Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future. Says, up every morning,
Speaker 1: just to keep a job, I gotta fight my way
Speaker 1: through the hustling mob on Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren vocalon
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And and my theory is that out
Speaker 1: of context lyrics are actually less satisfying when you complete
Speaker 1: the rhyming couplet. Yeah you think so, Well it's more interesting.
Speaker 1: Well just do the first half. See some empirical research
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, you know. My theory hypothesis is that
Speaker 1: the person who introduces the podcast gets to choose whatever
Speaker 1: the heck he wants to introduce it. Okay, well, what
Speaker 1: are we going to talk about today? We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about offices, Joe, offices, where you go to work,
Speaker 1: where we go to work, Well, not specifically our office,
Speaker 1: although I'm sure that's going to come up in the
Speaker 1: conversation several times, hopefully as the least amount of snarkly
Speaker 1: is possible. We are we are about to full disclosure,
Speaker 1: full disclosure, We're about to to endure. Now we're about
Speaker 1: to have a transition, a transition experience in our office.
Speaker 1: The house Stuff Works office, which is where we work,
Speaker 1: is relocating to a different floor on the in the
Speaker 1: building that we work in, and we're going to end
Speaker 1: up in a smaller office space with a new floor plan,
Speaker 1: and it is one of those things that we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about. I actually have some information about the type
Speaker 1: of floor plan that we will be in, not specific,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to give you guys, like the
Speaker 1: square footage or whatever. Basically, this is just to say
Speaker 1: that we're we're having feelings. So if they're sighing throughout
Speaker 1: this intellectual discussion about office environments, you'll know why. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: because we have we have feelings and have an intrinsic
Speaker 1: bias and that's feels yes, okay, well, and it's not
Speaker 1: just us, by the way, this is something that's borne
Speaker 1: out through actual research. I have information about the I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to say, like, also, Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: is really upset. Well, Robert Lamb is very upset. Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb actually is one of those stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: And they did an episode called Cubicle Doom, a podcast
Speaker 1: episode called Cubicle doom, which is very good. You guys
Speaker 1: who are listeners afford thinking, who have not listened to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, you should check that out.
Speaker 1: Cubical doom in particular, goes into some research about how
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about how Mars is trying to
Speaker 1: kill you, and they're talking about how your office is
Speaker 1: trying to kill you. So it's everything from psychological effects
Speaker 1: to actual medical effects of offices. Really well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of those effects. Okay, what happens to you
Speaker 1: when you work in an office five days a week
Speaker 1: for thirty years? Yeah, well, all depends a lot of
Speaker 1: that depends upon the office. But Lauren, I think you've
Speaker 1: got some information about this, right all right? Okay, So, so,
Speaker 1: first of all, research suggests that indeed stress at work
Speaker 1: is associated with all kinds of things that are negative
Speaker 1: to not only your own health but in turn your
Speaker 1: your productivity and a need to do your job. Um.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, that physical characteristics of your work space, you know,
Speaker 1: the noise, the lighting, the ventilation, are all linked to
Speaker 1: job stress. So compounded upon that, the way that we
Speaker 1: work in offices mostly these days is sitting down at
Speaker 1: a desk looking at a computer screen. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's all we do it. I mean, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that in these are modern times. That is, I do
Speaker 1: not have a statistic about that specifically, I believe that
Speaker 1: one of you, too, find fellows is a little bit
Speaker 1: of information about that. Here's the deal. Going looking at
Speaker 1: research about people in office spaces is difficult. You can
Speaker 1: find a lot about trends, but when you get to
Speaker 1: look when you're looking for hard numbers of how many
Speaker 1: people are actually working in offices, that's where it really
Speaker 1: gets kind of messy because a lot of the surveys
Speaker 1: are small sample size, and then you extrapolate out and
Speaker 1: as it turns out, there are very different trends across
Speaker 1: different parts of the world and even across different nations. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in the United States, teleworking, which we will
Speaker 1: talk about later on in this episode, is something that
Speaker 1: you find that's very prevalent in places like the southeast,
Speaker 1: the Southwest, and the West, but not so much in
Speaker 1: other parts of the country. So it's really difficult to
Speaker 1: actually say how many people are working in offices. However,
Speaker 1: it's a lot and I actually do have some information
Speaker 1: about the types of offices people are working in today
Speaker 1: compared to previous generations. Let's hear it. Oh well, okay,
Speaker 1: so like you know, we at how stuff works right now,
Speaker 1: we have cubicles, right, and they're a little different from
Speaker 1: the cubicles you might see in something like office space.
Speaker 1: They or one of my favorite movies, Joe Versus the Volcano,
Speaker 1: where it's a soul crushing experience. It's like everything is
Speaker 1: done in this blue filter on the screen, so it
Speaker 1: looks like the artificial lighting is just draining the life
Speaker 1: out of everyone. It looks like the building that Joe
Speaker 1: works in and Joe Versus the Volcano was scientifically designed
Speaker 1: to crush a human spirit. Well, that's not the kind
Speaker 1: of cubicles we have here at how stuff works. It
Speaker 1: tends to be this sort of kind of weird angular
Speaker 1: cubicle where you've got your own little sense of space.
Speaker 1: But it's it's but it's open to the to the
Speaker 1: to the environment, so that people walking by or you know,
Speaker 1: you can make eye contact with someone if you want
Speaker 1: to write. Yeah, it's it's not so much sequestered that
Speaker 1: you are in a cell, right, You're not in a
Speaker 1: little blocked off cell. It's open a little bit, but
Speaker 1: it also gives you some privacy, so it has sort
Speaker 1: of the best of both worlds approach. The ceiling is open.
Speaker 1: I've heard that that's an important factor in that that
Speaker 1: that that if you you don't have a full wall
Speaker 1: to the ceiling, that that adds to your sense of space.
Speaker 1: And uh, and yeah, you're not. You don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're you don't feel like you're hemmed in right, that
Speaker 1: that you're being you're being contained, uh, because you could
Speaker 1: like potentially climb over the cubicle wall if you needed. Well,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't psychle Lauren, did you see this video psychologically,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like you are contained. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: the same idea that you paint a wall of different shade, uh,
Speaker 1: two thirds of way up to accentuate height, or use
Speaker 1: of mirrors to expand a space, Well, that's not the
Speaker 1: way a lot of offices are moving these days. And
Speaker 1: that's not the way our office is moving. Pretty soon more,
Speaker 1: more and more offices these days are moving to what's
Speaker 1: just called an open plan. So it's not open floor plans,
Speaker 1: not just cubicles necessarily, it may be workstations where you
Speaker 1: don't have all these divide dividers that that sequester people
Speaker 1: or give them the sense of privacy. In fact, seventy
Speaker 1: of unite US workers in offices today are working in
Speaker 1: open floor plans. Huge. Yeah, so that's that's become sort
Speaker 1: of the approach, which is kind of funny if you
Speaker 1: look back on the history, like the development of the
Speaker 1: office space. If you look back in the early days,
Speaker 1: it was essentially kind of the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Like if you ever think of any newsroom type films
Speaker 1: about newsrooms where you just see lots of desks in
Speaker 1: a big open space. Yeah, the bullpen that that was
Speaker 1: a very typical kind of approach, and then we moved
Speaker 1: into this sort of cubicle approach, and then we're now
Speaker 1: moving back into an open floor space. And the idea
Speaker 1: behind it is to, uh, to foster collaboration, right, but
Speaker 1: if you work in a field where you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: collaborating all the time. For example, what we do, we
Speaker 1: collaborate right now, but we do a lot of our
Speaker 1: research on our own. Will will meet occasionally to kind
Speaker 1: of compare notes, but then we go back in our
Speaker 1: own little world. We're not constantly collaborating. For people who
Speaker 1: do that sort of work or even more individualized work.
