Dan Pink: The truth is that many free agents get the bulk of their work through word of mouth and referrals. That has rather little to do with the Internet except that the e-mail can be a communications mechanism for making the referral. But I think that most successful free agents rely on having a large and robust network of human contact. The Internet can be an enabler of that but people have done it for 15,000 years without the Internet.

So I think that what really allows free agency to flourish, or people to flourish as free agents is the capacity to develop those relationships. Develop, maintain, nurture, deepen, extend all those relationships. The Internet can be useful in doing that but as I said before, you can do that without the Internet, people have been doing that for 15,000 years.

Sohodojo: Well maybe they didn't call it free agency, they called it something else. The term "free agency" is really kind of coupled with the Internet.

Dan Pink: Yeah. Certainly and the Internet has been a help, a huge help to free agency -- helps speed the revolution. But ultimate success, I think ultimate happiness in a way depends on your human relationships, not on whether you have a DSL line.

Sohodojo: The operative word as you were describing it is that this is true of 'successful' free agents. What you have on a lot of the free agent sites are young, inexperienced folks, just getting in. So they don't have that network. What do you substitute?

Dan Pink: I don't think that any of these sites are a replacement. I think they are a supplement. The thing can be powerful so why not have another marketing arm out there? You don't have to rely on it for everything but if you get something, that's something you didn't have before. So again, that's the interesting thing about free agency and the New Economy in general; so many of these things seem to be positive sum rather than 'zero sum'. So it isn't an 'either or'; it's 'both and'. And you see that in a number of different realms, especially with the number of partnerships and alliances companies are doing. Rather than "we stand by ourselves, we compete against the rest of the world," you have much greater NETWORK realm with an alliance. You guys at Sohodojo are doing that same thing too.

Dan Pink: At the top of the list I would put the rather out-dated health insurance system based on the notion that health insurance is something you get because you hold industrial age constructs called 'a job'. No moral or economic logic behind that but historical accident and it's a system that really doesn't work. Most of the people who are uninsured in America today are working people, often working as small businesses. And that for me should be on the top of any agenda. Now fixing the problem is very difficult.

Sohodojo: In fact, that was one of the things that was interesting to us at the Summit. While folks recognize that the current system is stupid and as you say, an accident, it was almost universally agreed, that it was nearly politically impossible to end employer-based coverage.

Dan Pink: Yeah, it's hard to end that but I don't think that starting one thing means ending another. What you could do as stop-gap would be to let free agents and small business people buy into the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. That's the plan that all the Congressmen and Senators you met with have.

It's a great plan. I think you are part of a huge, 9 million, bargaining pool. And you have a menu of choices. So if you want your fee for service you can do that, if you want an HMO you can do that, and every year federal employees can switch too. So it really is a great plan because it offers the safety net that you need in health insurance but allows you to make individual choices. It's a health insurance plan that Senators and Congressmen have too. So I don't think that a 'good' free agent should have a worse health insurance system than a 'bad' senator.

Sohodojo: When you were interviewing around, did you get to talk with folks about their health insurance issues? What kind of coverages did you see?

Dan Pink: All kinds of things. Some people are doing the Rube Goldberg style thing a lot. But I've done that in my own life. For the first part of my own free agency the family was covered by my wife who had a regular job. Then she left her regular job and for 18 months we were covered by COBRA. Our second daughter is a COBRA baby because maternity costs are so incredibly expensive. We got the bill for our first daughter -- I think it was five figures, over $10,000 -- and we didn't have to pay any of it because our health insurance program was so good. And so we said if we want to have another kid, we have to do it in this 18-month window. That's why Eliza Pink is a COBRA baby.

And now, we went back into the open market after our COBRA expired and pay a lot more for a lot less. And thank God we can get the coverage. But people end up doing other things. Some people get it through professional associations. Some suck it up and pay a lot more. I'm thankful that we were able to get it and that we can afford it but we are paying a LOT more for a lot less right now.

Sohodojo: And that was one of the issues that this Summit was about. This notion to allow professional associations to have the same treatment for these ARISA type self-help funded exemptions to level the playing field. Because even if you belong to an association, unless they have a gazillion members in your state, you're screwed.

