Is it the End of Second Life?

So we’ve heard about the death of email, the demise of the book and finish of face-to-face contact, is the end of second life (reported in the BBC online magazine) worth getting worked up about? Or is it just in having some down time in Gartner’s Hype Cycle?

For those who have missed the whole phenomena Second Life is a virtual world, “a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using free voice and text chat“, launched back in 2003. In the past virtual worlds have existed (primarily in the gaming arena) but had not really been engaged with by the masses. Second Life is accessible via the Internet and for a short period of time there seemed to be no boundaries to its potential. It offered opportunities to the commercial sector and the public sector alike. The three-dimensional modelling tool available meant that those with basic programming skills could build simple geometric shapes and virtual objects, almost anything could be created, virtually. Second Life was somewhere to interact with others, hold events, have virtual meetings, create learning environments, build properties and have a presence. For a while we were all encouraged to get on to Second Life.

As Lauren Hansen, BBC News Magazine, explains

“Newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and trend pieces. By the end of 2007 Second Life had secured more than 600 mentions in UK newspapers and magazines, according to the media database Lexis Nexis.“

In 2007 over four million users had registered. However interest fell just as quickly as it soared, “references plummeted by 40% in 2008 and dropped further this year” and many businesses “diverted their resources back to real life.“

Me and Second Life

My own experience of Second Life has been fairly limited. I first took a look back in late 2006 egged on by colleague Andy Powell. Andy, who now works for Eduserv, was about as enthusiastic a user as you can get (though he may deny this). At one stage Andy regularly ran virtual events and symposiums in Second Life and Eduserv gave out grant funding for studies and small pieces of work including the ” snapshot” of UK HE and FE developments in SL study. A search on the second_life tag on the eFoundations blog will give a quick insight into the work carried out.

Unfortunately my own experiences were similar to many other noobs: it seemed interesting and looked great, but it took an age to load and after a few attempts I still hadn’t really got the hang of it, so real life and real work got in the way. I’ve got a new PC since the last time I accessed Second Life and the idea of downloading the software fills me with dread so I can’t even show you what my avatar (Pixel Wildcat!) looks like.

Why isn’t it working?

Recent reports seem to suggest that Second Life has suffered a recession just like the rest of us. However the likelihood is that their recession would have happened with or without the antics of our real world banks.

The key problems seem to be:

• The media attention fell on the ‘first to do things’, attention dwindles if you are the 20th so there is little point in making the investment.
• Much of the world’s broadband cannot handle the graphics so speed is a real issue.
• The technology is always improving so users can find themselves constantly having to update their system.
• Second Life hasn’t met expectations as a social networking site, maybe people prefer to be themselves when it comes down to it?
• The learning curve is too steep for many, it’s not particularly intuative and only the hard-core gamers have stuck with it.
• Second Life works in real time so users have to be logged in at the same time. UK users often find that the streets are empty because the US users are all in bed.
• It has yet to provide a usable mobile presence and this is where the future lies.

The comments on the BBC article are interesting because Second Life continues to divide opinion. Many see it as the ‘ultimate sandbox’ with lots of great uses but others just haven’t got the time or the energy to spend on it.

For us remote workers it doesn’t look like we’ll be throwing away our web cams, creating our own avatars and heading off into Linden Land for our virtual meetings just yet.

What people think?

Swindon ‘Wifi’ Town

It’s not often that ‘Wiltshire’ and ‘trailblaizing’ get to appear in the same sentence (I should know I live there!) but recent news is that Swindon is to become the first town in the UK to offer free public wireless internet access to its entire population. The plan is for all 186,000 citizens to have blanket “Wi-Fi mesh” coverage by April 2010.

This is a pretty big project by Swindon Borough Council. They intend to make line rental free and will not be charging connection fees. The service will provided by Signal and will have limited access and usage but can pay for 20Mb upgrades charged at competitive rates. The £1m project will be run by Digital City UK Ltd, in which Swindon Borough Council has a 35% share. Local businessman Rikki Hunt,from digital technology firm aQovia, created the company especially for this particular project.

If successful, there is an intention of working on similar roll-outs of the technology in other towns and cities across the UK.

When reading about the project a few thoughts came to mind….