Speaker 1: This can actually be really distracting, and in fact, there
Speaker 1: have been some studies that suggest that this kind of
Speaker 1: open floor approach increases things like dissatisfaction and aggression in
Speaker 1: the workplace. And you guys have so much to look forward.
Speaker 1: I know, we can't wait to find out if this
Speaker 1: is going to be the king No, but we also
Speaker 1: all love each other. So also it says that according
Speaker 1: to surveys, people whose work is interrupted make fifty more
Speaker 1: mistakes and take twice as long to finish tasks as
Speaker 1: people who can actually concentrate on their work. So again,
Speaker 1: if if you need that sense of privacy to concentrate,
Speaker 1: then you're going to find that your your work style
Speaker 1: is going to be impacted quite a bit through this
Speaker 1: move to an open floor plan. But there must be
Speaker 1: some perceived advantages to an open floor plan as well.
Speaker 1: There is a trend, not just a perceived advantage. There
Speaker 1: is an advantage. It's cheaper. Open floor plans take up
Speaker 1: less space. Office space is expensive. It's not just expensive
Speaker 1: to have the real estate, it's expensive to maintain it.
Speaker 1: It's expensive to provide power, it's expensive to provide all
Speaker 1: the ventilation that you need. So you know, your your
Speaker 1: rental space. All of these things factor into the bottom line.
Speaker 1: If you can cut that, if you can reduce the
Speaker 1: space you need, then you end up saving lots of money.
Speaker 1: So one way to do that is to move to
Speaker 1: this open floor plan where you eliminate things like offices.
Speaker 1: You can use that space just as one unit. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that is a demonstrable improvement from the corporate side. I
Speaker 1: bet there are also plenty of workers though, who enjoy
Speaker 1: this well, you know, I you know, this is certainly
Speaker 1: not scientific, but within our own offices are our audio
Speaker 1: and video department is within an open floor office kind
Speaker 1: of space. And and they granted, many of them, I
Speaker 1: think we're friends before they came to the office, so
Speaker 1: they all have a good interpersonal relationship to start with,
Speaker 1: but they seem to not hate it. Well. In nine
Speaker 1: of the research that was done on this, like an
Speaker 1: of the research that's been published, So you're talking about
Speaker 1: like a meta study. Yes, the research of the outcome
Speaker 1: of working in an open environment was negative, with increases
Speaker 1: and anxiety, aggression, and employee turnover. So nine times out
Speaker 1: of ten, in other words, we're talking about a negative outcome. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're saying that my plan of going and getting
Speaker 1: those those grade school science report folders and or, as
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb said, dungeons and Dragons portfolios. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: setting those up is actually a very good idea. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it is not a bad idea because it turns out
Speaker 1: all right. So there's this great article. It's fantastic. I
Speaker 1: recommend people check this out. Uh. It's a New York
Speaker 1: Times article called the Rise of the New group Think,
Speaker 1: and it's by Susan Kane. Uh. There's there's a great
Speaker 1: section in this. I'll just go ahead and quote it.
Speaker 1: Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they
Speaker 1: enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption, and the most spectacular
Speaker 1: liarly creative people in many fields are often introverted. So
Speaker 1: that's a generalization there, but they are often introverted, and
Speaker 1: they are they're extroverted enough to exchange and advanced ideas,
Speaker 1: but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They are not
Speaker 1: joiners by nature. So in other words, they do their
Speaker 1: best work when they can kind of focus and and
Speaker 1: and be on their own. There they can collaborate and
Speaker 1: they can move things forward. But when they're doing those
Speaker 1: big leaps that's when they're on their own. Obviously, not
Speaker 1: everyone's like this, but there are lots of some somewhat
Speaker 1: anecdotal reports that, and some are actual studies where they
Speaker 1: found that people in various fields who were were moving
Speaker 1: into these open floor plants, like game developers, for example,
Speaker 1: we're finding it much more difficult to work in open
Speaker 1: floor environments than they were when they had their own spaces.
Speaker 1: So it's, uh, you know, it's it's interesting because according
Speaker 1: to at least the studies that I've seen, the demonstrative
Speaker 1: effect is that productivity goes down, efficiency goes down employees
Speaker 1: as faction goes down, but your costs also go down.
Speaker 1: So you have to weigh the two against each other.
Speaker 1: And it may be that perhaps the open floor plan
Speaker 1: approach is still young enough that a lot of companies
Speaker 1: haven't started to really factor in what the impact is
Speaker 1: to their business. And maybe it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that it's really just a social change. It could be
Speaker 1: that we eventually adapt to this open floor plan and
Speaker 1: gradually don't hate it with all our heart and souls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you've seen um all of
Speaker 1: the comic strips and and little jokey essays and everything
Speaker 1: from the eighties and nineties about how much everybody hates
Speaker 1: cubicles and it's like your amount all that stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rat in a maze. Uh. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I like my cubicle, but at some point apparently people
Speaker 1: found this just awful. Well, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: those cubicles also were very much designed to be it
Speaker 1: was all looking like everything was the same, right, it
Speaker 1: was all you know, this this idea of almost like
Speaker 1: an institutionalized approach where all individuality was stripped away and
Speaker 1: you were just another cog in the massive machine that
Speaker 1: was your company. Um I I do have to say
Speaker 1: that that what I enjoy most about my cubicles having
Speaker 1: wall space to put up a really ridiculous posters. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to say goodbye to that, not if
Speaker 1: I bring in those giant poster boards. UM. So that's
Speaker 1: the psychological side of that. I I had a little
Speaker 1: bit of research about the physical side of what happens
Speaker 1: to us when we sit around in offices all day.
Speaker 1: And um, I mean, because we've all heard the big
Speaker 1: headlines lightly sitting is killing you. Um And that's that's
Speaker 1: that's a wee bit debatable. There is a study from
Speaker 1: two thousand nine that found that people who sat most
Speaker 1: of the day were more likely to have a heart
Speaker 1: attack than people who sat very little, independent of how
Speaker 1: much they weighed or how often they exercised otherwise, which
Speaker 1: seems disturbing. UM. I mean, but a that is studying
Speaker 1: heart effects only, so you know, there there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other UH commorbidities involved in UH in in
Speaker 1: exercise and weight that I have not seen research on,
Speaker 1: and I hope that someone is working on that right now.
