Home offices find home in the West

In America today, more than 41 million people work at home sometime during the week. More than 12 million work at home full time; Some observers feel that the small office/home office (SOHO) movement is the most important social movement in America since the rise of the two-wage earner family in the 1970s.

Alex de Tocqueville, the prophetic 19th century observer of democracy in America, noted that Americans readily form voluntary associations to pursue almost any shared purpose. So we should not be surprised that America's most recent social movement has formed the Rocky Mountain Home-Based Business Association.

Formed late last year in Denver , the group has both capacity-building and public-policy purposes: to advance the knowledge and skills of home-based business operators through newsletters, business management seminars and networking opportunities; and to work in the public policy arena to shape a legislative and regulatory climate in which home businesses can prosper and grow in eight Western states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

On Aug. 19, the home-based business people will hold their first annual conference and trade show in the metro area's Arvada Center. Headliners include Paul and Sarah Edwards and Tom and Marilyn Ross. The Edwards, arguably the nation's leading authorities on the home office, wrote Working from Home, the latest in a string of best-selling books on home office management. The Rosses, authors of Country Bound! and Big Ideas for Small Service Businesses, are experts on making a living in small towns and rural settings.

Participants will be served a rich menu of "how to do it" workshops on marketing, financing, legal arrangements, choosing the right business equipment and other practical issues the home-based business operator has to face. In addition, the trade show will feature companies that sell equipment and services that cater to the needs of home-based businesses.

Working from home is growing rapidly for many reasons. Corporate downsizing is increasing the supply of highly trained professionals seeking new ways to make a living. "Outsourcing" practices by business and government -- where they turn to outside vendors for goods and services that used to be provided by employees -- are creating new markets for the services of knowledge workers.

New telecommunications technologies -- faxes, cheap and portable computers, easy-to-use software, information utilities (e.g., America On-Line, CompuServe, Prodigy), and the Internet -- make it easy to live and work anywhere and still keep in touch with markets and colleagues in far-flung locations.

The establishment of the Rocky Mountain Home-Based Business Association also reflects a social trend: More people seek to raise their families in small communities where they can escape the violence, pollution, gridlock, drugs and bad schools that characterize many of America's largest cities. Surveys by Rand McNally, Money magazine and others show that many of the most desirable of these smaller communities are located in the West. So it's not surprising that America's newest social movement should establish an organization in Denver and have a meeting for its members.

That's how things work.