My name is Andrea K. Allen-Cerioli, I was born in the United Kingdom (UK) and grew up there in a very traditional English family. When I was 14 years old, on holiday with my parents in Botswana, an African tribesman read my future from a pile of bones and stones on the floor of his hut. He said that I would marry a foreigner and live abroad, perhaps an easy guess as I was already far from home. Well, maybe it was fluke or maybe he really did see something, the truth is, he was right.

After 15 years of living in various parts of Europe, I would nowadays consider myself a true "European." What does that mean exactly? It’s true that once a Brit., always a Brit., but nowadays I’m a Brit. who has picked up a few quirks here and there, who now speaks a hotchpotch of several European languages, who really appreciates good Mediterranean food (but still dreams of fish and chips), who appreciates the fun-loving warmth of Latin temperaments (and who consequently wonders what’s wrong when back in the UK not one single stranger ever says "hello"), and who appreciates that not everything can always be settled over a glass of good wine; sometimes a more practical approach is necessary.

A great deal of my work experience as a technical translator and a technical communicator I have gained in two very different European countries: Italy and France. I have come to realise and appreciate that part of the charm of Europe is having so many different countries so close together, all adamantly defending and preserving their own languages, traditions and ways of life.

The ‘Cerioli’ part of my name comes from Piemonte, Northern Italy, where I arrived to work for Olivetti in 1987, met and married my husband, and which has been my home for the past 11 years.

In 1993, I was looking for a change, I still loved living in Italy, but needed a bit more of a challenge professionally. I joined Andersen Consulting based in the South of France as a Senior Technical Writer. This meant travelling three and a half hours each way, which wasn’t possible to do each day, so it also meant taking lodgings and staying over. For the last six and a half years, I have been working part-time in the South of France at the Andersen Consulting Technology Park and part-time telecommuting from my home in the North of Italy.

The Andersen Consulting Technology Park is situated within the Sophia Antipolis Science Park, the premier research and development hi-tech science park in Europe. Today, the Park covers over 3000 hectares with over 1000 companies of which over 50% are active in the IT sector. It might almost be considered a miniature Silicon Valley. Many international companies choose Sophia Antipolis for their European location because it is only 15 km away from the Nice Côte d’Azur international airport, it is linked to a motorway network connecting the main cities of Southern and Northern Europe including Marseilles, Lyon, Geneva, Turin, Milan, and Barcelona, and it is just 15 minutes by car from the nearest train stations. There are also ample hotels and restaurants to house visitors to the area.

The fact that over 50% of the companies based in Sophia Antipolis are active in the IT sector means that there are many of the big names such as IBM, Compaq, Lucent Technologies, Armadeus and many more, which also means a very big technical writing community. Of course, there is no need to worry about infrastructure and technicalities in a place like this. The latest in technological developments are up and running, smooth transitions from upgrade to upgrade are the norm, and the pace is fast.

 
Two views of Andersen Consulting Technology Park in the South of France

 
Three views of Sophia Antipolis, France

As a Technical Communicator or Knowledge Capital Developer as I am now called, I work for a Global Technology Integration Services group on research projects. My internal clients are consultants, who spend a great deal of time out at client sites. They use laptops all the time, which limits me to a PC-based working environment in order to be able to communicate non-stop with them wherever they may be. My working environment is generally Windows 95, using Microsoft products such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel for basic office communications, Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Flash for web development, and various different packages for graphics work, such as CorelDRAW, Quark Xpress, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Being PC-based used to be a problem especially for graphics packages, but thankfully, today, products are no longer restricted to Macintoshes.

Andersen Consulting lays a great deal of importance on researching and envisioning the business impact of up-and-coming technologies. It is critical for Andersen Consulting to always be in a position to deliver innovative business solutions to clients. Working on such projects means I get a bird’s-eye view of many new technologies in action and am able to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the technology world at any given time.

