Jeremy Green
Report from the London 'Mobility Summit'
We attended the European Technology Forum's 'Mobility Summit' in London over 11-12 July. Held in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on London, there was a slightly subdued atmosphere, but the event was no less valuable for that. Both audience and speakers were dominated by users rather than suppliers, and the discussions were much more honest and richer as a result. Comment: We were particularly struck by how much of the conference focused on the 'soft stuff' - the cultural and organisational changes needed to enable companies to adopt mobile working. While workforce and union conservatism came in for some pro forma bashing, it was old-style managers who took most of the heat. Speaker after speaker blasted the 'bums on seats' mentality. There was continual reference to managers who were simply unable to accept that mobile workers were getting their job done, and instead seemed to believe that anyone out of the office was 'sitting in the sun and sipping beer'. At the same time, mobile workers often feel unsupported when they are away from base - 'how come no one at head office ever picks up the phone when we call from the field?'Most speakers agreed that new kinds of management, and new kinds of metrics for measuring performance, were an absolute requirement for mobility. Some speakers - notably the rather charismatic Luke Mellors, Director of IT at the Dorchester Hotel - insisted that it would increasingly be an issue for managers to help staff change their work-life balance, and to make sure that they understood that being a mobile worker does not mean being available for work 24-7. Managers, he said, should 'set out the requirements on the end-user; tell them they can turn it off on the weekend'. Naturally, not everyone agreed; Professor James Woudhuysen (De Monfort University) argued forcefully that work-life balance was a 'politically correct' chimera, and that 'it's obsessive childcare that is the problem' rather than overwork.There was broad agreement, too, that more technology - let alone more bandwidth - was not a primary requirement. 'We are not taking advantage of the technologies that are available today.' In the words of Chris Haynes from the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 'the future is about consolidating and integrating technologies'.After all that, a presentation by Emin Gudenti, Technology Director of event sponsor T-Mobile UK, on all the great new bearer technologies which would soon be available, seemed to be coming from a different planet.
