me straight to a clinic to get help. I recovered from the shooting. We held a funeral for Amjad. Lots of people came. ? I was so sad that day.?

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/25/14095895-senseless-acts-of-torture-and-violence-charity-appeals-for-help-for-syrias-children?lite

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Monday, September 24, 2012

5 Easy Tips In Finding Space For A Home Office In The Garage | PM ...

If you are thinking of or already have made the decision to work from home, you are joining a work population that seems to be exploding. I have worked from home for a couple years now and I?m seeing more and more people making that same decision. There are a few good reasons why it?s ?.

There are a few good reasons why it?s a great choice, from saving money to having more flexibility and balance in your life. The long and costly commutes will soon be nothing more than a bad memory, and your closet will be host to less business clothes that can raid your budget quickly. It also allows for more time to spend with family and friends, or doing whatever you choose to do, as you set your own hours.

It really doesn?t matter if you are a self-employed freelancer such as myself, or are working for a company that allows you the luxury of working from home. The one common denominator that we all have is the need for a home office.

However, finding the necessary space to create a functional, comfortable, and practical home office isn?t always easy. Sometimes it might take a little creativity, as well as elbow grease. So ?have you considered the garage?

1. Take a Look Around

There are a lot of variables on whether or not your garage would make a good space for a home office, such as size, entry points, and how much work will be required. If the structure is not secure, in both security and safety, you might want to look elsewhere for space rather than taking on a major home renovation project. However, if your structure is solid, with an entry other than the big roll-up door, you have an option here.

You will also have to decide if you want to park outside, or not. Of course, where you live might play a role in that decision. If you live in the northern regions, with months of snow-filled mornings, you might not want to deal with brushing your car off all the time. Then again, you?re working from home now and won?t have to worry about that as much. That, and an automatic car starter can be useful for the days you do have to get out.

2. Make Room

Now that you know you want to convert the garage, you have to clear it out. As daunting as it seems, it?s much easier to design and develop a blank slate than it is to work around clutter. And, garages are notorious for clutter.

If you don?t have any other area around the home to store everything, and a garage sale won?t get rid of it all, check into renting a storage facility. There are some reasonable rates, and will be worth every penny to have a functional and nice office.

3. Develop a Plan

Once you have an empty space, you will learn more about what will need to be done, and how extensive the work might be. If you don?t already have dry wall up, heating and cooling, and other various necessities, you have a bit of work ahead of you.

Consider the following before you even pound the first nail:

Permit ? Check with your local government to see if you need a permit to do the work you are about to do. It might be a hassle to wait and seek approval throughout the process, but not nearly as much of a hassle than if you don?t get a permit, but are required to have one.
Space ? Is your space large enough to make two rooms, such as a family room or bedroom, so you can make as big of an investment as possible? In other words, we have a 2.5 stall garage, and that would be massive for a single office. However, if we divided it up, it would be perfect for two decent sized rooms. And, you might as well do the basics while you are in the mess.
Layout ? Get online and find a website that you can draw up plans for renovations. I did this when designing our new master suite, which was very helpful. You can put up walls, move them, delete them, put in furniture, get measurements, and more.

After you have done tips 1-3, then the construction begins. You can either do it yourself and save money, or hire it out and save a headache?or, at least not as big of one.

4. Customizing Your Space

The fun part comes in when the room is ready for you to start filling up and put the finishing touches in. Items such as the desk, chair, and cabinets are the ?norm? and necessary for you to get your work done. However, you could also add some touches to the room that will make it an office to be envied.

Take a corner of it and turn it into a reading area. Imagine a wall hugger recliner that you could put your feet up in comfort to do some research, and a wall of books. It could make a great environment for some reading and research. Now, consider a coffee center right next to it; a little corner unit with a coffee maker and all the fixings would add a special touch.

5. Finishing Touches

Add some finishing touches that can help guide you to your goals. Motivational pieces that can help stimulate your creativity and provide inspiration are great additions to any office. Simply find what motivates you, such as travel, a new car, financial stability, or even early retirement and then find or create related photos to use as wall art.

In Closing

Converting a garage into an office can be a huge undertaking, especially if it is not already dry walled. However, the end result could give your career a boost, simply by having a room where you can concentrate and focus on your work. And, if done correctly, it could add value to your home.

Kathy Barber works out of her home office as a freelance writer. She knows the importance of having a functional and dedicated space as an office, and was inspired to write a series on designing a home office after looking for a space-saving wall hugger recliner. She is currently writing articles for www.reclinerchairreviews.com.?Other topics she frequently writes on are health, working from home, and entertaining. Married, with a young son, Kathy lives in Michigan where she was raised. When she is not working, she enjoys spending time with family, cooking, entertaining, and various activities with her son.