A Road Warrior’s Dream

These days, I just thought about all that new technologies and gadgets and why I use some and some use others.

Working with a company, I was faced one day with the fact that they used Laptops for their management and sales people, but these laptops were not set up to work outside the company’s own cabled network. WLAN? A risk. UMTS? A risk. Internet? A risk. What they never considered was the fact that a road warrior, an employee meant to travel and not be in the office may need the laptop to access mail and files in the company’s environment. Instead to providing professional solutions, the company’s IT-manager shut down the network and opened Internet only with greatest reluctance. That was and is the one side of the issue.

In fact, being a road warrior, I am quite happy, to be once in a while “offline”. No mobile phone, no internet. Vacation, spend concentrating only on my company. Not the employer, but the two-legged walking, sitting next to and talking with me. Internet inflight? I know many road warriros hoping it will never truly work. It will, but it will also take of some relaxation out of the stressful enough business trip.

So sometimes, I dream of the good old days, when it was rather normal to reach the secretary, but there was no mobile phones and people were a little more patient about being called back ;-) And I hope that triggers quite some comments… :-D Come on people, don’t you sometimes thing the same? ;-)

Food For Thought

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Remington_smoke_signal.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Remington_smoke_signal.jpg

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Comments (3)

  1. Olga wrote::

    Yes, I agree, sometimes it can be not okay and very pleasant to be always in access and to be reached for all your bosses, for tiresome people asking for something what takes your time and really is not so needed for them… -as discovered after…
    sometimes happens, yes…

    But in other angle: when there is nobody around there for you “walking, sitting next to and talking with ” - and suddenly some internet connection (which you are sometimes so tired of) brings you a word of friendship and support from the other side of the globe… also happens some time, yes?
    Some people answer your questions, you come to know they are interested in communication - think different, but understanding… and share you food for thoughts… :) -then it seems not so bad, and our small world seems a little more united and more kind, agree? this is one of the reasons to write these opened Food for Thoughts, isn’t it?

    Monday, May 4, 2009 at 23:00 #
  2. jbarthel wrote::

    Hi Olga,
    I talk about vacation and occasional ability to be offline some times. I do not wish to go back and live without Internet. Internet helps me to stay in touch with friends. I do have my mobile phone but am sometimes happy when I can switch them off. I do understand the value of a (good) secretary, to keep my back clear so I can do my job. And sometimes it is nice to be offline and concentrate on the real world (i.e. family, friends). The good thing is, if I can control my time offline. A few weeks ago I was “forced offline”, moving. Whew. It drove me nuts :-D But again. Isn’t it nice sometimes to switch of the mobile phone (or “forget it at home” or in the office), to be traveling for vacation to a place where there’s no Internet and concentrate only on the accompanying person(s)? It can be rather relaxing… ;-) Thanks for your feedback!
    Jürgen

    Monday, May 4, 2009 at 23:38 #
  3. Olga wrote::

    it means that even the persons most devoted to their work sometimes need to have a break as real vacations…
    I think there is nobody in the world to oppose it :) - whatever country…
    and the task of TOP managers is to provide good secretary job and colleagues assistance for a while somebody to have this vacation time properly. And next is and to survive when coming back after vacations and NOT finding heaps of un-controlled process…
    This is what shows Co. TOPs to be best organized, wish to all of us to have this type!

    Team work is a really endless theme to discuss!
    But office people often seem to be afraid of making critics…This is what you mentioned as Cassandra-effect in some of previous posts. This is very rarely discussed considering as dangerous to the discussion members :)

    Thanks for posting, Jürgen.

    Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 09:09 #