A few years ago, Dialpad launched a very timely and on the money campaign all about the "Anywhere Worker." That was something I could identify with easily for a lot of reasons.
- When I launched Comunicano in 1993 the goal was to never have a physical office. This was well before the idea of remote work in marketing and advertising was considered normal
- In May of 2006 I launched the pioneering blog, Working Anywhere – the blog that was about just that. My mistake was I didn't keep that as active as VoIPWatch..well, mistakes can be corrected.
- In 1976 when I first started working for the Phildelphia Flyers' Hockey Central, I was an anywhere worker using a remote answering machine and a calling card to report to local media from an office, my home office and even ice rinks. In essence anywhere I was, was work. This followed two years of being the PR Assistant for the Philadelphia Wings, where the Spectrum Press Box was often my office.
- In 1989 when working for Foote, Cone and Belding's Impact-my office was the den in my parents house at night, while by day, between my cell phone and knowing where every payphone was on the Temple University campus, I stayed in touch with colleagues and clients. Oh, and then there was Jamey's Restaurant on Fridays with the Wine Lunch Bunch, and the phone in the back that was my "Friday office."
- In 2004 Comunicano began representing SightSpeed (thanks Peter Csathy) and we propelled the growth of video conferencing/calling well before Skype, and then sold the business to Logitech. I remember one call with Peter from Munich in November 2004, the day after a in person meeting in Emeryville, and his comment wondering how I could be in Munich as we had been emailing and chatting most of the day and night. I had been using Boeing's CONNEXXION service all night on my Lufthansa flight well before what is today's version of in-flight Wi-Fi.
- In the early 2000's hotels started to add broadband, and I can recall many a battle over some hotel systems powered by Cisco that didn't work with Mac's or airports powered by a company now owned by HP that didn't work with them either. As my now former wife, she being a girl geeky physician, would say, "If the hotel doesn't have broadband, Andy won't be staying there." So true.
- In May of 2015 after selling my home, I moved to Europe, living in Prague, Vienna, Krems, Paris, London over the first month and then basing myself in Lisbon and Porto for three, using mobile and fiber connectivity to operate Comunicano while I jetted around the EU for three months, really working from anywhere.
As a pioneer in the idea of "Working Anywhere" it's interesting to see how some things have changed, and others remain the same.
For those interested in the idea of the Anywhere Worker, Fuze is holding the Flex conference in Boston in June.