Speaker 1: But there are definitely other factors. You know. It's basically,
Speaker 1: when you're not using your muscles, they get less good
Speaker 1: at being musci e um. That is the highly scientific
Speaker 1: breakdown of that thing. And and so you know it's
Speaker 1: there's there's connective tissue that covers your muscles called fascia
Speaker 1: and it's flexible that can set in the position that
Speaker 1: you stay in the most, which causes muscle stiffness, poor balance,
Speaker 1: lack of stability, and mobility. Um. You know, sitting will
Speaker 1: weaken your your glutes, your butt, which is a major
Speaker 1: muscle group. And the more that you exercise, more that
Speaker 1: you develop any given muscle group the more energy it
Speaker 1: will burn. In general, So if you're letting this major
Speaker 1: muscle group go to waste, then in general you will
Speaker 1: you will burn fewer calories, which is bad times. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Skeletally speaking, sitting puts the absolute most pressure
Speaker 1: on your spine. It's terrible for for your back and
Speaker 1: for your neck, and over time, all of these problems
Speaker 1: just compound each other, you know. Weakening muscles and tendons
Speaker 1: makes all of these problems harder for you to correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this very thing actually makes me wonder if so, on
Speaker 1: one hand, you've got a trend towards open floor plans.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I wonder if there might
Speaker 1: be a trend away from the standard sitting desk toward
Speaker 1: maybe standing desks or even this is such a there's
Speaker 1: such a thing as this, the treadmill desk. And I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely it doesn't seem crazy to me, like I
Speaker 1: can kind of see it. I actually have a friend
Speaker 1: who has a treadmill desk. Worked at a treadmill desk
Speaker 1: and she loved it. She she liked the idea that
Speaker 1: it allowed her to to walk at a very very
Speaker 1: slow pace. You know, we're talking like a mile per hour.
Speaker 1: It's really, you know, a very gradual thing, and it
Speaker 1: was really just meant to keep the muscles moving. It
Speaker 1: wasn't meant as you know, not not like an aerobic
Speaker 1: exercise and filling out that Excel sheet while jogging at
Speaker 1: twelve miles per hour. Yeah, obviously that would be kind
Speaker 1: of silly. But um, but I can see that, I
Speaker 1: I can. I think I'd probably really prefer if I
Speaker 1: had such equipment. We also had a coworker, a former
Speaker 1: coworker of ours, who would regularly work standing up. He
Speaker 1: would spend about probably about two thirds of his day
Speaker 1: standing and only about a third on fuller who used
Speaker 1: to used to stand up and work at his desk.
Speaker 1: And he even had a little a little platform you
Speaker 1: have for him to put his laptop on, so that
Speaker 1: would be tall enough where he wouldn't have to know,
Speaker 1: lunch over in tight because obviously that wouldn't necessarily help
Speaker 1: you help past Um, I do wonder if open floor
Speaker 1: plans might help aid, you know, getting up, standing up,
Speaker 1: getting your muscles moving, walking around the office to go
Speaker 1: away from the person who's all yappity yappity. That one
Speaker 1: because out of the three of us. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you both tested, if you've taken
Speaker 1: like Myers Briggs tests or whatever I test out, here's
Speaker 1: a shock alarmingly extroverted. That's so so I I am
Speaker 1: one of those people who I really do get energized
Speaker 1: and jazz by having quick conversations with people, and then
Speaker 1: I can quickly I can go right back into focusing.
Speaker 1: But that means that if everyone else is introverted, I'm
Speaker 1: actually hurting them at least as far as their ability
Speaker 1: to do work. They I am distracting them. I interrupt
Speaker 1: their their processes. They get their energy by really sitting
Speaker 1: down and focusing and being apart from everything. So it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult because I don't want to impact their work experience.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be irresponsible in that way. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, if I don't say anything and
Speaker 1: I just sit there by myself, my own work productivity
Speaker 1: starts to decline because I haven't had the chance to
Speaker 1: actually energize myself by chatting with someone. So occasionally I'll
Speaker 1: go and have a quick chat, trying my best to
Speaker 1: keep it as as short as possible, which is difficult
Speaker 1: with me as the length of these podcasts can attest,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, in these open floor plans, that
Speaker 1: becomes even more difficult because I can't just kind of
Speaker 1: have a quick conversation with another extra sing and then
Speaker 1: walk away. Though this also makes me wonder if, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of like really cutting edge off
Speaker 1: as to the future might have floor plans grouped by
Speaker 1: personality type or you know, I think, well, does that
Speaker 1: make sense You can take your take your test when
Speaker 1: you come into the office and maybe have a group
Speaker 1: of extroverts in a small open floor area and then
Speaker 1: maybe have people like me who just want to live
Speaker 1: in a hobbit hole, you know, kind of cornered off. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also a question of I mean, the collaboration aspect
Speaker 1: is something that a lot of companies are still saying
Speaker 1: this is the main reason they want to move to
Speaker 1: this open floor plan. They want to have a collaborative
Speaker 1: environment for their employees. And in some applications that makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. You might have a team of six or
Speaker 1: eight people who are working on a specific project, and
Speaker 1: so having them close together makes it much easier for
Speaker 1: them to touch base and really understand what's going on
Speaker 1: and move forward. So that and and in some of
Speaker 1: these places, we're talking about floor plants where you don't
Speaker 1: even have an assigned desk all the time. Because if
Speaker 1: you work in a place where you're going to be
Speaker 1: on multiple teams throughout your career, then it makes sense
Speaker 1: for you to be able to move to different locations
Speaker 1: and so the group of people you work with one
Speaker 1: month might be different from the next month. UH. That
Speaker 1: moves us into an area where we're talking about places
Speaker 1: where you you type in on a computer when you
Speaker 1: get to work, and it assigns you a desk for
Speaker 1: the day, which makes it even less personal for you
Speaker 1: because you can't set up your space, you can't define
Speaker 1: your space because you're sharing, you can't bring all your
Speaker 1: wacky action figures and and unless you carry them desk
Speaker 1: to desk with. Yeah, but as we've established, that might
Speaker 1: be ideal for some types of workers and especially some
Speaker 1: types of work well. And it also again is ideal
Speaker 1: for companies that maybe they have a teleworking policy where
Speaker 1: they have UH only a certain percentage of employees are
Speaker 1: in the office on any given day, they can reduce
Speaker 1: down to a minimum or maybe just over minimum number
Speaker 1: of desks they need on a per day basis. And
Speaker 1: that way, even though they might have two hundred employees,
Speaker 1: if only fifty of them are showing up on any
Speaker 1: given day, they only have fifty desks, so they don't
Speaker 1: have to have the space for all two hundred in
Speaker 1: their office because of that teleworking uh schedule. Okay, sorry, Well,
Speaker 1: I have one other thing to say about health, which
Speaker 1: is that offices are germ bombs, y'all. I'm talking they
Speaker 1: are uh sinks. The handles on sinks, like if you
Speaker 1: have a kitchen in your office, that that sinks a
Speaker 1: death trap just waiting to kill you. Not all of
Speaker 1: us spend like an hour a day licking the sink,
Speaker 1: do uh. No one spends an hour a day licking
Speaker 1: the sink like I do. I got my own sweet style,
Speaker 1: all right. But also things like the microwave handle is
Speaker 1: pretty growdy, you know. There's there are parts of the
Speaker 1: of your typical office that are And that's another thing
Speaker 1: is that let's say that you have one sick person
Speaker 1: coming into an open floor planned office. Then you've suddenly
