When I was in high school I always stared out the window wanting to see and do things in exotic places.  Because world travel was an expensive proposition, I knew employment was a necessary evil.  And to get a job I needed some skills. So I studied foreign languages and learned how international commerce flowed.  My plan worked wonderfully throughout the 1990s.  I got paid to do business trotting the globe seeing different things and meeting new people.  That is until mobility ruined everything.

Sadly, my business need for traveling to lands far and near is diminishing.   I now have a computer with an all-access connection client, antivirus, firewall, data encryption, back-up and recovery, compliant policy settings, a video driver and VOIP software.  I have a veritable corporate data center in six pounds of encased plastic. And it’s a good bet it will be two pounds or hanging from my key chain or embedded in my arm any day now.   

It is increasingly hard for me to justify the need for travel based on cost and more importantly, the amount of physical collaboration needed in a mobile world.  Back in the day we traveled in order to exchange information, ideas and interests. We traveled to see the local picture — to understand the relationships between the local office and corporate. We needed to hold regional management meetings in exotic places with all leadership present.  We needed those Pina Coladas.  We needed those 100 page PowerPoints with numbers and letters and legends.  We needed the 10 foot video screen for The Big Man.  And we needed all those binders of paper that we hauled back through the airports.   That is until mobility ruined everything.

Today, the need to travel to understand “the local office” and impart the corporate culture and practices seems both impractical and imprudent here in internet time of ‘08. Even the term “office” conjures up something so yesterday and inefficient. What office?  You are doomed for second-tier status if you think centralizing culture around an office is a winning formula.

Of course, there is still value to visit fellow employees and certainly customers. But the value continues to be more and more about the interpersonal exchange versus anything else to do with business including the contract, the presentation, the collaboration of ideas, the assessment of skills and talent.

My latest trip to the west coast was a typical tour of duty: visit customers, visit a technology partner and visit with fellow employees. Just like any other week on the road — except the locations of my meetings were far different than even three years ago. Not one of them was in an office.  I met the team at the hotel, the technology partner at a coffee shop and a customer at a restaurant.  And in each, I used a laptop with confidential information from the corporate data center with full accessibility.  We reviewed presentations and spreadsheets and contracts all on the laptop.  Truth is, I probably would have been able to accomplish all of my objectives from my home base if I hadn’t wanted to meet my customers where they live. Mobility has ruined every other travel requirement except that one. 

I still have a passion to visit places I’ve never been, but these days many seem to be intellectual spaces, with few maps or airports.  The purpose of this blog is to help navigate — to continue to scan the horizon to gain a glimpse of all kinds of new places and new people, new ideas, successes and failures in this new mobility revolution.   

I said it as a child and I say it now…it’s a whole new world out there.