|
|
| Lifestyle Options Will Drive The Workplace |
November 10, 2003 |
By Peter Wolchak
You know you’re having a bad day when you find yourself really relating to Bart Simpson. Take the episode entitled “Bart the murderer.” Stuck in principal Skinner’s office licking his way through a pile of envelopes, Bart glances up at the clock only to see the second hand tick backwards.
Office workers know that feeling all too well: sitting in an airless and timeless cubicle, drinking “coffee” that tastes like melted brown crayons and dreading the long rushhour drive home.
It’s a scene directly out of the industrial age, when labourers who toiled in factories had to move themselves to and from the workplace.
But now, in an age where data is the most valuable product, workers can employ new mobile technology which allows them to work almost anywhere.
If you or your company haven’t yet explored the option of anywhere-but-the-office working, it’s time to check it out.
Others have. Walk into any upscale coffee shop and you’ll see the converts; people who spend all or part of their days outside a traditional office, working on laptops and meeting up over cellphones.
(Like me, now. I grabbed my favourite table at the local Second Cup, pulled out a PDA and a portable keyboard, and started working, shooting a smug look at my two “office” companions typing away on their bulky laptop computers. The keyboard I’m using now is made by Belkin. It weighs next to nothing and costs about $90. The guy sitting next to me asks about it and then heads out to Future Shop to check it out. I get up for a refill of dark roast and get back to my writing.)
In fact, anyone still talking about the emergence of mobile productivity is already a couple of years behind, as we are now well into the second phase of the mobile technology revolution.
How do we know this is the second phase? Phase one of any big change is over when a great early innovation becomes passé. For mobile technology, that first great thing was the Internet café, those places where people on the go could check e-mail, update a file or play computer games.
That era is over. Internet cafés still exist, but with Wi-Fi access points popping up all over, they are becoming unnecessary. Once traditional watering
holes become ’net-enabled, no one will need dedicated Internet access sites.
Mobile hardware is also enabling this second phase. Palm, Dell and others are rolling out updated PDAs, laptops are becoming lighter and more powerful, and innovations in mobile storage will deliver more travelling music and cellphones that can do way more than today’s models.
So that clock-watching office denizen will have more options in the not-so-distant future. The work itself may not get more interesting, but doing it in a offee shop or on a backyard deck will sure make the hours go by easier.
We all need to work, but whenever possible we want to do so on our terms. A recent Drake Beam Morin-Canada poll of human resources managers has concluded
that lifestyle will be the number one issue for employees 10 years from now.
That means employers and their staff need to explore mobile productivity options, because ultimately, it’s all about lifestyle.
FINDING YOUR WAY ON BACKBONEMAG.COM:
Backbone’s mandate is to give you interesting articles with information you can actually use. We’ve done our jobs if you read an article and want to hold on to it or pass it to a colleague. To make this process easier for you we’ve added a nifty little Web navigation aid to each article.
At the end of the business continuity article that begins on page 16, for example, you’ll see a small box with http://www.backbonemag.com/11/page16. Plug that into your browser and you’ll find that article.
It will work today and it will work months from now.
We hope you find it useful.
|
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Nav, with 3D maps
Navigon 7100
All GPS devices perform the same basic functions: supplying turn-by-turn directions and highlighting area restaurants, hotels, etc. So selecting your device comes down to deciding which extra features matter to you.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
