So many of us have a home `office’, yet we are never there. Take last week. My business took me to Tunbridge Wells, Hammersmith, Peveseney Bay, and Piccadilly respectively. Ahh, that left Friday free to `work at home’. No it didn’t. I work at my kids school on a Friday as part of a parent/school partnership so my `office’ is grabbing emails off my phone in between teaching French to lively little people who may grow up into a world where the `office’ is more of an abstract concept, like existentialism.

With free wireless starting to be available on some overland train routes, the phone replaces the laptop, and with wind up phones coming onto the market, the lack of a recharging socket on the way to St Pancras will no longer be an issue.

The idea that one should sit calmly and just `work’ in a familiar place, could become as quaint and old fashioned as having to stand still whilst on the phone tethered by a telephone wire. Being able to multitask whilst on a cordless phone is great for getting lots of things done at once, but sometimes the `yeh, I know what you mean’ really should be `I have no idea what you are talking about because I have just put the potatoes away in the dishwasher and set fire the frying pan.”

I wonder what the consequences of our mobile offices will be to our businesses?
(PS. This was all conceived and typed on the train between East Grinstead to Victoria)

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Chris Brogan discussed in his blog today about shuffling adds around and he brings out some interesting thoughts from the original article that had caught his attention. John Hagel writes in his blog Edge Perspective about how advertising is and will respond to the internet, and Chris highlights a key part of the article:

Why will the Internet ultimately undermine advertising? A number of factors come into play:

• The Internet proliferates resources, all competing for the attention of people. Even the most targeted and relevant ads over time will have a harder and harder time rising above the noise.

• The Internet creates powerful options for people in terms of how they become aware of new products and services and how they obtain information about the products and services that are relevant to them.

• The Internet offers increasingly powerful tools to filter and block advertisements (and, yes, product placements will be an interesting alternative for a while, until even that space becomes so cluttered that people will mentally filter out the products)

Which brings me to www.theopenbrand.resource.com since with the world changing so fast for advertisers, how those products are branded in a way that works well on the internet will be integral to how successfully advertisers can market them. I don’t see how branding your company if you are sending out physical brochures is going to neatly transplant to making the impression you want on a shifting internet audience. A different approach is required.

Your core values and vision for your business or product will become even more important to understand if it is to be communicated across so many variable and shifting worlds – the physical and the virtual (if you choose to head into Second Life.)

Or will advertisements online just become something else we have to mentally block out (like the ones on Facebook), and what value will the advertising companies be able to provide their customers then?

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At dinner at my mum’s recently I got interviewed and recorded by a neighbour. She must be in her fifties or maybe even older.

Her name is Moira and she walks with a stick, negotiating stairs and gangplanks with remarkable poise, with a recording device stashed in her large overcoat pockets. Moira (who I should explain, lives on the neighbouring houseboat to my mum) has retired to the river and engrossed herself in various academic courses, one of which involves an audio arts’ project. I asked what software she used on her Mac, and Moira raved about Cubase.

She told me how wonderful it was to bond emotionally with a piece of software. The look and feel of it, as well as it’s intuitive functionality. One of the reasons Apple has been so popular is not just because of what it looks like, but Mac owners can become as fond of their computer as some of us become of our cars.

With an aging population who want to exercise their minds, software developers should take note. If there are differences between what would attract a 20 year old to a software application and a 60 year old, it would be interesting to know.

Do you think there is a difference?

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