HOME > NEWS AND EVENTS > NEWSLETTER > APRIL 2010 > NOTES ABOUT THE FUTURE

Notes about the Future

The Future of Place and Space

Norway's Prime Minister Runs Country with an iPad while stranded by Volcano

The recent eruption of that volcano in Iceland (we don't dare try to pronounce it) stranded thousands of travelers (including Jim's brother and sister-in-law), but no one made more news than Jens Stoltenberg, who was pictured at New York's JFK airport overseeing his country's affairs using his brand-new Apple iPad.

Now that's the ultimate in remote work!

Later stories indicated that Prime Minister Stoltenberg was able to catch a flight to Madrid, Spain, where he then slowly worked his way home to Oslo using ground transportation.

(Thanks to Jim's daughter Wendy, who is based in London, for first alerting us to this story)

Working at Home May Not be as Family-Friendly as We Thought

USA Today recently carried an important story about research recently conducted at MIT and Michigan State suggesting that working at home sometimes creates more problems for parents than it solves:

Today's parents might not even realize how their divided attention plays out with kids, says Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

"That mother shows up in these surveys as being with the child, but is she actually, if she's on the BlackBerry in the car?" Turkle says. "A mother putting laundry in while the child sits on the couch is not the same as a mother concentrating on this screen and going into this virtual space. Kids are totally attuned. They know ... their parents are in la-la land."

The full article is online at: "Working at home: Family-friendly?"

Debunking the Myths of Telecommuting (April 18, 2010)

On the other hand, here's a first-person account of telecommuting (in the New York Times on Sunday, April 18) from someone who's being doing it for over ten years. She makes it sound pretty darn good (which is our own personal experience as well).

And that Pesky Volcano is Good for Videoconferencing Sales

And yet one more story from the New York Times: the travel disruptions in Europe are, not surprisingly, stimulating interest in both audio and videoconferencing as substitutes for travel:

"Stranded Travelers Turn to Videoconferencing" (April 17, 2010)

The Future of Work Design

President Obama Commits the Federal Government to a More Aggressive Flexwork Policy

"I do not want to see the government close because of snow again." President Obama smiled as he opened a March 31 White House forum on Flexible Work with that observation—but he meant it:

The president said the government is committed to "practicing what we preach" with budget proposals that would increase funding for child care and provide grants to states to promote flexible work programs.

There's a good summary of the story at: "Obamas tout benefits of a flexible workplace."

And Tory Johnson of ABC News interviews Stuart Friedman about the White House forum at "Flex-time goes to the White House."

What's Happened/Happening?

Future of Work Private Client Network

We previously announced the formation of a new Future of Work Private Client Network (see the December 2009 newsletter at this link for the full announcement)

In brief, we have launched a new, private network of clients and expert resources whose mission is to make practical sense of the future. We'd love to talk to you about becoming part of this new community. If you are interested, please contact us directly for a detailed prospectus and research agenda.

Public Appearances

Well, maybe not quite "public," but on April 22 we repeated our highly successful webinar on "Managing People You Can't See." Once again sponsored by Citrix Online, this time we addressed Citrix's EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) clients.

And if you want to listen to a (free) full audio/video recording of the webinar on that same topic that we delivered to over 750 folks in North America on February 2, just click on this link.

Getting Out and About

We're currently spending time with clients in southern California several times a month. We currently expect to be in the area for sure the weeks of April 29, May 3, May 17, and May 24.

If we're in your area and have a few minutes, we'd love to see you for breakfast, lunch, dinner (depending on our other commitments), or "refreshments" any time after 5 PM local time (and you know what that means).

We're doing our best to publish our travel schedule, including both public appearances and private client work, on our new online calendar that's embedded in our website.

And please follow us on Twitter for more current updates on the future of work and our travel plans.

Give us a shout or send us a note, and if we can squeeze out some time, we'd love to say hello and share some good ideas the old-fashioned way: face-to-face, glass in hand.

©Copyright 2003-2008 The Work Design Collaborative, LLC. All rights reserved. Website development by InMotionMedia, Inc