Speaker 1: got this one sick person who's who's coughing, sneezing, breathing
Speaker 1: in the same general area as everybody else. It's just
Speaker 1: like any other enclosed space. It means that the disease
Speaker 1: hasn't a the chance the opportunity to spread to other people,
Speaker 1: and thus you can have something that would have been
Speaker 1: HAPs more controllable in a different environment become kind of
Speaker 1: a rampant disease within the enclosed space of an open
Speaker 1: floor plan. Okay, So is the coming future solution to
Speaker 1: this problem that everybody's going to wear those surgical masks. Well,
Speaker 1: that only works if you are sick and you're trying
Speaker 1: to prevent other people from getting sick. It keeps germs
Speaker 1: in your face, but it doesn't it doesn't really filter
Speaker 1: germs out due to the fact that you're you're touching
Speaker 1: things you might I mean in any orifice on your body,
Speaker 1: including your skin, which isn't an orifice okay, but you know,
Speaker 1: but it does have pores um, you know, your eyes,
Speaker 1: your ears, unless you are covered in like Sam Punk styled. Well,
Speaker 1: the whole reason, the whole reason doctors wear them is
Speaker 1: because they don't want to pass on any infection to
Speaker 1: the patient. It's not for them to prevent illness getting
Speaker 1: to them, it's to prevent them from infecting a patient.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not like wearing a mask may make
Speaker 1: you feel like you're being safe, but really what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're saving other people. And I hate other people,
Speaker 1: so I just go and breathe on them all the time. Okay, uh, well,
Speaker 1: all right, one one more one more note on health
Speaker 1: and then we can totally move on. I did want
Speaker 1: to mention that although there's all of this doom and
Speaker 1: gloom about office spaces in general and open offices in particular. Um,
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that we still, in fact
Speaker 1: have it better than people who are doing manual labor. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. It's you know, although because I've seen it
Speaker 1: mentioned in kind of a lay person sort of way
Speaker 1: that like, oh man, it would be so much better
Speaker 1: if we were all doing manual labor, because that would
Speaker 1: mean that we would be getting in that exercise exercise, right.
Speaker 1: Um but uh, you know, the studies have shown that
Speaker 1: people who do manual labor during their jobs do get exercise,
Speaker 1: but their health deteriorates more rapidly over the span of
Speaker 1: a lifetime than non manual workers. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: big study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research
Speaker 1: in two thousand three using data from the National Health
Speaker 1: Interview Survey, and uh, they basically I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they are economists at heart, and so what they were
Speaker 1: really concentrating on was the fact that that this might
Speaker 1: be um due to economic indicators of manual work, including
Speaker 1: poorer health at the onset of life, less education about health,
Speaker 1: and less access to appropriate healthcare. But but that nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you know, I just wanted to put in there that
Speaker 1: it's pretty cushy getting to go to an air conditioned environment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine just things like especially if you have
Speaker 1: a job where you're you know, yeah, you've got manual labor,
Speaker 1: but if you have a very specific sort of series
Speaker 1: of motions that you tend to do, I can imagine
Speaker 1: repetitive stress injuries would be a big problem. I mean, yeah, there,
Speaker 1: it's it's no, it's not rosy. I mean. The the
Speaker 1: one last statistic I have for since we were talking
Speaker 1: about office spaces and are moved to the open floor
Speaker 1: plan and the reduction of office size, this this kind
Speaker 1: of illustrates it. So in the nineteen seventies, the average
Speaker 1: office had about five square feet per every employee that
Speaker 1: worked in that office. All right, so five do you
Speaker 1: think like, I've lived in places smaller than five square feet.
Speaker 1: So in two ten seventies, didn't computers each take up
Speaker 1: five square feet? Yeah? Well, in two it was two
Speaker 1: five square feet. In two thousand twelve it was one seventy.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the amount of space per employee
Speaker 1: is decreasing in the United States year over year. Uh
Speaker 1: So that just as another indication that the Office of
Speaker 1: the future may not have people in it. Well, and
Speaker 1: that may just in one way, reflect an overall growing
Speaker 1: trend towards density and urban environments where lots of these
Speaker 1: offices are located. But okay, so if we say, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a trend towards uh more sort of population density
Speaker 1: within the office, and there may be a trend we
Speaker 1: hope to help solve the sitting crisis in one way
Speaker 1: or another. So maybe standing or treadmill desks, or maybe
Speaker 1: just getting up and moving around more. What about these
Speaker 1: crazy the offices? What about like I've seen pictures, can't
Speaker 1: remember where of offices that have tube slides for adults
Speaker 1: and petting zoos in them and stuff like that. Where
Speaker 1: we going that way as a society or or nix
Speaker 1: on that? I think it all depends upon the nature
Speaker 1: of the business. Certainly, startups tend to go into this
Speaker 1: kind of really funky, bizarre, I mean, at least bizarre
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of this is not what you would
Speaker 1: consider a normal office environment, the average nine kind of
Speaker 1: kind of button down office. Yeah, I mean I worked
Speaker 1: in a place where we could bring our dogs into
Speaker 1: the office if if we wanted to. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: It was actually really cool. Yeah, there's a Microsoft those
Speaker 1: But Microsoft was one of those companies that also kind
Speaker 1: of kind of pioneered this in the sense that at Microsoft,
Speaker 1: when they were first ramping up and starting to hire
Speaker 1: people right out of college in California and uh and
Speaker 1: Washington and and the essentially the West Coast was really
Speaker 1: where they were farming their their talent. They would put
Speaker 1: in things like arcade machines and pinball machines in the
Speaker 1: office because it gave the the people working there an
Speaker 1: opportunity to blow off some steam and have fun. They
Speaker 1: also realized that the more amenities like that that they included,
Speaker 1: the more time their employees were spending in the office. Willingly,
Speaker 1: they were happy to stay in the office as opposed
Speaker 1: to going home to I don't know family, so, uh
Speaker 1: so that kind of started a trend, and so we
Speaker 1: see that today with other companies like Google is famous.
Speaker 1: The Googleplex is infamous really for some of its amenities,
Speaker 1: including things like a you know, for a while, if
Speaker 1: you worked at Google, you did not have to pay
Speaker 1: to eat really because you could come there and have
Speaker 1: a fully you know cooked. Yes, it was part of
Speaker 1: your compensation, was the fact that you had access to
Speaker 1: this food. Um, and it was you know, from a
Speaker 1: chef who actually was a known name, and so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, just just cafeteria food. This was
Speaker 1: like really high end stuff. And then on top of
Speaker 1: that you had things like no giant bends of snack
Speaker 1: foods and candies everywhere and this but I can attest
Speaker 1: to because I've seen them been through one of Google's offices,
Speaker 1: although it was a sales office, it wasn't their main
Speaker 1: campus in Mountain View anyway. They also have things like
Speaker 1: bicycles where you could ride across campus and inside the
Speaker 1: buildings themselves because they were so gargantuan. Uh. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: they had like an infinite swimming lane, So it's a
Speaker 1: swimming lane that has a current so that you just
Speaker 1: you can you keep swimming, but you stay in the
Speaker 1: same position that you are in and within the lane,
Speaker 1: so you could get your swimming exercise in while you're
Speaker 1: doing spreadsheet. It was one you couldn't necessarily work that way,
Speaker 1: but it was one life tablet staffed to your arm.