What about security?

Security is always the big issue when it comes to wifi. The Swindon network will be using wifi protected access (WPA) which is fairly robust. The main press release claims “Anti virus software and Microsoft and Google online services will be a key feature of the network” but there are likely to be serious security implications of managing such a system.

The other issue is health, to date there has been no evidence to show that consistent exposure to wifi signals affects health, but we are still at early days with these technologies.

Other Uses?

Signal have already indicated some other potential uses of the mesh:

“The technology will also revolutionise home and business security courtesy of CCTV coverage with rapid response, allowing homes and businesses to be monitored via a control room or remotely using laptops…There are plans to deliver valuable real-time information on home electricity usage and street-wide air quality monitoring. Swindon’s Wi-Fi also has the scope to deliver free voice calls and could be used by health professionals to carry out consultations and remote medical procedures or examinations through Telemedicine.“

It will be interesting to see the other knock on implications of having a totally ‘wired’ town.

How does this work for visitors to the area?

Does this scheme just apply to locals or will visitors to the area be able to participate too? This could potentially be a big pull for those interested in establishing technology businesses. Swindon already has a fairly decent IT sector with Intel and a number of other smaller businesses being situated there.

Hasn’t this been done already?

The claim soundsa little familiar, so has a town or city already offered free blanket wireless coverage?

Apparently other UK cities have had trials of the schemes (Norwich being the one most people can remember), but this is the first time an entire town area will be covered by council-backed public wifi. In 2006 the cloud geared up to bring wireless broadband to nine cities: Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and three London boroughs – Islington, Kensington and Camden.. Whether this has happened or not is unclear but their intention was to create hotzones out across the cities, giving access to the internet for anyone using a wifi enabled computer or mobile. The project was not targeted at the entire population. More cities were to be announced during 2006 but I can’t find any record of this happening.

It seems there are many claims that have been made but not a lot actually happening on the ground.

I wrote a post a while back about finding wifi hotspots in towns and cities. For many of us life will continue as normal and we’ll still be hunting out those wireless hotspots when out and about. But for those in Swindon life will be a little more hitec!

PSF Annual Mobile & Flexible Working Survey

Public Sector Forums are running their annual mobile and flexible working survey which looks at the usage of mobile and flexible working practices of Local Authorities and other public sector organisations.

This 10 minute survey is designed to gain an insight into the adoption of these technologies, the benefits and challenges facing organisations trying to use them. It differentiates between Line of business and Personal Information Management (PIM) usage and also questions the different approach being taken by organisations in acquiring mobile solutions.

They have had a large number of responses to the survey already, a preview of which can be viewed at this editorial piece (note you will have to login to the PSF site to access the article – membership is free to those working in the public sector.) A quick taster:

“the survey also reveals that the current economic climate is impacting greatly upon councils’ approaches to their mobile working, prompting many to look for ways to deliver their strategies at lower cost….Comments indicated that councils were very aware that they still had much work to do to fully realise the benefits of mobile working.“

The survey will feed into a report which will be available to all who participate, with the findings to be unveiled at Public Sector Forums’ Government Goes Mobile SOUTH event being held in Milton Keynes on 24th November 2009.

All those that participate in the survey will be eligible for a £75 + VAT discounted place at the event and will also go into a prize draw for an Apple iTouch with the winner drawn on the day.

Home is a land worth exploring

Guest blog posts are like buses…none for ages, then three at once! Anyway I’m not complaining! Hearing about other people’s remote working experiences gives me a real boost, it’s great to feel I am not alone, and of course steal all their ideas!

Today we are lucky enough to hear from Alistair McNaught. Alistair works at JISC TechDis where his role includes developing advice and guidance on accessible and inclusive teaching and learning practices. He works
across a range of sectors from FE to Adult, Offender learning to Work based learning.

For Alistair there is no such thing as a typical week except that he usually spends 2-3 days at home and 2-3 days ‘on the tracks’ using trains as mobile offices en route to or from events. Alistair thinks that the average train carriage is more conducive to real work than the average office… see below for details.

