By Paul Lima

Business professionals take mobile technology seriously. Backbone spoke to four people over 40 and discovered that, unlike young people who play games on their cellphones, text message friends and read movie reviews using wireless Internet access, these people take a strict business stance when it comes to mobile technology. And it’s a stance that pays off with improved productivity, customer service and communications.

MOBILE FROM DUBAI TO PRAGUE TO NEW ORLEANS TO MONTRÉAL

arry Lewis is hooked on mobile technology. “I see myself dying with a laptop in my lap. I just hope it doesn’t die before me. If I’m ever sick in the hospital I’ll have something to do as long as I have Internet access,” said Lewis, 53, a computer security consultant whose work has taken him to Dubai, Prague, Slovenia, Zurich, Brussels, Amsterdam, Melbourne (Australia), Luxembourg, Chicago, New Orleans, Las Vegas and half a dozen Canadian cities.

While on the road, Lewis, president of information security management consultancy Cerberus ISC in Toronto, conducts securityrelated

seminars and consults with financial institutions, manufacturers, government agencies and other clients.

As a high school student, Lewis was not into slide rules and math, but he remembers being awed by pictures of IBM mainframe computers.

“When I first saw those flashing lights I thought it would be cool to run one of those.” In the late ’60s he took a punch card course on an IBM 1401 and landed a “lowly job” with TD Bank in computer operations.

Now a certified information systems security professional (CISSP), Lewis has a dog-eared passport and uses mobile technology to keep in touch with clients and family.

His mobile arsenal consists of two laptop computers that he networks when training, a Palm handheld, an AT&T Business Internet account with local access in more than 1,350 cities and 140 countries, and a Rogers AT&T Wireless global phone that works on GSM cellular networks in many countries.

While on the road, Lewis used to call home using Web sites that offered no-charge voiceover-IP long distance calls. But most of those sites have gone under, victims of the dot-com bust. However, long distance rates have also dropped dramatically and Lewis now uses his cellphone to call his wife and son.

He also used to use Internet videoconferencing to get that long distance feeling, but has now found a more personal way to stay connected, at least with his wife. Now that his son is old enough to take care of himself, Lewis and his wife Elizabeth often travel together, which beats long distance calls and e-mail any day, he said.

MOBILE ON THE BACK ROADS

Marsali MacIver lives in Killiney Beach, between Kelowna and Vernon in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. She travels the B.C. “boondocks” from Salmon Arm to Peachland, teaching people how to use computers efficiently.

MacIver, 50, calls her service “relationship counselling for you and your computer” and maintains a healthy relationship with her cellphone, PDA and laptop, which doubles as her office desktop along with a large flatscreen monitor when she’s in the office.

The first time she encountered a computer the relationship was not so healthy. She was supposed to maintain a database during a political campaign but couldn’t figure out how to turn on the PC. However, the selfdescribed “anal-retentive Virgo” soon discovered “computers are linear thinkers like I am” and she’s been involved with technology ever since. At times, she said, she has even been over-involved.

In 1986, she volunteered to help a provincial politician set up his campaign office. The phone lines not yet installed, she had a cellphone in each hand and remembers conducting two conversations simultaneously as her pager went off.

“There is such a thing as being too connected,” said MacIver, who often leaves her cellphone off these days even though she has several thirtysomething entrepreneurial clients. “I’m not a doctor or a tech support hotline.

I set aside time each day to return calls rather than letting calls interrupt my workflow.” Balance, she said, also includes having the right tools and using them as effectively as possible.

In addition to her cellphone and laptop, MacIver’s mobile arsenal includes a new Handspring PDA in which she keeps her training schedule and list of more than 1,000 contacts. MacIver doesn’t always need her laptop onsite, but she always needs her contact list and calendar, and the PDA lightens her load.

MOBILE CONVERT

In charge of the operation of 1,350 restaurants with 75,000 employees across Canada, Louie Mele travels a great deal. The executive vice-president and chief operating officer of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada used to find hundreds of e-mail messages waiting forhim when he returned from his trips. Not any more.

