Welcome to the future today, where we are always working always at play,
always on.

kelly
from the New York times


      February 20, 1999

     Travel Log

      By STEPHEN C. MILLER

On the Road, but Never Out of the Office

      Some things used to stop when you were on the road. When you were
     out of the office, no one expected you to attend meetings,
     negotiate contracts, write sales promotions or read your mail. All
     that waited until your return. Not so anymore.

     The accoutrements of the mobile professional (laptops, cell phones,
     PDAs, two-way pagers, etc.) have changed expectations. It is now
     possible to be in two or more places at once.

     Lest you think I exaggerate, here are some recent examples.

     At a conference, the person next to me pulled out her two-way pager
     a dozen times during the two-hour session. During a break, I asked
     her about it, thinking some family crisis was taking place. "No,
     we're announcing a major alliance and there was some quibbling over
     the wording of one paragraph in the press release," she explained.

     The person writing the release in New York was changing the text
     and sending it via e-mail to a half dozen people with two-way
     pagers. Two were in different locations in New York City, one was
     in New Jersey, one was in Atlanta and one was in San Jose. Each
     would then respond with a "yes" or "no" until everyone agreed.

     "Isn't that cumbersome and inefficient?" I asked.

     "Quite the contrary, it used to take days to get this kind of thing
     approved," she said. "We used to try and schedule a conference call
     but we rarely got everyone together at the same time. Sometimes we
     had to send drafts by mail and wait for comments, then send the new
     changes out again. It was tedious." The process is now reduced to
     an hour or so. "The guy in San Jose is still at home and probably
     in his bathrobe," she concluded with a chuckle.

     I had to appear on a panel recently and 5 of the 12 participants
     were using their laptops. The moderator read his speech from his,
     the others were taking notes, and I was filing my column via my
     infrared modem, reading e-mail and changing my Power Point
     presentation to incorporate remarks others had just made that would
     make my remarks stronger.

     During the break, two panel members went looking for fax machines
     so that they could catch up with e-mail and any breaking news. They
     didn't need to fax anything, but fax machines still require analog
     phone lines just like modems. When faced with corporate or hotel
     digital phone systems, find the fax.

     In yet another example, a fellow road warrior concluded contract
     negotiations for a $5 million deal without ever having a
     conversation with his counterpart. Both were always in different
     parts of the world and the entire process took place by voice mail.

     "After I got used to it, I found it much better than face-to-face
     or conference calls," he said. "I could listen to his message, make
     notes and then respond without any interruptions."

     He claims that it sped up the process. "I did talk to him at the
     end of the negotiations, but that was an accident," he said. "He
     was actually in his office and answered the phone."

     I've always thought that the word virtual was overused -- virtual
     corporations, virtual workgroups, and even virtual management.
     There is nothing virtual about the way many of us have to work. We
     make phone calls while walking down the street. We get paged in
     meetings or in cabs to the airport. We write reports in far-flung
     hotel rooms. We participate in online conferences. We even brush up
     on our skills through distance learning. In short, we have to be
     able to work anytime or anywhere as long as the technology is
     available. It's no longer science-fiction to talk about virtual
     reality as a real place. For those on the road, our kind of virtual
     is very real.


   Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company


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