By 2012, 50% traveling workers leave laptops behind

By 2012, 50 per cent of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favor of other devices: Even though notebooks continue to shrink in size and weight, travelling workers lament the weight and inconvenience of carrying them on their trips. Vendors are developing solutions to address these concerns: new classes of Internet-centric pocketable devices at the sub-$400 level; and server and Web-based applications that can be accessed from anywhere. There is also a new class of applications: portable personality that encapsulates a user’s preferred work environment, enabling the user to recreate that environment across multiple locations or systems.

I thought you might be interested in learning more about LiquidTalk (www.liquidtalk.com). LiquidTalk’s secure, web-based (SaaS) application for the enterprise enables remote employees to find, organize and create business-oriented audio and video content and push it proactively to their mobile devices. LiquidTalk has now expanded its solution to include the media-enabled BlackBerry® 8800 Series, BlackBerry® Pearl™ and BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphones, as well as iPhones and iPods.

Market indicators point to the growing opportunity for organizations to implement mobile workforce engagement initiatives. According to IDC, in 2007 over two-thirds of US workers were mobile. IDC also reports that the market for mobile enterprise applications reached $1.2 billion in 2005 and will grow to $3.5 billion in 2010, representing a compound annual growth rate of 23%. A recent Aberdeen Group study found that the top two mobile workforce issues companies face are keeping road warriors efficient at all times and servicing customers effectively regardless of where employees are.

The LiquidTalk application tackles these challenges head-on through the power of multimedia content accessible through mobile devices. Business intelligence such as sample sales pitches, competitive updates, skills training and more can be accessed by remote employees during “cracks in the day” to prepare for productive customer interaction, and market-facing media like product demos and testimonials can empower more meaningful customer engagement. Such media is pushed to the mobile devices of specific employee groups using wired or wireless synchronization.

LiquidTalk empowers mobile sales enablement, learning and training, knowledge transfer, corporate and customer communication and more – wherever and whenever. Here’s how:

1. An organization launches its own branded LiquidTalk application for centralized access to proprietary audio/video content. Think iTunes – but for business. Best sales pitches, training segments, customer testimonials, product overviews and demos, word-on-the-street – any business intelligence can become a mobile asset.

2. A company’s employees, resellers, partners or other authorized users log in to find files, organize them into playlists and quickly syncing them to their preferred mobile device(s).

3. A phone-in feature enables easy creation and upload of podcasts on the fly.

4. Manager can push content to specific users and review usage detail.

5. LiquidTalk’s customer service team helps companies convert corporate knowledge into mobile content, manage devices and users and more.

If you’d like to see a short video on this solution, please visit http://www.liquidtalk.com/solution.php.

Reinventing office culture -- from home

By BECKY PALLACK, Arizona Daily Star
national

TUCSON, Ariz. -- More than 40 percent of this company's workers don't come to the office every day.

But managers don't mind when or where employees work -- as long as they get the job done well.

That's the IBM way of work-life balance.

"When employees have flexibility and autonomy on when and where they work, they're more productive and more committed to the business," said Andre'a Jackson, IBM's manager of work-life, flexibility and mobility.

In fact, workers say flexibility is the second-highest reason -- behind compensation -- they stay with IBM, Jackson said.

Mike Solan is a longtime IBM finance and marketing professional in Tucson who has worked from his home since 2001.

In the office, "I was the sort of the person who would go down the hall and talk to somebody rather than call them on the phone," he said.

Now, Solan said he would have a hard time working from an office again. He spends a lot of time on the phone, but also in chat rooms and in a virtual meeting room where team members can see a common drawing board.

"It's like being in the same room with the folks," he said. "I certainly don't miss the commute," which was at least a half-hour each way.

Working from home provides Solan more flexibility in his work schedule, like when he has to get up early to take an early call from Brazil, he said.

IBM is evaluating the pros and cons of telecommuting through a study by Jay Mulki, assistant professor of marketing at Northeastern University in Boston.

Mulki said that telecommuting presents two major challenges: a feeling of isolation and achieving a work-life balance.

Engineer Jose Chavez is one of the highest-ranking technical professionals at IBM and has worked from home for the past four years.

Communicating with co-workers over instant messenger keeps him from feeling isolated. But it's not an exact replacement for face-to-face contact, he said.

"You have to be a little more careful of what you type," Chavez said, because the online chatting includes no non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions or tones of voice.

Isolation happens when telecommuters can't get the support they need, Mulki said. When face-to-face communication isn't possible, workers need a substitute -- and voice mail isn't it, he said.
The other aspect is a feeling that work isn't being recognized. Employees appreciate managers who "toot their horn," Mulki said.

Other best practices included starting meetings by asking where everyone spent his or her weekend.

And those who successfully manage telecommuters differ from traditional office managers, Mulki said.

"Managers are not the traditional command-and-control managers; they're more like coaches," he said. "They say, 'Tell me what you need, and I'll go get it,' or they run obstacles for their employee."

Mutual trust is key to this work situation, Mulki said. Employees resent managers who give the impression of monitoring them, he said.

And when it comes to work-life balance, working from home can be good -- or bad.

"On the employer side, when you're at home, you're always available," Mulki said. "On the employee side, you wanted to be there to pick up your kid, or whatever the case may be."
When you're commuting to an office, the drive is a transition time, he said.

"When you're working at home, if you're not careful, you're never disengaged. You're always involved," Mulki said.

People who overcome the problem of work overtaking life have a separate room or workspace, they dress for work instead of staying in their pajamas and they take scheduled breaks and sick days when they need to.

