A week of working remotely. Covered by the FT. Sounds pretty straightforward.
In fact, it sounded so straightforward that this morning I was a little worried I'd have nothing to report on. Don't get me wrong - I'm interested in the 'mobile working' thing. It's just I normally spend a couple of days out the office each week. So, what makes this week any different? And what makes it sufficiently newsworthy for the FT to cover?
The new toys were picked up from Enable Interactive HQ bright and breezy this morning. Being more of a web guy than an IT guy, it took me a little longer than hoped to get up and running. Actually, it took me about 5 hours, which is probably some kind of record for 'simply' synching up a new phone and connecting a plug and play USB device. Hmmm, maybe this technology thing isn't so simple after all.
All sorted at around lunchtime and I managed to start my journey. First stop Tate Modern.
Having hammered my phone continuously for most of the morning, and tapping my laptop the entire journey from Bristol to London, I arrived at the Tate with flat batteries all round. As planned, I headed to the cafe where they'd kindly agreed to me working for the afternoon, but was told there was nowhere to plug in. In fact, the manager kindly pointed out there were no sockets I could use anywhere in the Tate Modern.
In fact, it sounded so straightforward that this morning I was a little worried I'd have nothing to report on. Don't get me wrong - I'm interested in the 'mobile working' thing. It's just I normally spend a couple of days out the office each week. So, what makes this week any different? And what makes it sufficiently newsworthy for the FT to cover?
The new toys were picked up from Enable Interactive HQ bright and breezy this morning. Being more of a web guy than an IT guy, it took me a little longer than hoped to get up and running. Actually, it took me about 5 hours, which is probably some kind of record for 'simply' synching up a new phone and connecting a plug and play USB device. Hmmm, maybe this technology thing isn't so simple after all.
All sorted at around lunchtime and I managed to start my journey. First stop Tate Modern.
Having hammered my phone continuously for most of the morning, and tapping my laptop the entire journey from Bristol to London, I arrived at the Tate with flat batteries all round. As planned, I headed to the cafe where they'd kindly agreed to me working for the afternoon, but was told there was nowhere to plug in. In fact, the manager kindly pointed out there were no sockets I could use anywhere in the Tate Modern.
Brilliant! All the mobility I wanted, but without a plug I was completely stranded.
I ended making a quick stop at a book shop to recharge the phone - enough for a call in to the office - and headed to my hotel to get some graft done. Since then I've been trying to catch up on all the hours I lost in my day!
Quick summary:
Interesting technical challenges setting up all the gadgets. When it's all working it seems pretty sweet. Train journey proved incredibly effective with some good collaborative working with one of my account execs back in the office. One big problem - no matter how wireless you are, you're always constrained by the life of your battery.
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