May 2005

A Free Monthly Newsletter.

This Month's Headlines

Click on any Headline to go to the full story.

This is our personal note welcoming you to the May 2005 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. Right now we're still in recovery mode from the World Congress on the Future of Work. It was a terrific experience, and this issue is devoted to sharing it as best we can in a narrative form.

Future of Work continues to seek and welcome new members. Rob Moran, founder of the Ancora Group, has joined Future of Work as a small business member. And we're also looking for authors to feature in future issues of this newsletter.

We've pulled together a quick report and brief summary of what we learned in Philadelphia. It's not the whole story, and it reflects only our own experience, but we think it's a reasonable start at making sense out of an incredibly complex and dynamic two days of intense conversation in the City of Brotherly Love - and sisterly affection (to quote Philadelphia Mayor John Street, who welcomed the Delegates).

It feels as if almost every month one of us shouts at you to "read this book, or you will die." But this time we really, really, really mean it. Tom Friedman's The World is Flat is getting a lot of press these days, and it is all well-deserved. This is frankly the first nonfiction book we can remember being such a page-turner that it is almost literally impossible to put down.

This section appears from time to time, as we come across (or write ourselves) new perspectives on what is actually happening (or may happen) in the word of work. These reports are different from "The Future is Already Here" notes below, in that here we report on formal research studies, findings, and data we find valuable, while in "The Future is Already Here" we use "raw" anecdotes, news stories, and case studies about things already going on that we think you should know about.

In one form or another, the future of work is already here. This periodic section provides you with notes from all over the world - stories about what's happening somewhere today that provides clues to what will be happening everywhere tomorrow.

We end each issue of Future of Work Agenda with a personal perspective - our chance to comment on issues and developments in the world of work that we find important and interesting. This is our "editorial" page, where we enjoy offering our opinions and predictions about what's happening (or should be happening) in the world of work.

From Jim and Charlie

Well, better late than never. Here at last is our May issue, which we deliberately delayed so we could provide you with an up-to-the-minute report on our just-completed World Congress on the Future of Work.

We're very pleased and proud about the 2005 World Congress. Please read our Feature Article here, and be sure to check out the "live reports" that Elizabeth Albrycht posted on our Future of Work weblog during the event itself. And there are also some great candid camera shots of the Delegates at work in the Photo Album on the World Congress home page.

We are already hard at work cooking up an even more powerful event for 2006. Stay tuned for details, and plan to join us.

Our book review this month is focused The World is Flat, Tom Friedman's new warning to America that this is not your father's economy. We strongly urge you to read the book. But please do more than that - pick one of the critical issues that Friedman writes about (education, health care, energy independence, the national debt, global competition) and do something about it. Our collective future, not just your own, depends on a fairly significant change in policy and direction now, not twenty years or even five years from now.

In fact, we feel so strongly about the book and its messages that we've been posting short comments and excerpts on our Future of Work blog for the last several days.

Finally, we hope you'll also enjoy In Our Humble Opinion, where this month we abandoned our regular ranting style in favor of a rave - once more, about the World Congress and our strong optimism about the future. After two-plus days in the company of 80 really smart people, we firmly believe that the future of work will be a positive, rewarding, and attractive place. Our Delegates won't accept anything less.

And of course we hope you'll check out our Announcements, Research Notes, and The Future is Already Here too.

So, on to the rest of the newsletter. Enjoy! And please let us know what you think.

Announcements

Future of Work Program Actively Seeks Individual and Small Business Members

Future of Work now offers several levels of membership that depend on your status and needs: Individual and Small Business, Corporate, and Implementation Partners. We also offer special discounts to nonprofit, educational, and public sector organizations.

These membership programs are described in more detail on the Future of Work website, or feel free to contact us directly for more information about fees and benefits.

Our newest individual/small business member is Rob Moran, founder of the Ancora Group. Rob was also a Delegate at the 2005 World Congress on the Future of Work. Welcome, Rob!

All individual members of our community are now listed on the Future of Work website, in the About Us/Members section. We encourage all our readers to consider joining the community.

Please visit our website at www.thefutureofwork.net and apply for membership today.

Got Article?