Dan Pink: The regulatory apparatus around health insurance is extremely hard to understand, extremely hard to change. The health insurance system fails the Peter Drucker "blank paper test." Like if you could design this from the beginning with a blank sheet of paper would it look like this and, you know -- no way! If you were to start with a blank sheet of paper and design the current kind of health care system I think the only person who would do it the way it is would be coming off a really bad acid trip. But, it's very hard to change and it is kind of entrenched. As it happens you have more people now who are employees than you have who are free agents, and majority rules.

Sohodojo: Speaking along those lines, are there any policy changes or new laws that are needed to protect free agents aside from health insurance and otherwise make free agency a more viable long-range strategy for working people?

Dan Pink: I would go to health insurance. Health insurance is the 800 pound gorilla of free agent politics and policy. You have a lot of people who are not making that leap because of health insurance. You have a lot of people who are able to make the leap, only because they are covered by a spouse. And, you have a lot of people who are locked into traditional jobs who don't want to be in those traditional jobs but who are there because they have a family member who's ill. They have some kind of previous condition. When you think about the amount of talent we are losing because of that, because our health care system is broken, it's a shame. It's a national tragedy.

Sohodojo: If we could change that health care system, think of the future of the work! That could be exciting!

Dan Pink: Right! It would be liberating for all kinds of people. I think you'd unleash an enormous amount of talent. One reason I think that you will have a lot of '65-Club' creation is that those folks are covered by Medicare. Medicare isn't perfect but it is health insurance.

Sohodojo: OK. Now this is a long one. Charles Handy in his brilliant 1989 book, "The Age of Unreason," describes the profound changes in the nature of organization and management that set the stage for free agency as an emerging vehicle for a more rewarding 'portfolio' approach to work. At Sohodojo we envision this free-agent portfolio as evolving through a life-cycle with the early years predominated by conventional project-base contract work giving way to increased involvement in entrepreneurial participation in various small business ventures. Have you seen examples of this entrepreneurial spirit in the free agents you have interviewed?

Dan Pink: Ummm, sure!

Dan Pink: Again, it's self-defined. So there isn't a single way. We used to have this predictable path -- education, work, retirement -- three parts. Like here you are at a restaurant, fixed price menu. Here's your appetizers, your main course, your dessert. But now, it's just this gigantic buffet table. You're going to have some people who are pure carnivores. You're going to have some people who are vegetarians. You're going to have some people who just want to chow. Got some people who want to eat a little bit now, a little bit later. So it really depends on the individual. So their path, if you can even use the word 'path' -- their thing is going to be idiosyncratic.

Mine's not going to look like yours; yours isn't going to look like mine. You may be able to detect some kind of patterns there in that I think that for a lot of people when they're younger, a period of intense work and then maybe they pull back a little bit when they have a family and then maybe they gear up again during empty nest and pull back again when they get older. But again, that's not going to be everybody. So the number of varieties are as large as there are numbers of people. We'll be able to detect some kind of patterns.

I think you're going to get past the Thanksgiving turkey method of education where you cook people til they're done and then you serve them to an employer. That's a ludicrous structuring of the world today. But again, where's the boundary between work and learning. We were talking before about making mistakes as a great form of learning. You don't take a class in making mistakes. You go out and do things and make mistakes and then you learn.

Again, we used to have these very clearly demarcated boundaries; this is work, this is learning. Now that's certainly blurred. Same way with 'this is your work life, this is your family life'. If you work at home or you work as a couple the markers aren't there.

You used to have this divide between work and fun. I don't know what this conversation is; is this conversation work or is it fun? I mean it's part of my work, sure I'm having a good time though I was looking forward to coming down here. It's Sunday afternoon. I don't know whether it's work or fun all I know is 'hey, it's a good way to spend an hour'.

So the boundaries, and I hate to keep coming back to these kinds of metaphors, we're developing a new vocabulary but we're also developing a new 'map' because a lot of the borders have washed away. When you pick up the old map of work, it's like picking up one of those globes from grade school, which has countries like Siam and USSR and so forth. Wait a second that's not quite up to where we are right now. So things are changing.

Sohodojo: OK, now, is there anything we didn't ask you that we should have asked you?

Dan Pink: No I think these were great questions. I've been totally interested.

Sohodojo: Great! That's a wrap! Thanks, Dan. Now back to work! We've got a train to catch.