A few weeks ago I read a post by Steve Gillmor from Salesforce.com about The Office of the Future which pointed out how high tech (iPad, iPhone, GoToMeeting, Skype) and “low rent” (McDonalds parking lot) the office of the future is for some already.
Last night, I was getting ready to go out for the night to do a video shoot and some post-production work when I stopped to think, “Should I bring my laptop with me?” Only a couple of thoughts later in my mind, I concluded that my office is not just an anywhere office, it’s really at the same time a nowhere office. I headed out the door with only a iPhone in hand, yet I knew that I wouldn’t lose productivity that night on account of the lack of technology I was carrying.
In video post-production, you spend a lot of time designing the look and feel you need for a project, then when it comes to output, you can spend hours waiting for your work to be rendered, encoded and finally published to whatever medium you choose. What can you do while you’re waiting? The answer is be productive on a computer that’s anyone’s.
A majority of the business tools I use every day don’t live on a hard drive. They’re in the cloud so Im not locked to a physical office location, nor even to a specific piece of hardware like a laptop or a network to be productive.
What could I do from the edit bay while my projects were rendering and encoding?
I could into Salesforce.com, send some custom email templates to prospective customers and update opportunities I am working on. I could add publishing and video view analytics from The Salesforce Channel to the custom objects in Salesforce and update my channel performance dashboard.
I could search for, organize, filter, and publish videos for The Salesforce Channel all from a standard web browser. Even all my tag groupings are stored in Google Docs so I wasn’t more than a login away from all that.
I could use HootSuite to look at all my favorite Twitter groups and send updates off to my Facebook profile and Pages as well as LinkedIn and obviously Twitter. Through the browser, HootSuite give me a consistent user interface with the same productivity and immediate connectivity to all my networks. All configurations are stored in the cloud and look the same, no matter where I log in.
I could look for new blog posts and status updates on the most important companies and people I talk to each week using Gist. I don’t need to install any app; I go to the Gist website and all my interactions, whether email, calendar, Facebook or Twitter are stack-ranked by importance on my Gist dashboard.
I could work on a collaborative planning spreadsheet, document, or wiki page using Google Docs and Sites instead of tossing files on flash drives and never-ending email threads with constant revisions.
Truthfully, I was able to do all the above work securely, in the cloud, with need for nothing more than the browser on the Mac Pro I happened to be using while encoding the video. I didn’t need processor power; it happened in the cloud. I didn’t need a flash drive because my files and data were all in the cloud. I didn’t need to install applications or plugins or even use a certain browser. My work just gets done wherever I am. And if I’m in the edit bay or on a friend’s laptop or even at my mom’s house, I can be just as productive because my anywhere nowhere office is all I need.
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