Speaker 1: It was one one lane of of swimming pool with
Speaker 1: a lifeguard tower next to it, which I thought was
Speaker 1: because by law they had to, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was hilarious. But yes, that's just one example. There actually
Speaker 1: tons of offices that have really amazing amenities, and even
Speaker 1: Discovery like Discovery Communications. When we went there, we saw
Speaker 1: they had like a yoga room and exercise room and
Speaker 1: they had like all these things that you know, house
Speaker 1: to works. We've got we've gotta we gotta fridge, we
Speaker 1: do get free soda, we do that. Yeah, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, the people that Discovery Communications are really jealous
Speaker 1: of Yeah. Yeah, like like like they have like a
Speaker 1: t Rex in their lobby. Not a real t rex.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a scale. It might not be a
Speaker 1: t rex. Okay, Okay, it is is you know, reproduce bones.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless they're like, but you guys have soda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they also have a crazy kinetic sculpture in their lobby
Speaker 1: that I don't know how the people who work near
Speaker 1: there get any work done because it's it's quite loud,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was. It was pretty funky. But if
Speaker 1: you want to see some really cool office designs, I
Speaker 1: don't know that they're effective as far as getting employees
Speaker 1: to be efficient and productive. But if you want to
Speaker 1: see some crazy awesome designs, UH, there is a great
Speaker 1: UH site. You should go to Office design Gallery dot com.
Speaker 1: I've been looking at these and some of these I
Speaker 1: shared a couple of pictures earlier with Joe and Lauren
Speaker 1: and I'll see we'll probably link to this in our
Speaker 1: blog posts and stuff. But the pictures here are pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: There's some places you look at and you think, I
Speaker 1: wish I worked in this office, just because it's such
Speaker 1: an interesting approach. But there are other ones that I
Speaker 1: look at and I think, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: could get any work done in this particular environment. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looks really cool. I would love to tour it.
Speaker 1: I just don't know that I would be able to
Speaker 1: work their day to day. What was the one that
Speaker 1: was just like a glass tube in the middle of
Speaker 1: the woods. I'd have to I'd have to open that
Speaker 1: up again. It wasn't It was a company name that
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize, but it was a It was actually
Speaker 1: not a tube, but it was. It was a building
Speaker 1: that had been set into the ground so that that
Speaker 1: the windows looked out like it looked like it was
Speaker 1: a dome, half dome. Yeah, so you could look out
Speaker 1: onto the trees. There was actually another wall there, like
Speaker 1: the windows ended at a wall, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: it went all the way from ceiling to floor. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was in this very uh, woodsy setting, so it
Speaker 1: looked like you were working as a hobbit, a corporate hobbit.
Speaker 1: So do you get the feeling that these kind of
Speaker 1: like wonderful, whimsical, Willy Wonka kinds of workplaces are on
Speaker 1: the up or on the down or are they sort
Speaker 1: of just a niche that's always going to be there
Speaker 1: for those small, kind of really weird creative startup I
Speaker 1: think I think it's a niche in the sense that
Speaker 1: what these offices do. I think they're great for attracting
Speaker 1: new talent because the person fresh out of school takes
Speaker 1: a look and sees this incredible Willy Wonka esque land
Speaker 1: where they think, wow, you know, golden tickets every day,
Speaker 1: I can't wait, and and that becomes a selling point,
Speaker 1: that becomes something that attracts them to go and work
Speaker 1: at this place, because I mean that that's a big commodity.
Speaker 1: Are the fresh people out the college who have the
Speaker 1: ideas in the drive exactly, you know, they and and
Speaker 1: only that, But they're cheaper to hire. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of different reasons. But these
Speaker 1: these sort of things make those companies very much attractive
Speaker 1: now once you get there, whether or not it actually
Speaker 1: helps you do what you were hired to do, that's
Speaker 1: a totally different question. So it may come up time
Speaker 1: where these companies start looking at this design and say,
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting the people we want, but we're
Speaker 1: not getting the results we want, so maybe we need
Speaker 1: to rethink this. I don't know that that's a fact.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some companies that are doing quite well.
Speaker 1: Google is doing really really well. There are other companies
Speaker 1: like Yahoo that, while it has a super funky office space,
Speaker 1: was going through some real problems. Speaking of Yahoo, um,
Speaker 1: I've got a question, Okay, what do you all think
Speaker 1: is the future outlook for teleworking. Well, of course, what
Speaker 1: is that by teleworking? I mean um working remotely via
Speaker 1: the internet. Basically anybody who does entire like coffee shop.
Speaker 1: If you use a computer to do all of your work,
Speaker 1: this is probably an option for you. Uh. I would
Speaker 1: say good too. Amazing would be the outlook for teleworking.
Speaker 1: The reason why I say that as the US Census
Speaker 1: Bureau did a study about teleworking working from home, they
Speaker 1: also talked about mixed workers. Mixed working would be when
Speaker 1: it's where mixed workers and we get to come into
Speaker 1: the office some days, we get to work from home
Speaker 1: some days, so it's a mix for us. There are
Speaker 1: some people who just work from home, and then there's
Speaker 1: some people who can only work in the office, and
Speaker 1: then there's the rest of us. Well, according to the Census,
Speaker 1: this trend is growing. Uh. They employees of private companies
Speaker 1: saw a sixty seven percent increase in people working from
Speaker 1: home between two thousand to two thousand ten. Now, there
Speaker 1: this is not true across all industries. There are some
Speaker 1: industries that had a decrease in the number of people
Speaker 1: who work from home. Uh. Specifically people who worked in agriculture, forestry, fishing,
Speaker 1: hunting and mining saw a decrease. The fact that there
Speaker 1: were people working from home in the first place is
Speaker 1: something of a surprise. Well, in in any in any
Speaker 1: manufacturing or labor industry, there's always going to be office
Speaker 1: financial workers. For example, administratives right, well, they make spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: They saw a twenty four point one percent decrease from
Speaker 1: two thousand to two thousand ten. But most industries saw
Speaker 1: their percentages increase. Some went from um some had an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of growth. For example, state government employees saw
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty two point five percent increase from two
Speaker 1: thousand to two thousand ten. However, when you look at
Speaker 1: the actual numbers, you realize that while the growth was enormous,
Speaker 1: we're still talking about a very small number of jobs,
Speaker 1: because it was only from one percent of all state
Speaker 1: government jobs going to two point four percent of all
Speaker 1: state government jobs. So the growth was huge, but the
Speaker 1: actual numbers were very small. It's only because the numbers
Speaker 1: were so loo to begin with, exactly. So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: just one of the trends. But there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other statistics I could cite. For example, again, according
Speaker 1: to the Census, ten percent of all American workers spend
Speaker 1: at least one day working remotely, which is up from
Speaker 1: seven percent back in. This census was conducted in so
Speaker 1: people who work from home exclusively made up six point
Speaker 1: six percent of all workers. Those working from home and
Speaker 1: quote other locations end quote made up two point eight
Speaker 1: percent of the total. And of the people who work
Speaker 1: from home, about ten percent of them were over the
Speaker 1: age of sixty five and about a quarter of them
Speaker 1: worked in management, business and financial occupations. About half of
Speaker 1: all people who work from home report as being self employed.