This is just a quick reminder that we are always opening to considering article submissions from any of our readers. And feel free to send us short notes or links to materials or websites that you think are worth sharing. If you have something to submit, or even just an idea for an article you'd like to see, feel to contact us anytime. And check out our article submission guidelines online at:

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/news_newsletter_submit.html

The Feature Article: And a Grand Time Was Had By All

By Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

From where we sit, the 2005 World Congress on the Future of Work was a terrific success. We can't resist starting off this brief summary of our experiences and learnings with a picture of Philadelphia Mayor John Street welcoming the Delegates to Philadelphia.

Mayor Street focused his remarks on "Wireless Philadelphia", emphasizing its importance to local residents, schools, and businesses. He also stressed the challenges involved in forming a wireless municipal infrastructure. The city faces severe resistance established service providers and other special interests who see a municipal system as serious competition to their own businesses.

We were very fortunate that Dianah Neff, Chief Information Officer for Philadelphia and the day-to-day champion of Wireless Philadelphia, was a Delegate. She participated actively in several of our World Café sessions and in the Town Meeting on New Ways of Working that was hosted by Toni Kistner of Network World.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Our goal in this report is to provide you with a high-level summary of the issues we covered, the insights the Delegates generated over two days of intense conversation, and some of the "products" that are coming out of the World Congress. We're not going to walk through the entire agenda minute-by-minute; we'd rather focus on the content of the conversations and the new ideas that we all left the World Congress buzzing about.

(If you are interested in more details about the agenda, the Delegates, and the "raw" sense of what transpired in Philadelphia, please visit the World Congress website (http://www.futureofworkcongress.net) or take a look at our Future of Work weblog, where Elizabeth Albrycht's on-the-spot reports and photos are available).

Setting the Context

Following Mayor Street's welcoming remarks and a similar greeting from our "official" host, Kevin Kampschroer (representing the General Services Administration), we opened the World Congress by officially declaring it a PowerPoint-free zone.

Our intention, as those of you know us know, was (and always will be) to create a context in which the Delegates could listen, learn, and teach each other; each Delegate came to the World Congress with valuable knowledge, experience, and questions. The World Congress was a forum where we could all explore together and develop a collective intelligence that goes way beyond what any of us could ever build as an individual.

Charlie put it this way: "We are going to provide you with access to tools, people, and ideas, and each Delegate will receive a toolkit that will help you create a productive future in your workplaces and your communities."

Charlie then highlighted several aspects of the world of work that feel different to us from just a year ago:

• The speed of technology diffusion has increased significantly. We see more new kinds of collaborative technology and collaborative platforms appearing every day.
• The predicted shortage of skilled knowledge workers is becoming very real, especially in the last six months or so.
• The bloom is off the rose of globalization. It isn't working as well as many people thought it would. That's a big subject that we'll come back to many times over the next two days.
• There are many more real-world experiments in shared work environments, distributed work programs, and serious use of collaborative technologies. Some are working, some are not.

What Did We Learn?

So, cutting to the chase and skipping all the process replay, what were the "Really Big" learnings that came out of this year's World Congress? We'll actually have this all sorted out in a lot more detail in another month or so, but here's what stands out for us right now (others will naturally have different perspectives, and we relish continuing the dialogue):

1. Distributed work may be surprisingly attractive to older workers - and to their employers.

Several of the early conversations about the future of work began by focusing on the huge number of public and private sector employees who are already able to retire (in his opening conversation with us Kevin Kampschroer pointed out that fully 50% of federal employees are eligible to retire right now).

Not only the federal government but many other organizations need to keep those folks on the payroll for the foreseeable future, for the simple reason that there aren't anywhere near enough talented younger workers (meaning anyone below about age 55) available to step into those empty slots.

We also remembered that the majority of those baby boomers have saved only about $50,000 towards retirement, and that they probably won't actually be retiring any time soon simply because they can't afford to.

However, some kind of "gradual retirement" might become very popular, including provisions for older workers to work part-time, and from home, thereby avoiding lengthy and unpleasant commutes and perhaps enabling them to live in smaller, more attractive communities, some distance away from major metropolitan areas.

What really struck some Delegates is that the older workforce may need substantial training in how to use online tools for work. But work online and remotely means that people don't necessarily know your age, and generally can't judge you on your appearance (we don't all have web cams yet). That might be a significant reason for more older people to move towards online work.

2. One of the biggest changes in the future of work will be the degree and kind of control that individual workers have over where, when, and what they do to produce value.

A dominant aspect of work in the future (at least for knowledge workers) will be the extent to which the workers themselves will be determining what they do, when they do it, where they do it, and - most importantly - how they do it.

