Mobile workers and telecommuters around RVA are always asking me about the best ways to conduct business outside of the traditional cubicle or office environment.

Today there are options around every corner in Greater Richmond, and thanks to the Mariner’s Club there are even possibilities along the river for a floating office.

The Mariner’s Club, located at Rockett’s Landing, offers Richmonders a crack at boating without having to actually own a boat in River City. That’s right, the club removes the financial burden of buying a boat along with the stress and costly duties of maintaining it. Instead, you can simply join The Mariner’s Club for exclusive access to club-owned watercraft. However, if you’re wanting your own personal boat to turn into a personal floating office, you have the option to go searching for boats for sale locally, or looking at something such as GraysOnline Boats Sales for example!

While the club offers Richmonders the ability to play on a boat whenever they’d like, it also presents a unique opportunity for mobile workers looking for a change of scenery. That’s right, savvy telecommuters now have the ability to copy, print, and scan while working from a boat that floats in the James River within a stone’s throw of traditional office buildings towering above. Those working with the need for large format scanning of their documents may struggle to do this from a boat! Even in a regular office, there may not be the correct devices present to digitize larger documents between A3 and A0. Luckily there are scanning services available like ProScan that can help with this.

To make this happen, mobile workers simply need to set up a wireless local-area network (WLAN). Traditional offices use WS-C3560-8PC-S Cisco networking switches to set up their ethernet and LAN but a WLAN uses radio waves to connect devices such as laptops to the Internet, and to your business network and applications.

For those of you who are mobile workers, or are knowledgeable when it comes to technology, this may sound familiar to you. If you have ever been required to think about looking into sd wan implementation for your business, or remote-working needs, you will know how this, alongside a WLAN, can be so beneficial for the needs of your company when you are working away from the office. From there, a wireless router or access point’s signal can typically extend to approximately 300 feet. You can extend WLANs throughout an area by placing additional wireless access points in various locations. The access points extend the wireless signal’s strength and range. This is exactly how it can be done at The Mariner’s Club. Or, you can simply activate your Personal Hotspot feature on your mobile device to share its wireless data connection with other nearby devices.

So mobile workers, you can be on the river — and working in no time — just create a wireless access point (with proper security measures put into place) on your boat and begin working from the James as you float or motor along while colleagues hunker down in office spaces nearby.

No more hovering around the water cooler, you can access network resources from your boat, print that urgent proposal or report due in 15 minutes, and scan important paper documents in your briefcase through a scanner to your laptop and save it digitally. Best of all, you’re likely to become a more productive worker, all while enjoying the freedom of a floating office.

Article from Issue #16