Speaker 1: So this is you know that, it's not a huge
Speaker 1: surprise if you're self employed. You could have an office
Speaker 1: space that you could go to, and lots of people do,
Speaker 1: but working out of your home means the you can
Speaker 1: often end up incurring fewer costs on the business end. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so to bring it back to Yahoo, if this teleworking
Speaker 1: trend is is so much on the upswing, why did
Speaker 1: I hear that, um that there was this big deal
Speaker 1: where Yahoo said everybody you should come back to the office. Well,
Speaker 1: Marissa Meyer took over Yahoo. She was a former Google employee,
Speaker 1: one of the first women to work for Google. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think the first female engineer at Google, and then
Speaker 1: she came over to become the CEO of Yahoo. And
Speaker 1: in fact, that was one of those things that a
Speaker 1: lot of industry analysts viewed as an incredibly positive mood
Speaker 1: move because Yahoo had been sort of struggling for several years.
Speaker 1: In fact, they went through five CEOs in four years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not not sign of a healthy company in general.
Speaker 1: So the official line from Yahoo is that the change
Speaker 1: in policy was meant to increase collaboration, uh, saying that
Speaker 1: a lot of great ideas come when people are interacting
Speaker 1: within an office environment and not and that that's just
Speaker 1: not as easy to do when you are working remotely,
Speaker 1: which is surely to some extent true. Yeah, But there
Speaker 1: were also other issues with Yahoo about whether or not
Speaker 1: employees were working very efficiently, whether they were doing their best.
Speaker 1: If you look at revenue generation on a per employee basis, UH,
Speaker 1: Yahoo was making about a third of what Google was
Speaker 1: per employee. So, in other words, if you look at
Speaker 1: Google and you counted every employee, every employee accounted for
Speaker 1: something like nine hundred thousand dollars in revenue. For every
Speaker 1: person who works at Google, that's nine thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: revenue at Yahoo it was more like three thousand. So
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's also saying that things are not
Speaker 1: as efficient as they need to be in order for
Speaker 1: us to compete at a level that goes, uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's comparable to our our arrivals, you know, are you know?
Speaker 1: So those are sort of the reasons that have been cited.
Speaker 1: Um so do you think that that kind of decision
Speaker 1: signals that there could be uh, some counterbalancing to this
Speaker 1: trend towards telework. I think I don't think that it's
Speaker 1: necessarily counterbalancing. I think this is a one example where
Speaker 1: a CEO comes into a troubled company and tries to
Speaker 1: really get a handle on exactly what are the contributors
Speaker 1: to the company's I guess lack of success, you could say,
Speaker 1: or at least uh problems with direction. And maybe it's
Speaker 1: even just to assess who is a good contributor to
Speaker 1: the company and who Isn't it maybe in preparation for
Speaker 1: things like reorganization or putting people on different teams. And
Speaker 1: I would imagine that the teleworking policy will eventually make
Speaker 1: its way back to Yahoo. The benefits of teleworking are numerous.
Speaker 1: One thing it does seem to have a very positive
Speaker 1: effect on employee morale when it also seems to help
Speaker 1: with employee productivity because people who work from home tend
Speaker 1: to be able to work at the times when they
Speaker 1: are the most productive, and they take breaks during the
Speaker 1: times when they're the least productive. They're not. They're they're
Speaker 1: putting in the same amount of time as workers who
Speaker 1: are going into the office for a nine to five
Speaker 1: type of job, so it's not like they're shirking from that.
Speaker 1: In that respect, it means that you have lower overhead
Speaker 1: for your company because you for not having to I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, way cheaper than an open office. Oh sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: even even an open office would be more expensive than
Speaker 1: having no centralized office at all, or a very small
Speaker 1: centralized office where only a few necessary employees would go in,
Speaker 1: or meeting rooms, yeah, for those few collaboration sessions it takes.
Speaker 1: It means that there's a lower impact on local traffic
Speaker 1: because people don't have to drive into work, which in
Speaker 1: turn means that you have a greater sense of satisfaction,
Speaker 1: you have a better work life balance since what we
Speaker 1: get to talk about all the time over in meetings.
Speaker 1: But it also means that you are helping the environment.
Speaker 1: You know, again, energy consumption for an office building is
Speaker 1: way higher than it is for a typical house. So
Speaker 1: even if you're working out of your home and you've
Speaker 1: got your own home office and you've got lots of equipment,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be generating the same amount of
Speaker 1: energy as you would need to for an office building.
Speaker 1: So accumulatively, it decreases our energy consumption. Also, because we're
Speaker 1: not driving as much, it decreases our fuel consumption. So
Speaker 1: these are things that end up having kind of a
Speaker 1: domino effect that are positive effects. Um and on top
Speaker 1: of it, you you create flexibility among your employees, uh,
Speaker 1: and you remove that that illness spreading mechanism. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't have that. If you're not in constant contact
Speaker 1: with tons of other people, you are also not in
Speaker 1: danger of spreading an illness or catching an illness. Or
Speaker 1: if you really have an option to work from home
Speaker 1: while you're a little bit under the weather and perhaps contagious,
Speaker 1: but feeling well enough to do your work then or
Speaker 1: if you can work from home while Sally is undergoing
Speaker 1: the Mongolian death flu, then you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about contracting it yourself. Yeah, I think working from home
Speaker 1: is probably a big advantage for parents, especially parents with
Speaker 1: younger children. Yeah, but at any rate, I mean, teleworking
Speaker 1: on its on its face, I think will continue to,
Speaker 1: uh to grow year over year. I think that we're
Speaker 1: going to see it grow in almost every industry. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sorry for those of you who work in agriculture and
Speaker 1: forestry and mining, you probably aren't going to be teleworks,
Speaker 1: although you might be replaced by robots, so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's time to although speaking of robots and also
Speaker 1: speaking of teleworking, so so as the number of teleworkers
Speaker 1: in our in our workforce grows, telepresence I think is
Speaker 1: going to become more major than it already is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that a lot of you have have
Speaker 1: sat in on some kind of vaguely weird webcam meeting
Speaker 1: in which no one is entirely sure how to interact
Speaker 1: with each other. Um. Yeah, well there's lots of awkward
Speaker 1: pauses while you're waiting for someone else to pick up
Speaker 1: the conversation or or like this podcast. Thanks thanks for
Speaker 1: admonstrating that, guys. That's great. Yeah, telepresence uh so, in
Speaker 1: some ways, advanced telepresence is still kind of a baby,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of the solution to this teleworking problem
Speaker 1: we were talking about, and especially what's suggested by like
Speaker 1: at least the official line on on the Yahoo decision right, um,
Speaker 1: which is collaboration is important. Yeah. Is that what you
Speaker 1: were totally about to say? Yeah, I'll let you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that obviously, teleworking has all these advantages. It's cheaper,
Speaker 1: it's better for the environment, it's better for employee morale
Speaker 1: and all that, um, but it also creates the problem
Speaker 1: that you know, if you've ever called into a house
Speaker 1: stuff works meeting on the telephone, First of all, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Yeah, that's for us. Why would you
Speaker 1: be doing that? No, I don't know anybody coworkers listen
Speaker 1: to us when we do that. It's uh, it can
Speaker 1: be hard to hear what's going on. Yes, it can
Speaker 1: be kind of confusing because you don't know who's speaking. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: it can be there can be you know, yeah, crack holes,
Speaker 1: and you miss things, and you miss a lot just
Speaker 1: by missing gestures and body language. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: there are some people who say that more than nine
Speaker 1: of communication really is physical. Well, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: if if the speaker phone happens to be closer to
Speaker 1: certain people within the office. You're going to hear lots
Speaker 1: of snarky comments, but not what they're commenting on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um and so. But obviously this is not a problem
Speaker 1: unique to us. It's a problem with how telephones work,
Speaker 1: and so when we're talking one on one. There's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to notice though, when you just use one
Speaker 1: telephone with a good connection to call your friend. I
Speaker 1: think most of the time most people can experience a
Speaker 1: kind of seamless simulation of a real conversation. In other words,
Speaker 1: like you don't have this feeling of I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: using a device, but you actually have a feeling of
Speaker 1: I'm talking to my friend. Right. You still end up
Speaker 1: missing certain things, but you can pick up stuff like
Speaker 1: from tone, but not necessarily you know, a physical response, right.