Solan said he had a hard time learning when to quit work at the end of the day.

He solved the problem by scheduling and prioritizing, he said.

Twice a week, he starts work a little later to allow time for a bicycle ride. And he has an agreement with his wife that she can say hello when she comes home from her job, but they don't spend time together until he is done working, too.

Breaks also have changed. If water-cooler conversations start over the phone, it's easy to excuse yourself, Solan said. Now breaks are for stretching or letting his dog outside.

(E-mail Becky Pallack at bpallack(at)azstarnet.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

Eyes on the Enterprise

(Not So) Instant Karma
by Steve Vonder HaarApril 20, 2008

It must be karma. How else can one explain the long, sometimes checkered, evolution in the market for online business multimedia solutions?

Nearly a decade ago, it was relatively easy to sell the world on the idea of implementing web video for creative marketing applications. Think back to Broadcast.com’s ill-fated Victoria’s Secret webcast in February 1999. If you believe the company’s self-reported usage statistics for the event, about 1.5 million internet viewers tuned in to see the lingerie marketing event, which had been hyped to Super Bowl proportions.

Of course, most of the people tapping into the Victoria’s Secret webcast that day were more than likely to see jilted, jagged video peppered with repeated “buffering” interruptions, as the Broadcast.com servers largely failed in their attempt to make the video available to online users wanting to catch a glimpse of models strutting the catwalk in their underwear.

The resulting publicity from this technological debacle, however, was a boon for Victoria’s Secret, casting the retailer as a brand seemingly popular enough to crash the internet.

Similarly, Broadcast.com’s Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner parlayed the attention—and the red-hot internet market of the day—into a sale of their company to Yahoo! that made them both billionaires.

These days, Cuban is more focused on spending part of his internet loot on a point guard that can push his Dallas Mavericks deep into the NBA playoffs than he is on online video.

Meanwhile, the online business multimedia market continues to grow steadily even while fighting the forces of karmic retribution.

Back in the days of the Victoria’s Secret webcast, the technology needed to drive such an event was truly not ready for primetime. Yet, companies such as Victoria’s Secret were ready to take the plunge with web video marketing events. And pundits at the time told us that Victoria’s Secret would be only the first in a new wave of corporate marketing events incorporating online multimedia.

It hasn’t quite turned out that way. The business online multimedia sector has grown smartly in the years since the Victoria’s Secret event, but it probably has not reached the levels envisioned by many back then. Instead of becoming part of the fabric of online marketing, internet video has emerged as a highly effective tool for one-to-many internal communications for large organizations.

The potential still exists for web video to evolve into a cornerstone marketing platform for a wide range of organizations. Indeed, the one problem highlighted during the Victoria’s Secret era has clearly been overcome.

Today, we can unequivocally say that the technology works. When a user clicks on the “play” button of an online multimedia player, the expectation is that he or she will see a good quality video stream without the buffering issues of yesteryear. And in the vast majority of cases, that user’s expectation is met, regardless of the format in which the content is delivered.

Clearly, concerns about the reliability of the technology are melting away. In a survey of 1,209 corporate executives conducted by Interactive Media Strategies in 2007, only 1% of respondents said that the primary barrier to the deployment of online multimedia is that the “technology is not ready for the mainstream.”

So, you ask, what is the biggest barrier to the deployment of online business multimedia? Among companies that have yet to deploy online multimedia, the single most referenced factor keeping them from implementing the technology is that there is “no need, no use” for the technology in their day-to-day business communications. Overall, 24% of respondents from companies that have yet to deploy online multimedia essentially say that they have no productive use for the technology.

Let’s put it another way. Nearly a decade after the grand Victoria’s Secret marketing webcast experiment, this industry continues to wrestle with the problem of convincing executives of the value of multimedia for enriching online communications.

Back then, the corporate spirit was willing, but the technology was simply unable to deliver the goods. Today, the technology is more than capable, but that corporate will to experiment with web video, so strong a decade ago, has disappeared. Businesses have barely scratched the surface in leveraging the multitude of ways that online multimedia can be used to communicate with partners, prospects, and customers.

Why is this the case? Like I said, it must be karma.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/r/printerfriendly.asp?id=10143

Family Violence Clinic Receives $376,000 in Federal Funds

From left, President Jim Doti, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, Dean John C. Eastman, Professor Marisa Cianciarulo, and Anaheim Chief of Police John Welter.

On Friday April 11, 2008, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, Chapman University alumna and member of the Chapman Board of Trustees, presented a check for $376,000 in federal “earmark” funding for the Chapman University School of Law's Family Violence Clinic. Congresswoman Sanchez presented the check to John Eastman, dean of the Chapman University School of Law, Marisa Cianciarulo, director of the clinic and School of Law faculty member, Chapman President James L. Doti and Anaheim Chief of Police John Welter. The clinic, located in the Anaheim Family Justice Center and staffed by students from the Chapman School of Law, provides direct legal services to domestic violence victims within the 47th Congressional District. The presentation event, which was covered by numerous Los Angeles and Orange County media outlets, also commemorated the Clinic’s opening in 2007 and highlighted the collaboration of on- and off-site partners at the Anaheim Family Justice Center, including the City of Anaheim, Anaheim Police Department, Chapman University School of Law, the Women’s Transitional Living Center, and the County of Orange, among others.

“I’m thrilled that my alma mater is providing its students to help people who really need the assistance,” Sanchez said. President Doti added, “We’re extremely proud of this kind of Chapman outreach, where the university and our students can have a real and positive impact upon the Orange County community.”