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Ten years ago the allure of home-working piqued my imagination. My five children ranged from 1 to 18 and I desperately wanted to shake off the shackles of high pressure teaching and win some lifestyle flexibility. I went part time with half a location based job and half a home based job but it soon became apparent that half time status refers only to pay, not hours…

Ironically, I ended up working longer hours with less holiday ..but increased flexibility. I got to sports days and assemblies, I was around when the older kids dropped in with friends in a free period but there is a difference between being around and being present.

Even when I was around I was haunted by the unfinished email and the laptop stayed on from 8 in the morning to 10 at night. It’s odd that employers fear home-workers spend all their time watching TV or gardening. My experience is exactly the opposite. Over my career, the occasions worked in an office were always notably less efficient due to the amount of time wasted chatting about trivia. Maybe I’m not good at multi-tasking… A day at home is worth three in the office. I always track my weekly hours, but I use the time tracking to avoid short changing my family. There is never a remote risk of my employer being short-changed.

A joy of homeworking is the reduced travel. There is something weird about a business model that requires hundreds of employees to physically transport themselves to a central office where they work all day surrounded by distractions, using technology that enables them to communicate instantly with any part of the globe… including the bit it takes an hour to drive to work from!

Since using technology to run online workshops and meetings I have roughly doubled my capacity to say ‘yes’ to requests for events / meetings and, in the process, significantly reduced my Carbon footprint. A bizarre outcome of this modus operandii is ‘assymetrical acquaintance’ where strangers greet me as if they know me because I trained them in an online session. They regard me as a fond familiar face (they watched me for an hour!) and always seem vaguely disappointed when I don’t recognise them. It’s hard to get past that feeling that because you can see someone on a screen they ought to be able to see you
as well, whether or not you have a webcam.

In conclusion, working from home has undoubtedly benefited my productivity, my carbon footprint, my employer and – on balance – has benefited me as well. It’s not for everyone and can be very lonely (or wonderfully uninterrupted) depending on how you are wired. It can present huge distractions or unhealthy over working depending on your personality. It should certainly be encouraged and for many teams could result in big productivity benefits but there needs to be realism, creativity and honesty for it to work well. Home is a land worth exploring.

What’s the big fuss about Augmented Reality?

A while back my boss showed me an application on his phone that gave a view (using the camera) of the physical space around us and where in that space people were tweeting from. I’m not a gadget person (he is!) but I have to say I was impressed. It does look amazing.

There is more about this particular app (Twittaround) on the ReadWriteWeb site and you can view a YouTube video of it in action.

But you might ask, as many people have done, what’s the point? Is it just all fluff and no substance?

What is it?

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a “live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.”

As How stuff works puts it, it is a way to “pull graphics out of your television screen or computer display and integrate them into real-world environments“.

So what can we use it for?

Here are some of the current thoughts on what it could be used for:

Web Browsers

Some believe that AR is likely to be where the Web browser ends up. Last week I watched Age of Stupid for the first time (for those unfamiliar with the plot it’s an appeal for humans to avoid knowingly destroying the earth (by our CO2 emissions) delivered from the vantage-point of 2055). The ‘future archive’ browser is very AR and it is quite possible that this will be the way we go.

Practising tasks

AR could help with practise real world tasks virtually. This could be really useful in the fields of medicine, manufacturing and engineering and could potentially save organisations a fortune. This also has lots of implications for the education sector.

Orientation Information

Integrating AR into glasses or head-mounted displays (HMDs) makes it possible to walk down the street and be bombarded with informative graphics at every step. This could have a huge impact on maps, tracking and orientation information. The military are probably one of the biggest users of AR at the moment, AR systems can provide troops with vital information about their surroundings and much more.

Gaming

The possibilities are endless…

Phone Apps

Phone apps is where AR is likely to hit the mainstream. New apps are appearing daily. Some of the most popular so far are nearest tube (which finds you your nearest tube station!), face recognition, music apps (that change depending on your environment) and travel guide apps (which show you info on where ever you are).

People are still a little unsure how AR is going to take off, but there’s no doubt it will. It is also likely to make a big difference to those working while on the move. For example this phone app allows users to locate venues that enable remote working around London. The creators say it was based on 200 information gathering visits to the capital and provides everything from the quality of the wi-fi signal available to the number plug points.