This means, essentially, that individuals have major choices to make - and most of us are not yet skilled at making those kinds of choices because we don't have much experience at it. In the "old world" of work we went to a corporate office because that's where our file were, that's where the company resources (including support staff) were, and that's where we would meet with colleagues, bosses, suppliers, and even customers.

Now, of course, we can do that work anywhere, anytime, and we meet all those fellow workers wherever it's most convenient. And all too often we blur the boundaries between our professional and our personal lives. We have a tendency to take our laptops, cell phones, PDA's, and other "tools of the trade" with us just about everywhere we go (including the beach, the golf course, the living room, and the car) because we can - not always because we "have to."

Many knowledge workers also mix and match their "work day" and their personal time, to the extent that they run personal errands mid-day and make up for it by working late at night. That's a real benefit of the information economy, but a major complication as well.

We believe that learning how to choose, and how to set limits on when and where they "work," will be one of the biggest tasks facing knowledge workers over next few years as they finally begin to take charge of their work, and their lives.

And organizational managers are going to have to learn to operate and exercise influence in a world where the individual workers are "in charge." And that won't be easy.

3. Economic development agencies, and local community initiatives, will be a major factor in creating the future of work.

This World Congress was the first one where we actually had economic development professionals mixed in with corporate real estate executives; that design was completely intentional. It seems clear to us that organizations - both large and small - have a growing demand for talent (workers), while the supply resides in local communities. So, how can we best match supply and demand?

Traditionally, organizations would offer to pay for a new hire's relocation to the area where the corporate office was located. And then, in their infinite wisdom, would transfer people around the country frequently, and at tremendous cost. All of this sub-optimal behavior was driven by the belief that people needed to "live close to where they worked." Well, given current technology, globalization, and several other factors, "work" is no longer a synonym for "place," and people are now able to work from almost anyplace they happen to be.

At the World Congress we heard case studies, testimonials from several people, and some very forward thinking that leads us to conclude that in the future communities will become known for the kind and quality of work that occurs within them. Organizations in search of increasingly scarce talent will reach out to help local communities build and maintain the infrastructures needed to support "remote" workers who will be making independent choices about where they want to live and come home to from work (there's that confounding of work and place again; how could we say it differently).

This perspective implies that in order to be sustainable, communities will choose to promote economic development plans and programs that support emergent workers, help attract for "creative talent," and reduce their dependence on growth through increasing retail sales tax revenues. The future of work will be created by communities and their residents as much as it will be by companies trying to stay competitive in the global marketplace for talent.

4. Corporate office facilities will undergo radical redesign as architects and facilities managers redefine their roles as enablers of work, not as creators and managers of physical places.

This is a major shift in thinking. And a quantum leap in perspective. Now, admittedly we were only dealing with several dozen self-selected thinkers and senior executives. But this is a theme we have also seen in larger professional organizations such as CoreNet Global. In fact, the very terms "facilities manager" and "human resource support" may not even appear in our new dictionary of the grammar of work.

First of all, the physical work structures themselves must be designed and built from a different perspective. We don't design our homes to minimize the cost per square foot and then just let people figure out what to do in them. No, we design and build our residential environments to enable specific activities in our lives. Kitchens are for cooking, dining rooms are for eating, bedrooms are for sleeping, and recreational rooms are for playing. In the future we believe that corporate offices (as well as Business Community Centers and home offices) will be designed to support a number of equally specific and highly varied work-related activities.

This concept immediately implies a shift in the social roles and competencies needed by the professionals who are charged with enabling and provisioning work processes. The World Congress left us with many important, but unanswered questions. What should we call these specialists? What's their job description (maybe another antiquated term)? We suspect that by next year we will have made significant progress on this issue.

5. There is strength in numbers. Change agents are far more effective when they operate as part of a larger community than as "lone wolves."

Finally, it became clear throughout the two days that the Delegates relished the opportunity to share stories, explore challenges together, and learn from each others' experiences.

More than once we saw Delegates exchanging business cards so they could keep their conversations going beyond the World Congress, and out of a desire to reconnect in the future around specific challenges and projects. They seemed almost to rejoice in the recognition that they were not alone in struggling to create the future.

