Working On The Go – How You Stay Productive and in Control
As manager of Univention North America, I often find myself working on the go. While free WiFi and mobile Internet are slowly bridging the gap between the office, airport lounges and hotels, connections are often slow and congested whenever many people are congregating.
While many office documents can still be worked on when on the go, synchronization with the office and collaboration with coworkers are still difficult, especially, if you have to consider questions like data and transmission security, including secure access to the company network, travel across time zones or, oh horror, the date line and slow connections.
Of course, travel needs are not the only reason, why you would want to look at these applications, for synchronization and collaboration can also greatly benefit teams that work at multiple locations or colleagues frequently working from home. In the end, nothing is worse than finding out that an employee has uploaded much of the companies confidential knowledge base to a cloud service, because tablets, smart phones or collaborations are words that the IT office can’t be bothered with.
When I started at Univention’s Professional Services in Germany, one of the questions I was asked was “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”. Being prepared for the interview, my answer was a mixture of showing my idea of working with customers, my understanding of the technologies of UCS as well as my personal goals and dreams. Looking back to my answers in our HR folder, I have to admit that life has taken many turns that I didn’t plan for. Today, I’m no longer working in Professional Services. For a bit over a year, I’ve been Univention’s North American Operations dealing not only with technical projects but also with Sales, PR and Management as a whole.