Now that sounds very useful!

Remote conference participation – the debate starts

Remotely attending conferences – efficient use of time or just not as good as the real thing?

Martin Weller, who wrote a guest blog post for Ramblings of a Remote Worker not long back, has written a post on his Ed Techie blog considering remote participation and whether its heading in the right direction.

Martin explains:

“There are a few things that interest me about this. The first is how does it change the nature of the conference to have this broader participation? Secondly, how can conference organisers and presenters best take advantage of it and incorporate it into the conference? Thirdly, what is the experience like for the remote participant compared with the ‘real thing’?“

He has set up a quick 5 question survey to get a feeling for how remote participation compares with real attendance.

He’s also set up a space in cloudworks for a flash debate. There are already lots of interesting comment.

Definitely a space worth watching (remotely!)

Have Laptop, Will Travel

Remoteness is a big problem for us home workers. Stephanie Taylor, a fellow UKOLN remote worker, has written a great post for us on her efforts to combat isolation, encourage creativity and keep fit! Enjoy!

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It’s a sunny afternoon in early October. I’m sitting in the Cornerhouse bar in Manchester with a large Americano, enjoying the buzz of the city and the hum of the late-lunching crowds. And I’m working. I have my mobile phone, my laptop and a good wifi connection. What more do I need? Well, as it turns out, nothing. I’m quite busy and contented, living the roving remote worker dream.

It all started a few months ago, when I met up with my fellow remote workers at UKOLN. UKOLN, based at the University of Bath, supports the idea of remote working – where staff do not need to be based on site or even in the same county. I live on the edge of the Peak District, travelling down to Bath every couple of months for various project meetings. The rest of the time, I stay in touch with colleagues via Skype, phone and email for serious communication, and via various social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook for more frivolous chatter.

During our remote workers day, we remote workers discussed the ups and downs of being based away from our place of work. To many people, especially those who have a regular commute, I know I look like I’m living the working-from-home dream. Based in lovely countryside, able to see Kinder Scout from my windows (if you’re upstairs and crane your neck a bit), with a river flowing almost past my front door, just across the quiet lane. What’s not to like?

Well, ungrateful as it sounds, if it’s your every-day reality, quite a lot sometimes! I miss other people, I miss all the small pleasures of going out alone or with colleagues for a coffee or lunch or drinks after work. Sometimes, the splendid isolation gets a bit daunting. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m very lucky. Living where I do allows me to keep three dogs and to go out for walks where I can gaze at trees and watch curlews dipping over the moorland. But sometimes, when deadlines loom and tasks seem endless, I have times when I’d swap it all to be part of a bigger world for a little while.

And as we all talked, I found I wasn’t alone. The isolation of working remotely can be a real problem. Someone suggested that we should make an effort to get out more. I remembered that I live only thirty minutes from Manchester via a reasonable daytime train service. Why not go in to the city now and again to work for the day? The plans grew. Three of us could get into Manchester without too much trouble – maybe we could meet up? Then we started to embellish the day. Lack of motivation to exercise plus lack of the obvious benefits in the shape of the gym, the pool and various classes available to campus-based colleagues was another gripe. But if we went into the city, maybe we could find a class, join a gym, go for a swim?

And eventually, I got round to giving it a try. Although I had a map of free wifi hotspots, I wasn’t sure it would all work out. So I chose some project planning tasks to work on, figuring that if I couldn’t work online or my laptop blew up or some other technological disaster struck, I’d be able to work with a paper and pen. Providing I could remember how to write. I also chose work that didn’t immediately involve other people or tight deadlines. If I was too distracted by being out and found I couldn’t focus, I could make up the time later without inconveniencing anyone else. And I thought. For the first trip, I’d try an afternoon rather than a full day. Just in case.

Feeling I’d covered all possible disasters, I set off. My first stop was the Cornerhouse. I liked it so much I stayed there most of the afternoon. Waitress service meant I could set up at a quiet table and not have to risk leaving everything to order another coffee. The wifi connection was faster than at home. And the work – well, the work went very well. Spurred on by the lively environment, I found my brain went into another gear. I came up with more creative approaches to solve problems that had seemed insurmountable. I wizzed through my todo list and even managed to fit in getting a time sheet back to the admin staff at UKOLN ahead of the deadline – previously unheard of!!