There is a real sense of empowerment that comes from knowing that others are facing, or have faced, the same challenges you are confronting. And it's a whole lot more than "misery loves company." It's also about sharing experiences, about learning what's worked (or not) and why. It's about having someone to test ideas on before "going live." And it's about drawing on the collective wisdom of the larger community for advice, support, guidance, and even just friendship.

We've already heard some wonderful stories about Delegates who met at the World Congress getting together back home to keep talking, and even being overnight guests in each others' homes.

We believe more strongly than ever that membership in the broader community of future of work change agents enhances individual capabilities. The future of work is a one-and-one-and-one makes five world. And that makes us feel just great.

So that's a first pass at what we learned, and what we're thinking about. We wish our entire cast of Delegates could have contributed to this summary of the World Congress. Sometime in the not-too-distant future we strongly suspect that too will happen. We know the collaborative tools to do it are out there - and maybe next year we can figure out how to produce an 80-author report. How's that for something to look forward to?

Book Review: "The World Is Flat"

by Thomas L. Friedman. Reviewed by Jim Ware

I am in real danger of sounding like Chicken Little. It feels as if almost every month I shout at you to "read this book, or you will die." But this time I really, really, really mean it.

Tom Friedman's The World is Flat is getting a lot of press these days, and it is all well-deserved. This is frankly the first nonfiction book I can remember being such a page-turner that I almost literally can't put it down.

What is so compelling?

Friedman is a journalist - for the New York Times. Most of his weekly columns are about the middle east and politics. But this book is about the world economy, as well as what it means to each and every one of us as individuals and as managers. I gather some economists have panned the book, because it's filled with anecdotes and case studies rather than data. But those stories are exactly what makes the book so compelling, so unforgettable, and so important.

Friedman's core thesis is a simple one (and may not even sound profound to readers of this newsletter): the incredible convergence of ten "flatteners" over the last decade or so has leveled the economic playing field to such an extent that our future is absolutely guaranteed to be unlike anything we have ever known.

No, let me say it more directly: our present - right now - is already radically different. The world economy is flat; it doesn't make any difference if your business is based in Baltimore or Bangalore; technology (and several related factors) have put your business right next door to every other business anywhere in the world. But the catch is that those entrepreneurs in Bangalore have radically lower costs in the areas that matter than do their neighbors in Baltimore.

So what, you say. "That's nothing new; we've been coping with outsourcing for a decade already." But this isn't just about outsourcing - it's about global communications, global labor markets, business process decomposition, competition for educated talent, Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage, international politics, energy independence, terrorism, and a whole lot more. The scary part of this book is the future that Friedman projects for us if we don't come to grips with the realities we are living with right now. Because it takes 10-20 years for the full impact of these competitive challenges to work their way through our educational system, our political system, and our mental systems, and….

So, back to what's going on. Friedman focuses on ten "flatteners" that he suggests have driven us to a entirely new kind of world:

1. 11/9/85 (not 9/11, but 11/9 - the fall of the Berlin Wall)
2. 8/9/95 (the day that Netscape went public)
3. Work Flow Software
4. Outsourcing
5. Open-sourcing
6. Offshoring
7. Supply-chaining
8. Insourcing
9. In-forming
10. The Steroids (you'll have to read the book yourself to find out what they are)

I keep wanting to describe these flatteners and tell Friedman's stories. But he's a lot better at telling his stories than I am - and I want you to read the book, so I'll do my best to avoid rewriting the whole book.

But wait - here's the most amazing story (at least to me) in the entire book; I just can't not share it with you. When you order a hamburger at the drive-through window of a certain McDonald's restaurant in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the person taking your order is about 900 miles away, at a call center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The order is then zapped digitally (along with a digital photo of you and your car to confirm who placed the order) to the pickup window just 50 feet in front of you.

Why such a "crazy" business process? It turns out that a call center operator is far more skilled at taking your order, and working in a much quieter environment, than the kids at the pickup window - and the call center does it cheaper. The service is better, the cost is lower, everyone benefits.

And while you probably expected me to report that the order taker was somewhere in India, the point of this story isn't the death of distance, but rather that even such a "simple" business process as taking hamburger orders benefits from a flat world.

The point here is that we have to be willing to challenge all our assumptions about how things get done. And where they'll get done in the future. And by whom.

Which brings me to one final point: the implications of the flat world for our established economies, at least in the United States and Western Europe, are incredibly profound. Friedman does an excellent job of highlighting the dismal realities of our education system, our health care system, and our dependence on middle eastern oil in a world that is becoming a global battleground, where our assumptions about U.S. leadership and U.S. "entitlements" are simply no longer valid.

