Military

Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, wrote recently on Tech Central Station about what he calls the Comfy Chair Revolution – also known as the virtual office:

But people live differently now. Lots of people work independently, or part-time, or work as telecommuters. The lifestyle is more fluid, in part because technologies like cellphones, laptops, and PDAs allow people to work wherever they are, or to stay in touch with family or teenagers without direct supervision. I see a lot of folks with that kind of personal tech hanging out wherever there’s a pleasant setting, checking email, returning calls, or writing. It’s work that doesn’t quite feel like work.

This fluidity gives retailers and other businesses a different kind of opportunity. Retailers have always tried to sell not just sweaters, but a lifestyle. But if you become somebody’s hangout, you don’t just sell a lifestyle, you’re selling a life. If price and selection are the main basis for competition, people can always buy on the Internet, but people – teenagers especially, but everyone — will still want a place to go.

Does it work? Well, I’m writing this on a laptop in a Borders right now, comfortably ensconced on a leather couch and waiting for the line to thin so I can order a latte. I do a lot of writing here, especially during the summers or on breaks when the university is closed. (And they sell me more books and CDs as a result) A few years ago, in the pre-laptop era, it would have been a lot harder to both work and hang out; I’m sure I would have done it less.

Over the last seven years in my current position, I’ve seen how I work change dramatically.

To understand what I am going to explain, you’ll need to understand my job.

I lead a team of eight exempt managers who supervise a larger team of around fifty – seventy hourly employees. I have an office located sixty-four miles from my home – and each of my managers work in a different location spread throughout the greater Boston area. I have an additional three offsite warehouses that I am responsible for spread throughout the same area. I am generally in the office once every 7 – 14 days and spend the rest of the time with my team in their workcenters – coaching, guiding, helping them with obstacles, and so on.

My office, while quite nice, isn’t really my kind of work environment. I have a very nice company provided laptop (a Dell Inspiron 600), a great PDA (iPaq 4451), a shared administrative assistant, and plenty of desk and meeting space. Oh, and it’s a private office! But my team isn’t there – it’s just me, a computer, and paperwork. Except to see my admin, my investigator, and my partner (who actually runs the stores that I provide support for), there’s no reason for me to be there.

Especially because there aren’t any windows. But that’s another story.

Over the last few years, the ability to work remotely has changed significantly. I used to have a “cubbyhole” – which was a place I could go hide-out during the workday. It was an offsite location in the midst of my market that provided a comfortable place to work away from the hustle and bustle – and distractions – of other locations. But the only way to communicate was with a cell phone.

Wi-Fi has changed all of that. I can goto Panera Bread, or Starbucks, or a hotel lobby, or tons of other places, turn on my laptop or PDA, get online and goto town. With my latest laptop, my company has finally provided a VPN solution that allows me to fully integrate onto our corporate intranet (most of our information is sent out via the web nowadays), sync my PDA with our Microsoft Exchange servers (you have no idea how much more productive this makes me), and so on.

Sunday morning I sat on my sunfilled patio and submitted more than a month’s worth of business expenses, reviewed investigation case notes, worked on another project, and some other tasks. That eliminated one of my major reasons to visit the office.

On my Monday train ride down to Philadelphia from Boston, I used my company laptop to schedule midyear reviews, create project documents (and email them out), setup 3rd quarter developmental statuses, and a slew of other scheduling, task, project, and e-mail related tasks. When I arrived at the Marriott in Center City Philadelphia, I plugged into the high speed internet in the room, connected to our VPN, and synced up all of my work.

I often work for a few early morning hours (I leave the house at 5 or 530am most days) before visiting my first store at a Wi-Fi enabled place. They get my business because of the atmosphere they provide, the food/beverage that’s there, and the wi-fi that enables me to complete my work without driving all the way to my office to do it.

We’re getting closer and closer to the convergence that I expect we’ll find one day. Bluetooth is going to help with that (I sync my PDA to my laptop via Bluetooth now) – but one day my PDA and Laptop and Cell Phone and Blackberry are all going to share information with each other – seamlessly. It will be interesting to see how things evolve in the months and years ahead….

Over at Sgt. Hook, the good First Sergeant has been writing in response to reader questions submitted over the last few days. Once recent question has been sitting in the back of my mind the last few days:

What is the thing that you are most afraid of in life?

That we’ll lose, that we aren’t as dedicated to our preservation as others are to our destruction.

I have much the same fear as the Sergeant does.

A few times now I have written about how we maintain resolve in the face of all that is going on about us – particularly in the media. But it’s our own internal resolve that I fear. Simply put, do we have the deep tenacity required to continue the right that we’re in to its end.

There are days that I wake up optimistically and don’t feel so much fear about our resolve – and then there are days when I wonder if we have all forgotten what happened to us on September 11th – the day we finally woke up and realized that there were a large group of people out there that wished us harm?

The President said during his speech ten days after September 11th that as time went on we may forget what happened to us – and why.

We cannot forget – and that’s my fear.

Former Air Force Officer (and pilot) John Robb writes today about CIA Officer who recently wrote a book Imperial Hubris about the Global War on Terror. Some interesting points:

# Al Qaeda and its ilk represent a national security threat to the US. This is war and it is going to last a long time.
# The tempo of attacks and activity within al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist organizations is increasing.
# Polls in the Islamic world indicate that our policies are opposed by 80-90% of the people (not our way of life). This is the basis of al Qaeda’s support.
# The policies opposed: Our military presence in Saudi Arabia. Our support for appostate regimes in the Islamic world (Egypt and Saudi Arabia). Our unqualified support for Israel. Pressure to maintain low oil prices. Support for regimes that surppress muslims (India and China).
# These policies cannot be debated within the US political system.
# Democracy can’t be exported.
# The solution is to revise our policies to meet the needs of the Islamic world because it is in our interest — or — if we can’t do that, we should be ruthless in our use of military power.
# Our military posture is defensive. It should be aggressive. Our generals have become bureaucrats. To win this militarily, it is going to require a high body count.
# No single official will be faulted in the 9/11 report (and therefore nobody will be fired), despite substantial failures.

There are many good points here. Some of which I agree with – others that I do not necessarily agree with – but eyeopening nonetheless.

I’ve been telling people over the last few weeks two revelations that I’ve had in recent weeks.

The first is that I will likely see suicide bombings here in the United States within my lifetime.

The other, from a speech by Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker a month or so ago, is that we will likely be at war with Islamic fundamentalists for the rest of our lives.

The world changed on September 11th – and there are some in this country that still doesn’t recognize that…