Interestingly, I wasn’t the only person who set up a portable office as the lunchtime crowds thinned out. At one point, there were about five of us, talking into mobiles, tapping at our keyboards, but discreetly spaced so we weren’t bothering each other. Bliss! I also began to see how beneficial the free wifi was, and why the staff seemed so happy to have us taking up a whole table to work at. After lunch and before evening drinks, the café bar was very quiet. But we not only made the space look busy, we bought drinks, sandwiches, cakes, handing over money at a dead period. I’ll bet the five of us paid for the free wifi in one afternoon!

Tempted though I was to linger for a glass of wine or even a cocktail at the end of my working day, I had another experiment to try out. Searching online before my trip, I’d found that the Manchester Buddhist Centre offered a drop-in class in yoga at 6pm. A brisk work across town had me taking my last scheduled call of the day in their Earth Café before stowing my laptop and changing into yoga kit. I really enjoyed the class and was amazed and delighted at how flexible I was after well over a year of not really doing any yoga. Then I strolled back to the station and caught the train back home.

I’d spent a very productive afternoon, and I’m planning to do it again, soon. I also plan on chivvying colleagues into meeting up soon. On the downside, it did take me two days to be able to move freely after the yoga class. The flexibility I had when doing the class was a false dawn and I could hardly move the next morning! But with regular classes I’m sure that will change.

Most important of all, I think I’m getting the balance right for me. Remote working is a very personal experience. It’s different for everyone, and you often only have yourself to rely on, so being motivated and knowing how to get the best out of yourself is crucial. Understanding that I need a change of pace now and again is very liberating, and I’m lucky that it’s easily within my reach, And that really is living the dream.

Woes of a Working Mum

Apparently women are unhappy at work. According to Harvard Business Review writer Sylvia Ann Hewlett high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men — 84 percent compared with 40 percent — to be seriously thinking jumping ship. Hewlett’s research is interesting but she never really goes into the reasons for this unhappiness. Sean Silverthorne writing on the BNET blog suggests it’s “something about the nature of work in the modern company“. The comments made on his blog seem to back up his theory and unsurprisingly the need for more flexible working practices comes high up the list as one possible salvation.

As one person says:

It would almost be forgiveable that the jobs themselves are pretty boring. It’s the political BS and stigma attached to females who want a work/life balance that makes a corporate job difficult. The flexibility to work from home often isn’t there, the understanding that a sick kid almost always wants his/her Mommy is lacking, and most women don’t want to put in 70-80 hours/week to prove they’re ‘worthy’ of being in the corporate job.

Or maybe we just want the days back where weren’t expected to do everything to keep a household running, clean, raise kids, cook, etc. AND work. Maybe we’d be just happy with cooking ). And before the self-indignant males start lambasting me, there has been a serious decline in chivalry since women started taking a bigger role in the workplace. And there is still a double standard that women should be doing the domestic duties listed above.

Strong stuff but for working mothers most of it will ring true.

As a working mother I find it seriously tricky keeping all the balls in the air, and I work for an enlightened organisation. Heaven knows what it must be like to work for a more traditional organisation.

The problem is clear enough:

About 100 years ago male and female roles were defined. The world wars left things a little fudged and now nobody’s position is clear any more. I now find myself with 3 jobs: 1) looking after my kids (house and husband!) 2) working and 3) juggling the two. My husband is a good dad, a great dad, but his purpose is clear: he goes out in the morning and returns at night having earnt money for us to live off. If life is any different from normal he has a list to follow! My purpose often feels like the spaces inbetween, and there are many! So I find myself torn between my work and my home life. I feel like I’m never able to give my all to either. The media kindly reminds me of this at every opportunity (Working mothers have unhealthiest children, study finds) and the government tries to throw hurdles in my way (Mothers are banned from looking after each other’s children) while claiming it has my best interests at heart. Yet I know I am a hardworking and loyal member of staff and a good mum too. So my high-flying tendencies, although not completely gone, now sit in a small place constrained by the boundaries my three jobs impose.