Friedman remembers that he grew up (as I did) in a family where he was often admonished to "finish your dinner, because there are people in India and China who are starving." Now he tells his kids to "finish your homework, because there are people in India and China who are starving for your job."

I'll be very surprised if The World is Flat doesn't win a bunch of awards and get declared the book of the year by someone. I consider it so important that for the past week or so I've been posting brief notes and excerpts from it on our Future of Work blog. Go there to pick up more of the important stories, facts, and scary insights. But please, whatever else you do, read this book.

The World is Flat is available online from Amazon.com at this link.

Research Notes

Reflections on the World Congress from Tony DiRomualdo

Tony DiRomualdo is a partner in Next Generation Consulting and an expert in workforce management issues. He led a pre-World Congress workshop on "Managing Next Generation Workers" and was an active participant in the World Congress conversations in Philadelphia.

Tony writes a regular column for Next Generation Consulting ezine, which he and Rebecca Ryan jointly publish.

The May 3 issue of Next Generation Consulting ezine features Tony's reflections on the future workplace, stimulated in large part by his participation in the World Congress. Here's a brief excerpt (selected specifically to get your brain cells all riled up):

...beneath the facade, is the workplace a better and more fulfilling place than it was 10 years ago? The prevailing view of the Congress attendees was that it is not, and much time was spent discussing how to accelerate positive change - remove obstacles to improvement, make work more flexible and environments more human-friendly and harness the power of technology to free workers to be more creative and productive rather than hold them tethered to the electronic equivalent of pick axes.

Today, the majority of workers still go to offices everyday even though information and communications technology increasingly allows them to work from anywhere. They still work in facilities that are designed to minimize operating costs and preserve hierarchy and status not inspire creativity and fuel collaboration among workers.

Their level of satisfaction with their jobs and work environments continues to slide downward....

You can find the entire article at Next Generation Consulting's website. We strongly encourage you to find it, read it, and - most importantly - think hard about how Tony's observations apply to you and your organization.

Tony would also love to hear your reactions. You can email him directly at:

td@nextgenerationconsulting.com.

Verizon is Ending Free Wireless Access in New York City

Right after learning all about Wireless Philadelphia at our recent World Congress on the Future of Work we returned home to a Business Week story reporting that Verizon is "pulling the plug" on its free wireless program in New York City. There is some (unverified) speculation that Verizon just may be envisioning so much revenue-generation opportunity in broadband that the company doesn't want to give away the store.

The whole issue of municipally-funded (and sometimes provided) wireless access promises to be a big story for the next several years, as more and more communities begin to realize the power of wireless infrastructure to help attract and retain business activity, to say nothing of talented knowledge workers.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Is this the future of work? A May 2 article in the Christian Science Monitor highlights the increasing number of hours that American workers are spending at work. The article cites a 2005 study by the Families and Work Institute in New York showing that one in three US workers feel overworked, with half of those surveyed using the word "overwhelmed" to describe their current situation. Many of them expect not to use their full vacation time in 2005.

Perhaps more to the point, a January study by Steelcase indicated that about half of white collar workers report spending over 40 hours a week "at work." Three-quarters of them report spending some weekend time doing work, while the vast majority report working more hours today than they did five years ago.

Editorial Comment: Is this the future of work that we (our society) wants? Based on our current behavior, it certainly appears to represent our preferences.

While some of this level of work intensity may relate to economic uncertainty and productivity pressures, there are also clearly a number of cultural factors involved. The Christian Science Monitor article goes on to contrast US and European attitudes towards work:

Jim Goyjer, a native of the Netherlands who lives in Los Angeles, sees profound differences between Europeans and Americans in their attitudes toward work.

People in the United States define themselves by their work, says Mr. Goyjer, who is self-employed. "Europeans define themselves by hobbies and other things. Work is just a means."

At parties in the US, he says, the first question is, "What do you do?" In the Netherlands, the opening question is, "Where have you been on vacation?" or "Where are you going on vacation?"

The entire article is available online at http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0502/p14s01-wmgn.html.

Food for thought, to say the least.