When the pace in the South of France gets too much for me, or rather, when I reach a point in a project where no more meetings are necessary for a while, where I need to think and be creative, I take my laptop and return home to Albiano d’Ivrea, a small village in Northern Italy, just a few kilometres from Ivrea and about half an hour from Turin.

Telecommuting from the North of Italy

I came to Ivrea, Northern Italy in 1987 to work for Olivetti. Originally famous for its production of type writers from the 1940s onwards, Olivetti went on to enjoy great success in the 1980s with the development of its first PC, the M24 and subsequent desktops. It was the economic mainstay of the area employing around 27,000 people. The telecommunications infrastructure in and around Ivrea was generally good, and work was abundant. At this time, there was a very large technical writing community in Ivrea.

In the 1990s, Olivetti hit crisis after crisis and work dwindled. The few remaining technical communicators were all telecommuting from their homes for larger companies further away. I too, took to telecommuting, which because of my location proved to be quite a challenge initially.

I thrive on the peace and tranquillity of my little haven, and enjoy the total contrast from the hustle and bustle of the South of France. I have long since come to terms with the technological shortcomings of living in the country and am able to telecommute quite happily and, more importantly, quite transparently (most of the time) to my internal clients at Andersen Consulting.

Even though the infrastructure in and around Ivrea is generally good, living 10 km further away, in the country, makes all the difference. Albiano is only a few kilometres from other small towns and villages, but remains isolated and primitive in its infrastructures and services. This was something that I did not consider when struck by the beauty of the place. Our water supply comes from a well, with a filter system attached to the sink, our heating and hot water system is gas in a tank in the garden, which is filled at regular intervals by lorry from a nearby plant, and the local phone system is analogue, which makes it impossible to get printouts of calls, or to easily send data. I had to get a numeric line brought the 10 km from Ivrea to my home, which was expensive. Telecom Italia offered me the possibility of an ISDN line for the first time in 1998. Even today, sending data is somewhat erratic and lines go down easily.

Over the last few years, a variety of Internet service providers have sprung up locally. The fact that Internet connections are still fairly new and little competition exists between those service providers currently offering connections means that value for money could still be improved somewhat, but at least it’s a start!

Telecommuting in Winter

My work tools remain the same, I use a laptop for travelling and have a desktop at home with a printer. I have identical configurations on all machines, my laptop, my desktop at Andersen Consulting, and my desktop at home. I use an IOMega zip drive, or Jazz drive to help reduce space problems. Powerful software packages and numerous large files soon clog up even the fastest of machines.

For the people in my village, which is very rural, computers are a rare commodity. Telecommuting is something very new and difficult to grasp. You are automatically considered a technological genius if you know how to switch a computer on, let alone do things with it. This is great for impressing the locals but also means that there is no technical support available locally when something goes wrong. As my agreement with Andersen Consulting regarding telecommuting is based solely on a satisfied client base, I have simply had to read up on things and try and be as prepared as possible in order to avoid not being able to deliver for technical reasons. It is somewhat of a comfort to know that if the worst comes to the worst and I have to return to France, it is after all only a few hours away.

I appreciate that my situation is ideal in many ways. Earning a French salary is certainly preferable to an Italian one at the moment, as the economic situation in Piemonte (and perhaps in other areas of Northern Italy) is not at its best. Salary rates are generally very low and down to at least half as much for full-time employee positions in technical communication. Despite this fact, in larger towns and the city of Milan, there is very little difference between the cost of living there and in the South of France. Certain things cost more and others less.

What I probably appreciate most is living in two totally different worlds just 3 ½ hours away from each other, both with exceptionally scenic views, in France of the coast and the mountains, in Italy of the mountains and the lakes. In France there is plenty to do socially and culturally, at home in Italy things are much quieter and I enjoy the orchard and my vegetable garden. I appreciate every little thing that each place has to offer and certainly would have a hard time choosing definitively between the two, something which sooner or later I will have to do!