Who knows what the future will bring? The government and the media will continue to wrestle with what percentage they think a woman should give to her two lives, but there is no easy answer. For the time being women will continue to be the bearers of children and yet they also have a great deal to offer the work place.

I know that I am not alone in my woes. Two-thirds of mums are now in employment. We don’t expect sympathy or praise but sometimes initiatives like flexible working can make life just that little bit easier.

Video conferencing and how to bridge the cultural gap

It’s been a while since I published a guest blog post. After chatting about the merits of video conferencing earlier this month at my local environmental group a fellow member, Mike Boyce, made some interesting comments about the cultural issues he’s faced when having online meetings. Not one to miss an opportunity I asked him if he could jot down any tips he had and share them with me.

Mike is the global Environment, Health and Safety Manager for a US Energy Engineering Manufacturing Company. They use video conferencing a great deal to support international business transactions and Mike has spent many years working with different video conferencing technologies and with people from different cultures.

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My company has business activity worldwide and my job has 2 main functions. Firstly to review and screen new and unusual or innovative business development projects to ensure we will meet all Environmental Requirements when they are built (this includes Wind Farms, Solar farms, Carbon Sequestration and Power projects). 90% of this work concerns non-UK projects due to the restrictive planning processes in UK that kill off many renewable energy projects. The main offices which I support are Schenectady, New York, Bracknell UK, Florence Italy, Singapore and Sydney, Australia. The second role is managing a Global Logistics Safety and Environment programme that moves about $20Bn US value of cargo, spending over $1bn US doing this. In this job I support teams in Greenville (South Carolina), Glasgow (Scotland), Prague (Czech Republic), Belfort (France), Rheine (Germany), Dubai (UAE), Chennai (India) & Shanghai (China). I am involved in qualifying and auditing road, rail, sea and air carriers; investigating accidents, improving processes and promoting reductions in carbon footprint. I have local colleagues supporting me in US & China.

So you guessed it….I travel a lot. I spend about 50-60% of the month overseas primarily in the US, China and mainland Europe. When I’m at home I telework as otherwise I’d have a 170 mile round trip to the nearest UK office my company has. My carbon footprint is bad enough already and being a staunch believer in reduction of CO2 emissions avoidance of the M4 is worthwhile for the planet and me.

Video Conferencing Tips

A typical day may start at 7:30 am with conference calls to China and end with the same activity at 7:00 pm to Greenville South Carolina or our HQ in New York State. There are so many great tools out there but my top tips are:

1. I telephone with a mute button (so no one can hear my dogs barking (I know Marieke has recently posted about animal noises!) or me typing my notes as people talk). I have a team of about 30 people globally I support. My closest colleagues know about my dogs barking, so I am not too embarrassed now. When I meet them they all want to see pictures!
2. Telephone with a head set so you don’t have to hold the handset for hours. Some calls I make last up to 3 hours long.
3. I have a software programme and subscription to WEBEX. It’s a cool system. I can upload slides for a meeting, run them so they appear on colleagues’ screens, hand control to a colleague in China or Australia, run agenda summaries, keep track of who joined, send private messages (like shut up and let the others talk) or provide info privately to colleagues when we have suppliers or customers online.)
4. Video conferencing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Bandwidth often means you can either talk or move your arms but not both…unless you have a system called telepresence, but that’s usually only available only in an office.
5. To avoid the calls in the pyjamas syndrome, get up get dressed, go out and come in again like you would do in a real office. Take the dogs for a walk.

Weird Work Locations

I’ve had a lot of funny work locations and should probably enter the Extreme Conferencing Survey. I have made conference calls from a park, in a cave in the Malvern Hills, on a beach in Greece, at the side of an Extinct Volcano (planned a recruitment campaign in France, Puys D’Auvergne) in Killybegs harbour, County Donegal, Ireland (watching seals) and in a former warzone in Croatia, surrounded by burnt out/bombed houses.

Cultural Issues

Over the years I’ve spent making conference calls I’ve come to a few conclusions: Conference calls with the US are no problem as it’s a way of life out there. Conference calls with other English speaking countries such as Singapore and Australia are fine. They are getting used to the idea and we normally have good meetings. However conference calls with non-English speakers spells trouble. Firstly you have to speak perfect English, be respectful, no slang, don’t mumble etc. Also as you move eastwards, personal relationships get more important. You need to make the effort to meet folks you will speak to regularly. This really helps because when you next get on a call with them, they will know you and the barriers are removed.