Speaker 1: But I think that you that you get a better
Speaker 1: experience the when if you're say, using a video skypeline
Speaker 1: or something to talk with someone. Yeah, and just like
Speaker 1: the phone. What I was going to say about the
Speaker 1: phone is I think a lot of this depends on
Speaker 1: the quality of the just the signal and stuff, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the more you're losing calls and hearing crackles and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. The more, yeah, the more your your simulation
Speaker 1: of the interaction degrades and you get the feeling that
Speaker 1: you're using a device. Same thing is true with say,
Speaker 1: video conferencing. Now, video conferencing is a thing that it's
Speaker 1: actually been around for decades, but it's just basically been
Speaker 1: getting better and better over time. Um, as we can
Speaker 1: use higher quality video, higher quality audio, and just better
Speaker 1: hardware integration. Also instant I mean instant feedback. You know,
Speaker 1: these days we can have a simultaneous instant connection with
Speaker 1: someone else with a webcam. Whereas in the eighties, where
Speaker 1: I think video conferencing enjoyed a very short lived and
Speaker 1: uh and pretty weak sauce reception within the business environment. Um,
Speaker 1: it was kind of uh, it was kind of fashionable. Um,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't there yet. We're we're getting closer and
Speaker 1: closer all the time, and stuff like Skype today is
Speaker 1: pretty commonplace and lots of office Yeah no, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say, ironically skypes office open floor plan, they
Speaker 1: don't skype in that's funny, yeah, okay, Um, but so
Speaker 1: obviously adding a visual element, and like I was talking
Speaker 1: about with the phone's adding a more and more seamless
Speaker 1: visual element that UM takes away the aspects of looking
Speaker 1: at a screen that remind you you're using a device,
Speaker 1: and instead UM offers this more unnoticeable sim elation of
Speaker 1: face to face interaction that really can add to a
Speaker 1: lot of business, you know, interactions. So if you're doing
Speaker 1: a negotiation on some kind of sales deal, people are
Speaker 1: real particular about how they carry themselves in these situations,
Speaker 1: Like body language can make a lot of difference. If
Speaker 1: you're able to gesture and make eye contact, you can
Speaker 1: probably get a better price. Right. That's just people are
Speaker 1: human when you're making right and so the better your
Speaker 1: video interaction hardware gets, probably the better job you can do, uh,
Speaker 1: simulating the experience of actually being there. So now what
Speaker 1: they're talking about these days is not just like a
Speaker 1: screen like a computer screen and you're looking into it,
Speaker 1: but these we'll say, one idea would be UM goggles,
Speaker 1: like interactive goggles, so that when you turn your head,
Speaker 1: what's the video game controller that's like that, oh, the
Speaker 1: oculus rift, the oculus rift at the head tracking software,
Speaker 1: head tracking software, It would be exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're in a room that's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a meeting taking place somewhere where you can't be,
Speaker 1: or at least it would be cheaper for you not
Speaker 1: to be. But you can simulate being in the room
Speaker 1: by wearing some kind of hardware that allows you to
Speaker 1: turn your head throughout the room and track eye movements
Speaker 1: so you can look where you want to look, interact
Speaker 1: with who you want to interact with. You can you know,
Speaker 1: make eyes at somebody across the table if you want to,
Speaker 1: can make robot eyes and yeah. Um. Now the other
Speaker 1: idea would be a more immersive room environment, so you
Speaker 1: can go into a room, would say like a wrap
Speaker 1: around visual display. Um and and so these are some ideas,
Speaker 1: but the problem with all of these is their stationary.
Speaker 1: They are you going to robots, I'm going to robots.
Speaker 1: People are into these two a segue with an iPad
Speaker 1: attached to baby. That's exactly what I'm talking about. No,
Speaker 1: actually it's not a segue. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about a few robots, um that are actually kind of
Speaker 1: in vogue these days. Um. Yeah, these are things that
Speaker 1: exist that are in use. Yeah, they're they're picking up steam.
Speaker 1: One that's a kind of really basic model, but pretty clever.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's from Double Robotics and it's called
Speaker 1: the Double. It's it offers an iPad based platform. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's a motorized scooter with a big stick on it
Speaker 1: and you put an iPad on top of that. I
Speaker 1: would call it the robots. Yeah, and so it it
Speaker 1: rolls around within the office. And now it's very cheap
Speaker 1: and stripped down. Um, because it leaves all of the
Speaker 1: video part up to you. It's the software you have
Speaker 1: on your iPad that that does the video. It's connected
Speaker 1: through the WiFi of whatever the space is, so essentially
Speaker 1: using face time and so you can see through the
Speaker 1: camera view of the iPad and then anyone who looks
Speaker 1: at the robots seas your face yeah. Um. And so
Speaker 1: this allows for sort of mobile video interaction. It's like
Speaker 1: the video conferencing idea, except now you're not stuck in
Speaker 1: the meeting room. You can follow people around have a
Speaker 1: conversation with them. And this actually might be more useful
Speaker 1: than you would first think, especially say in an environment
Speaker 1: where you want to tour facilities or say go around
Speaker 1: like a lobby, meeting people at a meet and greet
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. I'm just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what my own personal reaction would be to encounter this.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds very very Douglas Atoms or doctor.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm a I'm a science fiction fan, I'm
Speaker 1: a robot fan. I'm a forward thinking kind of guy.
