Progress of life without a smartphone

Follow thoughts, musings and pains of my life without a smartphone on Twitter: @stugom :)

Life without a smartphone?

An interesting thing happened to me, well several interesting things happened actually, that have made me think about mobile connectivity, my life and mobile connectivity's intrusion into my life. Like most things, it took an observation of someone else's life for me to realise my own behaviours and habits were becoming quite anti-social to say the least.

Firstly, I observed a middle aged couple board the train to Gatwick on Christmas Eve 2010. After boarding the train and him taking out both BlackBerry and iPhone, a "conversation" ensued something like the following:

Him [whilst face in smartphone]: Jeff says the heating is broken...

Her: Tell him to call and get it fixed. He's a handyman isn't he?

Him [whilst face in smartphone]: I will email him instead... [starts email]

Him [whilst face in smartphone]: It's easier, the connection may drop on the train...

... [a short time passes] ...

Her: Shoot, I know what I forgot...

Him [whilst face in smartphone]: What's that?

Her: My iPod touch, oh well.

Him [whilst face in smartphone]: You only have some music on there, what else to do need it for?

Her: There are some games, it's just something to do when you are ignoring me.

Wow. Just wow. Well summarised Mrs 11:47AM Southern Service from CLJ to LGW.

The second such observation, this time with a friend of mine - has been bugging me for a while, but seeing as though it is such "normal" behaviour, I suppose I tolerated, in fact even copied... but he is constantly engrossed in his iPhone. Morning, noon and night. I enjoyed conversations with him - now he's here, but not here. Where? I don't know.

But I find myself doing the same... it pains me.

So on Friday, I sent myself to the Vodafone store... and bought a new non-smartphone. Here goes life without a smartphone.

Time to review the year

It's a perfect time of year to reflect, in front of the fire, glass of port on hand, on the past year and what I feel I have taken away from the distributed development projects I have worked on, conferences that I have attended and text-bytes that I have come across.

Some I have shared via twitter @stugom and others I have yet to share at all. In the coming weeks, I plan to put some of these lessons learnt and snippets down for my own benefit as well as yours.

Here's to a happy festive season and happy reflection on a successful and growing year.

Back in the game

I am back working on distributed development projects again... after a hiatus doing admin, sales and business development work - oh and some strategic IT work for a global electronic manufacturer, I am back working with a development team based off-shore again. More randomness and thoughts on the process soonest.

Simple OneNote blog test

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Making your distributed offering sensible

When working in a distributed manner, the one thing to bear in mind is the applicability and/or sensibility of what you are trying to offer online in a distributed context. The best model will mean you will need to spend some time with your client. There is an ancient tangible nature to business and I feel there always will be... it is a good thing. The relationship between supplier and customer is important and it needs to be physically re-inforced at some point in the engagement.

Getting back to the sensibility of your value to the market - the medium needs to be appropriate and sensible. Don't deliver ice to eskimo's type thing. Similarly - the latest offender in this regard: www.pleasehelpme.com - an online PC helpline; which is great, but only when you PC is not broken. Delivery of an online solution will require you to be online. And if your PC is broken and you cannot get online... how can you seek help?

So what does the BBC Olympic coverage have to do with this?

Having the flat to myself this weekend - I took the opportunity to "veg" on the couch and channel hop - I came across the BBC Olympic coverage presented pretty much 24/7 on several channels showing all the sports in which Britons had qualified to compete in Beijing representing their nation.

This still seems to be going no-where, but wait... The presenters were talking about the time of day according to the time of day IN ENGLAND - not in Beijing - as if in some alternate reality. So the point of this entry to is to talk about the need to localise delivery - ensure that your message is tailored to the audience and their environment. This is particularly important to make the intended recipient of the information to feel comfortable. Or maybe the BBC presenters feel at home too.

Indian companies have been known to work during your working day rather than their own - so right now at 12:11pm in New York, USA... half way through the work day, it is actually 21:41 (they have a half zone there) in Mumbai, India. Talk about night shift. Global commerce in a 24/7 business... in fact so firms now offer a 24 hours working day at centres in the States, India and China effectively getting through two man days "while you were sleeping" (to quote Tom Friedman in "The World Is Flat").

The ultimate goal is to reduce the difference (distance, time, language) between people. So next time you see Sue Barker saying good morning to you when the brunch team take over at 11am on BBC1; say good evening - because it's 6pm there!