I recently had a great call with a supplier in Kuwait because we already knew each other. However it is worth remembering that you should avoid Thursday nights, Friday and Saturday in the Middle East and never ever have a conference call late Friday afternoon in China. Friday evening is a sacrosanct family or social time.

Also remember, no one can see your body expression, you can’t see hand movements, so forget jokes etc. This brings me to my last point: to get on you need to figure out the social business culture of the folks you speak to. My company uses a really good site called Globe smart for this, however you may need to subscribe to use it. It enables users to find out what the business culture is in different countries around the world and so find out how counterparts would behave and adjust your behaviour accordingly. You can log in and by answering questions your personality profile is plotted against other nationalities. You can see how you are in comparison to members of your selected target cultures on various preferences such as direct/indirect communication style, individual/group orientation, egalitarian/hierarchical structures, task/relationship approaches, and tendencies toward risk/caution. For example you might find that you are very direct (like the Germans and Dutch) or very heirarchical like the Japanese. I’ve recently used it for doing business with people in Vietnam and it helps me avoid embarrassing faux pas. This is very important as none of us want to look a fool or upset people!

The Mobile Divide

Mobile phones are the new ‘mass media’. Smartphones are all the rage. Last month brought news that Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system will be on smart phones by the end of the year, Dell is to introduce a smart phone using Google software, and Verizon Wireless (the biggest wireless operator in the US) will market a variety of Google Android-powered devices.

Mobile is where it’s at.

And of course the mobile phone is of utmost importance to remote workers…well those on the move at least.

So what’s the problem?

I’ve got a fairly decent mobile phone. It’s a Nokia 5800. It’s got quite a lot of apps, good music storage, fairly decent camera and video functionality and it’s easy to use. It’s got clear and easy to use connectivity too. The only problem is although my contract gives me lots of free texts and call time I have to pay to go online. I don’t have unlimited data and downloads. After a very scary bill a while back I’ve now limited accessing the internet from my phone to ‘only when absolutely necessary‘.

So there, I’ve admitted it, I’m not ‘always online’. When I’m not in an area with wireless I’m very much offline (though I can be rung up, but that’s so last season…)

Not only that I seem to be surrounded by people who are permanently online.

I often wonder if they have very full wallets or have just made very good gadget choices in the past and are clued up on the best deals. I can understand how some people who are always away from their desk might have unlimited Internet access as an essential but I tend to work from my home that has a PC with broadband connection in it and for me it boils down to priorities. There are many things that come further up the list than paying to be permanently connected.

That said I do sometimes feel like I’m sitting the wrong side of a mobile divide. The divide is no longer whether you have a phone or not because most people do (we’ve all heard it said that there are more mobiles than people in the UK, recent stats suggest that 89% of people in the UK own a mobile phone), I guess whether you have a smart phone or not matters, but the real issue is if you can afford to download the data.

Keep up if you can

At UKOLN we’ve recently released a number of briefing papers on mobile technologies. These originate from a session given by Sharon Steeples at the Institutional Web Management Workshop – The Mobile Web: keep up if you can! Sharon talked about the challenges of creating Web sites for the mobile Web. She mentioned at the start that one of the biggest issues is that wireless and 3G is still something only the minority have and data costs big time! That said at University most students tend to have better phones than the staff – in the future I’ll be able to have my children’s cast offs!

Of course data cost will go down. (Last week the EU roaming cap law was found to be valid.) It was only last year that Dr Nigel Bannister, a space scientist from Leicester University, did the calculations to show how costly mobile phones can be. It was all part of efforts to defend the money spent on space programmes. Dr Bannister explained that:

“The bottom line is texting is at least four times more expensive than transmitting data from the Hubble space telescope – and is likely to be substantially more than that.“

So till my contract ends and downloading data gets cheaper I’ll stay on the cheap and cheerful side of the mobile divide.

Anyone else willing to admit they’re stuck in the same place?