The next few weeks could potentially be the most important in our planet’s history. Today is the first day of the two-week UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Delegates from 192 countries around the world have come together to work on a global framework on carbon emissions which will eventually replace the Kyoto Protocol. As Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen puts it, this is an “opportunity the world cannot afford to miss“.

I’d say I’m a fairly opinionated person and throughout my youth was a quite an activist, I regularly attended animal-rights rallies, political meet-ups and went on anti-BNP marches. If there was an opportunity to shout about something I believed in I was there. So now I’ve grown up and have children of my own. I’m a busy working mum with lots on my plate, going out demonstrating is something I felt I’d left behind. However recent times have shown us that there if we don’t change the way we work as a planet we are in serious trouble. Now is not the time for apathy.

I’m not going to argue about the statistics, others are quite capable of doing that. Whatever the finer details the problem is clear. Today our route to school took us by flooded fields aplenty. Not a strange sight for today’s kids, heavy rain is pretty normal these days. We don’t really know what effects climate change will have on us but isn’t it obvious that we can’t keep on beating up the world we live in?

This weekend I attended The Wave march (organised by Stop Climate Chaos) in central London. I’ve never seen so many people together, working towards a common goal (estimates range from 30,000 to 50,000 people – I’d definitely go for the later!). The march was amazing, through strangely quiet and subdued. People were very focused, there was a real recognition that this is not just fun, something has to be done. What is happening is scary stuff. I’m really frightened about what sort of world my children will grow up in.

I’m far from perfect when it comes to being green but I want to do more. If we stop looking away and we start working together I really think this could be the turning point.

Why not have a look at:

• Official website of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
• The COP15 blog
• The Wave on Twitter
• The intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Yesterday I made a fleeting visit to Online Information 2009 held at Olympia, London. Online is billed as the largest event dedicated to the information industry and it did seem to be heaving! The conference and exhibition run in parallel and there is also a show floor seminar programme.

The 'tent' I gave my talk in

I was asked along to give a talk on remote working as part of the Information Masterclasses and Career Development Talks track in the exhibition hall. This was the first time I’d presented to a transient audience (the seminar was free so people could pop in and out of the ‘tent’) and I was a little bit apprehensive.

Me presenting on Remote Working in a 2.0 World

In reality it played out pretty much like a standard seminar (people actually stayed all the way through) but with just a little more background noise. For those who came along and for anyone else interested here are my slides (on Slideshare).

I also managed to get over to the conference to see a few talks in the track on The social Web: transforming the workforce (also given the byline Email is dead! The rise of Twitter, chat and communities). Although there weren’t any great revelations the track was moderated by Ewan McIntosh, Digital Commissioner for Channel 4, who always comes up with interesting ideas. One story by Ian McNairn (Program Director Web Innovation & Technology, IBM) particularly struck me. He was talking about a friend of his who had managed to reduce his email inbox to 20 messages a week, he’d done this through improved use of social networking tools and having a clear policy on his communication with people. He’d basically told people not to email him unless there is no other suitable alternative and he has set up his mail box to delete any messages over a certain size. I must admit to being a little envious of his resolve…

Benchmarking and measuring quality are standard practices these days in both the business and non-business world.

For goods we have the Kitemark symbol indicating they’ve been tested against safety and performance criteria. The Kitemark has been around since the early 1900s and is owned and operated by the British Standards Institution (BSI).

For organisations we have ‘business improvement tools’ like Investors in People marketed as a way to “transform your organisation’s performance by targeting your chosen business priorities“. One of the big aims of the indicator was that the organisations carrying it would in turn be the sorts of places people would want to work in.

The government runs QA schemes for all sorts of things including the Quality Assurance Scheme for Carbon Offsetting (QAS) and the recent quality mark for pensions.

I’m no expert but it’s clear that measuring quality is a cottage industry that can only continue to grow.

And as for benchmarking, well we are inundated with league tables for everything under the sun, from schools and MP expenses to fridge freezers and wireless providers.

So what about remote working?

Currently the main standard out there is the Work Wise standard, a standard for the adoption and deployment of smarter and more flexible working practices, launched back in 2007.

Organisations wishing to gain the standard will be assessed according to criteria that benchmark their adoption of flexible working practices. Awards against the Work Wise standard will be based on the amount of flexibility for the workforce, the levels of self-determination that employees have and operational benefits derived by the organisation.

A detailed overview is provided in pdf format.

As for benchmarking, well there was the Remote Worker awards I attended which judged organisations alongside individuals. Details of the 2010 awards are now on the Remote Employment site. However there doesn’t seem to be any tables of who employs the most remote/home workers and how organisations compare on the flexible working front.
Most of my data is gleaned from the UK National Statistics office. Not a particularly fun task!

So is there something out there I’ve missed?

I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who can offer me any more in this area.

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 phenomenon 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 do people think?

It’s not often that ‘Wiltshire’ and ‘trail-blaizing’ 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 in 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 in the early days of such 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 if there are any other 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 sounds a 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 hi-tec!

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.

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.

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!

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!)

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.