What's happening now? What is this 'new boom' roller coaster ride we're on? I'll tell you... I think we're finally reaping the tremendous gains in productivity and efficiency that communications technology and globalization have been threatening to bring for years.
It really is on the verge of being a 24/7, always on world. (I'm thinking of writing a paper or giving a talk called 'Everywhere and always on/right here, right now' because they really are the same thing--more on this later.) I'm writing this post as an email on my TREO while I'm waiting for and riding on a subway car--I'll send it when I get outside.
Let me tell you one story from today that illustrates where we are and where we are going... And architect in Melbourne, Australia is working on a big headquarters building for a bank and wants to team with Gensler to design the work environment. So he picks up the phone and dials the LA office of Gensler (Why LA? I don't know.). The person who answers the phone in LA writes an email to some people in our DC office, because she thinks they may have banking experience there, and copies a bunch of people in the LA office, too. The DC office, fortunately, knows that our financial experience lies in the New York office, which is coincidentally located in New York, the financial capital of the world. (To their credit, LA knows a lot about the entertainment industry and DC knows a lot about working for the Feds... Imagine that!) Anyway, DC bounces the email to me, and copies everybody in LA who had been copied before, and a few in DC and in NY, too. I go online, and find that we may have actually have worked with this architect before, on a big development in Dalian, China. I also know a certain studio director in NY who has lots of financial experience AND is an Australian. So I wrap all this info up in an email, attach a secure PDF file with our big bank qualifications, and bounce it back to LA to send to Melbourne. One additional point of note: the email from LA said that the architect in Melbourne wanted our info for a meeting with the bank client today. Which today? I'm doing this at 7pm in New York... It's the middle of the next day in Australia! Hoping that the call had just come in that morning (rather than the previous day), and that we could still get our info to the architect in Melbourne, I pressed send.
Things like this are beginning to be normal, everyday occurances. Just watch what happens next.
Now I press send on this so I can look at the menu in this Mexican restaurant...
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