Mele, 48, who has been with McDonald’s for more than 30 years, is an early adopter. He had one of the original clunky car phones and has had several portable computers, but, until recently, has resisted taking them on the road, finding them “not practical and far too heavy” for someone who likes to travel light. “Who needs the weight if there is no value?”

While on the road, Mele would take notes on paper which his secretary later converted to files. She would also call him and outline urgent e-mail messages and he would dictate replies. However, he still had volumes of e-mail to deal with upon his return to the office.

When he purchased his first Palm he found he could maintain his contact list and schedule, and take notes using a mobile computing device that fit in his pocket. By connecting his Palm to his office computer he could upload his notes and update his schedule. Mobile computing began to make sense. Then Telus Mobility introduced its 1X wireless network and Mele discovered he could replicate his desktop computer on a laptop.

His laptop didn’t feel so heavy once he was able to reply to e-mail and connect to the McDonald’s network using fast wireless Internet access—without dialling up. He can even deal with attached e-mail files and access his PC files. “It’s like being in the office, no matter where I am.”

By getting more work done on the road, Mele said his job is less hectic (still hectic, but less so) when he returns to the office. He is better prepared for meetings and his secretary gets more work done because she no longer has to read him e-mail.

Mele is now looking to add a Sony CLIÉ PDA, complete with wireless camera, to his mobile arsenal. If he sees something in a restaurant that needs attention he can take a picture of it and e-mail it to the franchise owner or head office.

He doesn’t mind adding weight to his travel bag, as long as there is a practical purpose for doing so.

MOBILE NERD

“I wish I could tell you I had some vice. I don’t even understand computer games,” said Charlie Regan, CEO of Nerds On Site Inc., a London, Ont.-based on-site computer service for corporate, small business and home computer users across Canada and in several U.S. states.

When it comes to mobile work, Regan, 48, is strictly business—going so far as to call his car “my office.”

His vehicular office includes a car desk with three cellphones and two laptops and a power bar connected to his cigarette lighter that keeps them all juiced. In addition, he has a digital camera and video recorder.

“Nobody sits in the front seat of my car,” said the early mobile technology adopter, who has been on the road most of his business life.

When in his mobile office, Regan uses voice-activated dialling and a headset to keep his hands free. He also pulls over to send and receive e-mail and to upload operational procedures, company news and short motivational and practical video clips to the company’s computer network. He and the company’s franchise owners, known as E-Nerds, connect to the computer network using the Telus Mobility 1X wireless network.

Regan’s encounters with mobile technology were not always productive. Two days after receiving his first—and only—pager, he attended a meeting with a bishop and several priests at the Catholic Church’s chancellery in Hamilton, Ont. During the meeting his pager went off and he couldn’t answer it, turn it off or control the volume. The meeting came to a halt as everyone waited for him to do something.

“I went outside, put the pager under the rear tire of my car and backed over it,” he said.

That experience did not put him off mobile tools.

Regan owned the second car phone ever to appear in Windsor, Ont. A friend who ran the Cantel (now Rogers AT&T Wireless) dealership had the first. The car phone cost $5,000. He convinced himself he had made back his investment in the first month since the phone let him set up meetings, answer calls and solve problems without returning to the office. However, he was so conscious of airtime charges that he installed a clock in his dash so he could time calls.

Regan has owned dozens of cellphones and portable computers, including an early Macintosh “luggable.” He is amazed at how small mobile tools have become and how much more potent they are. He is particularly fond of his Acer Tablet PC. “The handwriting-to-text capability is marvellous.”

Handwriting recognition, and the ability to instantly capture, save and send information electronically is important to the development of portable tools, Regan said. He’s seen E-Nerds who can thumb-type on the miniscule Research In Motion PDA keyboard, but said it is not for folks who are less dexterous.

He hopes one day soon to see practical mobile voice-to-text recognition devices on the market so he can talk, file and broadcast his thoughts to E-Nerds across the continent.

WEB MOBILE

Cerberus ISC http://www.cerberus-isc.com
McDonald’s Canada http://www.mcdonalds.ca
Nerds On Site http://www.nerdsonsite.com