Speaker 1: But uh, I honestly don't know how I would react.
Speaker 1: I think I think I would be intrigued and very
Speaker 1: much interested in the technology. I think you would put
Speaker 1: a kick me sign on the back of the robot.
Speaker 1: John Well, you know, unplugged me sign. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some more robots. Okay, Okay, they're Um. There's
Speaker 1: so Scott Hassan's Suitable Technologies. That's a group that has
Speaker 1: created a it's called the Beam Remote Presence Device, and
Speaker 1: there was an interesting little Forbes article about it. Apparently
Speaker 1: it weighs ninety five pounds and it's a motorized stand.
Speaker 1: It's got a seventeen inch flat screen that displays your face. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's about sixty two inches tall. Okay, um, which
Speaker 1: is interesting because that's sort of like considered in the
Speaker 1: middle between standing and sitting, so I can kind of
Speaker 1: interact with either one that's that's the the I'm continually
Speaker 1: forgetting the name of the Honda Robot. The Asmo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's about the height of the that's what about
Speaker 1: five ft? Yeah, and uh, there was a funny quote
Speaker 1: in the article I read. It said basically that some
Speaker 1: people have already bought these and they're using them in
Speaker 1: their offices for people who work remotely. And the main
Speaker 1: problem I heard reported is that it doesn't have arms,
Speaker 1: so when it needs to like come into your office
Speaker 1: to talk to you, you just ram it against the
Speaker 1: door a few times and then you can come open
Speaker 1: the door. To be fair, that's exactly how Connell knocks
Speaker 1: on bars to It just just keeps walking into a
Speaker 1: door until you open it. Um. There was like, comas
Speaker 1: are big, big boss, y'all, He's never rammed into my door.
Speaker 1: Well that's because we don't have doors in our cubicauts.
Speaker 1: So there's another one. I Robot and Cisco two big companies.
Speaker 1: Actually when you think about I Robot is big and
Speaker 1: consumer robotics, and Cisco is big and uh telepresence and
Speaker 1: enterprise stuff. Yeah. So I Robot that's the company that
Speaker 1: does rumba right. Yeah, so they came together to create
Speaker 1: the AVA five hundred. Um Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It offers bigger screen, so it's a one point five
Speaker 1: inch hteve video presence and when you when you talk
Speaker 1: to people who have used these and tested them out,
Speaker 1: they really do talk about how the video quality and
Speaker 1: the size of the screen is important simulating presence because
Speaker 1: the closer you can get to actual sale of human head.
Speaker 1: Yeah um, with good video resolution, it even though you're
Speaker 1: talking to a robot, it does help that simulation kick in.
Speaker 1: It feels more like you're interacting straight on with the person. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing that makes a five hundred interesting is that
Speaker 1: it's easier to get around. So the the beam that
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, you gotta steer it, so it's
Speaker 1: like driving a remote control car. Basically you're steering it
Speaker 1: with your computer keys and you can That's how you
Speaker 1: ram it into the door if you need to, or
Speaker 1: run it into your co workers. The A of five
Speaker 1: uses some of the same kind of technology as a roomba.
Speaker 1: It's massive its environment, and it it has automatic navigation
Speaker 1: within its environment. So what it has a prime sense
Speaker 1: three D sensor and when you put it in a
Speaker 1: new new environment. It learns where the rooms are and
Speaker 1: you tell it where to go, and it drives itself there.
Speaker 1: So all you have to do is map it against
Speaker 1: where you know. It has the geography of the space.
Speaker 1: You just have to tell it which region's map to
Speaker 1: which offices. For example, saying this this space here that
Speaker 1: you have already mapped out that relates back to Connell's office.
Speaker 1: You'll know from the banging noise where you're trying to
Speaker 1: get out. The cool thing about these is that they're
Speaker 1: actually apparently coming way down in price. Like the earlier
Speaker 1: models were super expensive if you wanted something that was
Speaker 1: at all decent um the AVA I read they're planning
Speaker 1: on selling it according to this article, Uh at about
Speaker 1: two thousand. That's not that expensive when you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, robots, it really is not that expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially a robot that large, that has that kind of
Speaker 1: learning capacity. Um So, And I've heard that some of
Speaker 1: these I think, specifically the AVA, have been tested in
Speaker 1: medical environments. Oh, I'd have to check, but I think
Speaker 1: the AVA was actually derived from an earlier robot that
Speaker 1: has been used in medical and vironments. This this is
Speaker 1: some stuff that I've that I've heard has been a
Speaker 1: really effective use of this. This telepresence kind of thing
Speaker 1: is is doctor patient interaction when, for example, a specialist
Speaker 1: cannot come fast enough to an emergency situation, being able
Speaker 1: to interact with a patient and furthermore interact with the
Speaker 1: rest of the hospital staff to help save lives. I see, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense, because you might have
Speaker 1: someone who is a specialist in a particular disease or
Speaker 1: condition or whatever who doesn't work that the hospital that
Speaker 1: the patient has arrived at might work around the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be like an instantaneous tele consultation, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Yeah, so I think, I think really
Speaker 1: to wrap this all up, the office of the future. First,
Speaker 1: there will be robots. Second, uh, there might not be
Speaker 1: many other people. Um, I think, I think again, I
Speaker 1: think telepresence is going to be a growing trend. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to see if the open office plan stays around,
Speaker 1: if it ends up proving that, you know, we're an
Speaker 1: adaptive creatures, and it may very well be like I
Speaker 1: said that after this initial reaction to yeah, of of
Speaker 1: dealing with us, that maybe we adapt our working styles
Speaker 1: so that the open office environment makes perfect sense. And
Speaker 1: maybe even you know, five years down the line, we
Speaker 1: might say, gosh, can you can you imagine if you
Speaker 1: were in a cubicle and you couldn't see anybody, That
Speaker 1: might be what we talk about. Then Uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: just like you were saying. You know, in the eighties,
Speaker 1: the cubicle became like a symbol of being yeah, under
Speaker 1: the corporate thumb, So it'll be you know, change is scary.
Speaker 1: Change does not always meet with enthusiasm, but often change
Speaker 1: can ultimately be a good thing. So while we have
Speaker 1: been snarky, especially since we're personally about to experience this
Speaker 1: for ourselves, I'd still like to maintain optimism and say,
Speaker 1: let's give it a really good try and and see
Speaker 1: what works for us. Yeah, maybe it maybe like I
Speaker 1: said that we're probably we might be overreacting, and that
Speaker 1: the initial findings of the open office plan are just
Speaker 1: an implication of the fact that changes is happening. That's it.
Speaker 1: So maybe maybe five years from now we'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is ideal for working. Plus we'll be
Speaker 1: working from home a lot, all right, So that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion about the Office of the future. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you want to join the conversation. Go to f
Speaker 1: W Thinking dot com. That's the website where we have
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Speaker 1: from you. We want you to be part of the
Speaker 1: conversation about the future. Let us know what you're excited about.
Speaker 1: Let's know what your office environment is like if you
Speaker 1: if you work in an office, or if you've never
Speaker 1: worked in an office, if you've only worked from home.
Speaker 1: Let us know if you want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. For
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