The Future of Work Is Already Here; It Just Isn't Evenly Distributed

Community Broadband is "Becoming the Next Big Thing"

We're getting a very strong sense that the next really "Big Thing" in the future of work just might be the forthcoming battles over community-based broadband networks. We're hearing more and more stories about local communities that are investing in municipal broadband - both fiber optic and wireless - as a powerful means of making the area more attractive to new businesses and to the "wired" generation of knowledge workers.

Wireless Philadelphia was a central topic at our recent World Congress on the Future of Work (thanks largely to the way Philadelphia Mayor John Street touted the initiative in his opening remarks, and to the active participation in the World Congress by Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's CIO and the architect and leader of Wireless Philadelphia).

Anyway, one of the most compelling stories we've heard about how essential broadband is to economic development comes from our Future of Work member and good friend Toni Kistner. Toni's latest Telework Beat column (April 25, 2005) in Network World Fusion describes the incredible impact that a broadband installation has had on Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Read Toni's column for the full story, but just consider this brief comparison between Cedar Falls and nearby Waterloo, Iowa:

Cedar Falls was a sleepy bedroom community. Waterloo had a vibrant downtown, more businesses and a higher tax rate.

In 2003, Cedar Falls took an "imaginative risk" by developing a municipally owned telecommunications network to serve its industrial parks. A year before the fiber infrastructure was completed, business began pouring in. In 2002, Cedar Falls counted 125 businesses in its parks; in contrast, Waterloo had 9, nearby Evansdale, 1. Cedar Falls' new construction valuation rose from $32 million in 1996 to $101 million in 2002. In contrast, Waterloo's declined from $58 million in 1996 to $53 million in the same period.

Now that's real food for thought.

Communicating with Temporary and Contract Workers

Our friend and colleague Elizabeth Albrycht of Albrycht McClure and Partners was an active contributor to the recently completed 2005 World Congress on the Future of Work.

A specialist in corporate PR and communications, Elizabeth came away from the World Congress with an important observation and question about the challenge large organizations have communicating with their workers, who are not only increasingly distributed around the globe, but are also increasingly not full-time employees.

Elizabeth recently discussed this challenge on her own Weblog, CorporatePR, She is actively looking for good examples of organizations that have mastered the following challenge (the following text is quoted directly from her blog):

Facing a situation where 50% of government employees eligible to retire this year, looking at the aging workforces of the old military-industrial complex workers, etc., I heard representatives of these two workforces that contract workers will be the future -- probably many of whom will be former full-time employees who have one foot (but not both!) in retirement. This raises a tricky issue, however. Today, most contract workers or temps are treated as second class citizens in the companies they are working for. They get the worst desks, the old computers, etc. Clearly, this will need to change as greater percentages of workforces are temporary in some way (and former employees used to better treatment to boot).

What does this mean for communications? If we think about it from a network perspective, it is important that all people connected to your company in whatever way can tell its story effectively, be it via barroom conversations or blogs. Companies can't afford to treat temporary workers in an offhand or neglectful way. Additionally, contract workers will often feel less connected or loyal to the company in any way. They aren't going to be a captive audience for vision presentations. I think that companies are going to have to rethink their internal communications strategies, among other things, to adjust to this new environment. I'd love some examples of what companies with large contract or temporary workforces are dealing with this.

If you have some ideas or suggestions for Elizabeth, please mosey on over to her blog and add your comments to her original post.

In Our Humble Opinion: What's Next?

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

Hear ye! Hear ye! This month's column will not be a rant. Nay, for once it is a rave. It's a report on the "State of the Community." Yes, the two of us have strained a few shoulder muscles patting ourselves on the back following the 2005 World Congress. But what we saw, heard, and felt in that week in Philadelphia was absolutely amazing; it really pushed our thinking forward.

First, we believe we've really reached the tipping point in establishing our Future of Work community. It's clearly got a sustainable life of its own. The connections are solid. We've got enough new faces, ideas, and perspectives coming in that there's little chance of us getting stuck and stale. Or of our members, for that matter.

We are just now beginning our annual round of recruitment for formal memberships in Future of Work, and we can already see some folks moving on, while many new people and organizations are lining up to join. Honestly we may be getting to the point of having to think about just how big we want to become. We've gotten some very strong feedback encouraging us to keep things small, intimate, and highly focused. And we really don't want the World Congress ever to become a 2000-person event.

But then again, maybe we need to concoct a different kind of event that will let us include many more of the "unwashed" out there so we can spread the word farther and wider. Or perhaps we should replicate the World Congress on several other continents or both coasts of North America. What do you think?

