Working out of a 'third place' By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY SAN FRANCISCO — The fall morning is mercifully fog-free, which puts a spring in the step of Mordy Karsch as he rolls into work.
In short order, he fires up the computer, turns on his cellphone and orders breakfast. Though he has toiled on these premises for two years, he doesn't know anyone here well except for Angel Pinto, who brings him his hot coffee. That's because Karsch, 34, works out of The Grove, a bohemian eatery in this city's hip Marina district that caters to a growing army of office-less employees. "Working from a place like this is less stressful than being in an office, and I find I get a lot more done," says Karsch, general manager of Spanish Sales Force, a Spanish-language marketing consultancy. Call The Grove the office of the future, except the future is here. IT WORKS FOR YOU: Do you take up a "third space" for work? This rootless army is growing 10% annually, according to Gartner Dataquest research. He says waiters here don't hover.
Cisco CTO reasserts video's value for work, home. Cisco CTO: Collaboration Is Saving Us Millions. Collaboration and social media are popular IT buzzwords, and according to Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), they're a way that businesses can save money as well.
Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior took the stage today at the VoiceCon conference for a keynote in which she detailed how Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) uses collaboration tools and social media technologies like Twitter and wikis to cut costs and get business done. "As human beings we have a natural tendency to want to build relationships," Warrior said. "The goal of technology therefore is to fulfill that human need as naturally as possible. " For Cisco, helping to fulfill that need comes in a number of forms. One of the simplest is Cisco's use of wikis to help internal collaboration. She added that perhaps the most popular wiki at Cisco is the Apple Mac support wiki, since Cisco does not directly support Apple Macs for its staff. "Guess what? In total, Warrior estimated that Cisco's wiki efforts save close to $4 million in costs annually.
Cisco CEO John Chambers proclaims the future is Web 2.0. Cisco CEO John Chambers ran on stage and then strolled throughout the crowd giving his vision of the networked future during his Network + Interop keynote presentation.
As he walked and talked throughout the ballroom with the verbal passion and polish of a televangelist, Chambers proclaimed that Web 2.0, which he defined broadly as collaboration, is the future. In other words, collaboration, enabled by the networking software and software that Cisco produces, will lead to an increase in productivity. He defined the characteristics of collaboration as safe, open architecture, simple, virtualized and converged. “We are moving our company as fast as we can to collaboration and Web 2.0,” he said.
“We see the next wave of productivity re-accelerating around the world.”