Converged ConnectionsOf Conference Calls, Cell Phones, and WiFi-Enabled Laptops

Prior to the year 2000, we were a business world in love with our office spaces and corporate travel. We traveled to work (the office) every day. We traveled away from the office for customer meetings, for internal meetings, for conferences, for awards ceremonies...we traveled because we could and we believed that it was necessary for the competitive advantage. That all changed rather quickly with the economic downturn of the early 2000s and, of course, 9/11. In short order, we relearned how to do business remotely by first re-igniting the "conference call."

The obvious intention of increased dependence on conference calls was to reduce corporate travel and its attendant expense. The less-obvious downside of this trend was that although these admittedly low-tech calls resulted in high-value efficiency, they also produced an increased rate of stress-producing multitasking.

The corporate payroll compression of the early 2000s specifically meant that we were all tasked with far more work than a single individual could perform adequately. To help make us more efficient, we introduced cell phones so that we could make calls while traveling and WiFi-enabled laptops that enabled us to take our work anywhere and exchange messages with anyone (provided a "hotspot" could be found). Conference calls, cell phones, and laptops have pushed personal multitasking to unparalleled levels. For example, workers are now able to process the relentless stream of e-mails and instant messages as well as review financial and marketing documents, all while supposedly being active during a conference call. (It should now be clear why videoconferencing has yet to catch on.) The experience of Mark Bregman, CTO of Veritas Software, is becoming more and more common: "I was on a call the other day and realized half way through that four of the people were physically at the same site but separately dialed in. Why? Because we need to work on 10 things at once now."

Does this sound unsettling? It is not for some. In fact, for those able to do three things at once, it is a stress reliever. Prior to this work style, employees who were required to be physically at meetings (even on-site) would worry about e-mail that was piling up as well as a half-written product presentation due the next day. Stress would slowly build as the meeting drew long. The productiveness of a conference call definitely suffers because multitasking participants are only slightly paying attention. But no matter...overall efficiency is increased for those who can draw the connections together and somehow manage to stay engaged in the call at the same time.

Unexpectedly, the preponderance of conference calls and portable office accoutrements has gained workers a new degree of personal freedom: nonoffice hours. Suppose you have conference calls at 2 P.M., 3 P.M., and 4 P.M.each one booked for an hour. Does it matter whether you take those calls physically at your office or your house? So, you can be home for a child who gets off the school bus at 3:30 P.M. and even get the roast into the microwave defrost cycle. In any given conference call, the majority of participants are on mute. When they need to speak, one often hears the ambient sounds of home lifedogs barking, children screaming, or the sounds of bathwater sloshing about.

Growth of Teleconferencing

In 1997, the teleconferencing industry introduced reservationless self-serve conference calling setup (not requiring an operator) systems. This significantly accelerated usage, and the industry grew by double digits for years.^[1] The stagnant voice phone market suddenly became a growth market. From just before 2000 (and before 9/11) through 2003, the market grew 40 percent and continues to grow at nearly that pace,^[2] driven by several factors: a need for more expedient business transactions, minimizing travel expense, avoiding contagious diseases (the SARS outbreak), and dealing with a more geographically diverse workforce. Add in rapidly falling voice communication costs and Internet-based voice conferencing (plus Internet-augmented e-meetings and video capabilities), the industry will continue to grow. Teleconferencing compresses time for us.

^[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2001/03/19/focus3.htl.

^[2] http://e-meetings.mci.com/confnews/20030506-a.php.

For some, the flip side of this new freedom is that calls can often take place at midnight when dealing with Asia, or 5 A.M. when dealing with Europe, or 10 P.M. when in Europe dealing with the U.S. The reality of the global economy for most of us is that the workday is now completely ill-defined in terms of start and finish hours.

Conference calls, cell phones, and laptops all enable a level of freedom nonexistent in the old corporate world. We can now work anywhere...and everywhere. Proportionally, they de-emphasize the value of the physical corporate office cube. In large multilocation companies such as IBM, a project team typically consists of people spanning three to six different sites (and maybe as many countries). Out of the 300 people who may be in your physical building, virtually none of them have any relation to you or the work you do anymore. You are now knitted together by a virtual thicket of project blogs, e-mails, instant messages, and, of course, conference calls. Does it even matter whether you physically go into work anymore? Often, it does not.