Our next big "aha" was the seriousness of the World Congress delegates. People just couldn't turn it off. We heard reports of conversations flowing out of the room into the streets and in taxis, and we can only assume also in planes when we all headed home - except for the event crew (that would be us, plus Jen, Elizabeth, and Susan) who had a couple of drinks and immediately fell asleep :) (okay, the drink part was mostly us).

The conversations were deeper this year. We heard "funny" terms like spirit, purpose, calling, and covenant. And we talked about what kind of future of work we want, not just what we expect. For a moment there we wondered if we hadn't somehow teleported ourselves back to Marin County and the 1960's - just a joke, folks.

Now for the real kicker. We've learned that there are at least two Future of Work World Congress mini-groups starting to organize on a local basis to make sure the conversations continue. One is in the San Francisco Bay Area, and one is in Atlanta. When you see cliques (that's a formal sociologist word) forming out of a larger community you know you've reached take-off. We didn't start it, it just happened. And we couldn't be more thrilled.

And to prove the power of the technology we keep raving about, Charlie had a personal epiphany early last week. While he was standing at a cocktail reception (that's where Jim makes him go when he misbehaves) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a total stranger walked up to him, read his Dilbertesque nametag and said; "Oh yea, you're one of those guys doing the Future of Work World Congress blog."

Could have knocked him over with a feather (did that have anything to do with the drinks??). We had been in Philadelphia at the World Congress but connected to the blogosphere in real time, thanks to Elizabeth Albrycht; and people we didn't even know about were actually tracking our conversations. Whoa! This stuff is really real!

In addition, we think we've created a conceptual link between the future of work in organizations and the future of work in communities. Bruno Bottarelli's testimony about how connecting with us has led him to shift his whole business model was truly astounding (and very gratifying). Go dude! This is a whole new level of conversation, which we will absolutely push forward.

So now we're toying with several ideas we'd like to hear about from you:

1. Building a closer connection with younger workers (defined as people with lower Body Mass Indexes and more hair than we've got, which realistically includes almost everyone). Seriously, we think reaching out to Universities, providing scholarships, and connecting to other local youth-oriented community groups would be a useful way to go.
   
   Tracy Wymer of Knoll even suggested that we hold the next World Congress on a campus and invite some student classes to make a field trip and join in the fun.
2. Putting more emphasis on communicating through blogs and perhaps even doing a series of Web-based audio "podcasts" over the coming year.
   
   That might also mean scaling back the scope of this newsletter just a bit; it's getting so 2003-ish (meaning we may move more of our "current events" coverage like the Research Notes to the blog rather than fill up the newsletter with them).
3. Taking the World Congress to a community setting next year. We've already got two communities who want to discuss that possibility, which could include some really nifty site visits and tours to places that demonstrate the future of work in the here and now.
4. Pushing a new message: Building real sustainability in corporations and communities.

We also want to find a way to strengthen and enhance the efforts and passions of the Future of Work small business and individual members. Frankly, we need some fresh ideas about how to make their membership more meaningful and how to leverage their incredible talents more than we have up to now. We've tried several things but haven't really gotten the juices flowing the way we know is possible.

So, there's our first post-World Congress rave. In closing, it's not about us - it's about you, our community. How can we work together to make it better, improve it, and continue to evolve it faster than anything else on this planet? That's where we need your help. Comments, ideas, brutal in-your-face feedback, and even insults are always welcome.

Please direct your comments to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We'd love to publish your reactions and suggestions. And thanks for listening.

This issue of Future of Work Agenda was produced by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham of the Work Design Collaborative. We encourage your comments, suggestions, and submission of materials for possible future publication. Please contact us at:

Charlie Grantham, charlie@thefutureofwork.net, +1 928 771 9138
Jim Ware, jim@thefutureofwork.net, +1 510 558 1434

To subscribe to Future of Work Agenda, register on our web site. Please pass this newsletter on to other interested individuals and encourage them to subscribe as well. The newsletter is free, and will remain free as long as possible.

To end your subscription, send a message to newsletter@thefutureofwork.net and write Unsubscribe in the Subject line.

For republication rights, contact Jim Ware at jim@thefutureofwork.net.

 Future of Work | 966 Creston Road, Suite 150 | Berkeley, CA 94708

©Copyright 2005 The Work Design Collaborative, LLC. All rights reserved.