Web Worker Daily

Hot on the heels of our earlier Coworking Roundup comes the news that Cisco has collaborated with the city of Amsterdam to launch its first Smart Work Center (SWC), in the nearby community of Almere, an area which incidentally, has an all-fibre broadband network.

The SWC has been conceived as an experiment in using computing technology to address climate change, reducing travel costs and carbon footprints by providing workers with the ability to work remotely away from the City. Cisco, driven by its commitments to the Clinton Global Initiative has also taken the opportunity to introduce some of its leading edge conferencing and collaboration technologies in the SWC. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s Economist, in an article called Home warriors, explores some fascinating issues around the implications of telecommuting and its implications on energy, policy and employment…not simply the availability of connectivity and email.

The writer argues that though technology and infrastructure has long been available, only now are the economic and commercial drivers unfolding that’s making teleworking an attractive default position for many employers, not just employees.

Here’s a few key items from the piece…

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WWD’s Mike Gunderloy recently commented on Sun Microsystem’s study of the impact of telecommuting on a worker’s carbon footprint. Coincidentally, on the same day policy changes in the UK may mean that telecommuting sees a sharp increase as the options for actual commuting rise in cost and narrow the ability of people to travel into urban centers.

Following the success of London’s congestion charge, launched in 2003, other UK cities such as Leeds, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol have begun to explore similar schemes. The UK government approved a congestion charging programme for Manchester – the country’s defacto second city – which would charge inbound morning commuters the equivalent of $4-6 and outbound evening commuters around $2. I guess that’s around a gallon of fuel each day by US standards!

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