Our third in a series of New Ways of Working white papers focuses on how the workplace is being impacted by changing workstyles such as distributed and mobile work. If fewer and fewer workers come to the central office to work, how will these offices be used in the future? Is the centralized office as a place to work an artifact of the 20th century? If the office has a future, what direction will it take?

Our third symposium was held on July 29th through 31, 2007. The theme was Sustainability through New Ways of Working. The program was an "energetic" and stimulating one, with energy consultant, Hal Levin, presenting the results of his review of total system approaches to sustainability. Follow-up panels on organizational behavior, urban development, location planning, workplace strategies, and technologies also took place. In addition to Hal, participants included energy experts from VTT and Dr. Suvi Nenoen from Helsinki University of Technology, principal investigator of ProWork: Workplace Productivity, a new Tekes-sponsored project.

This is Joe Ouye’s presentation in May 2006 for EDRA 37. (32 slides) He asks the question: Can dispersed team be as productive, quick and innovative as collocated teams? The answer: in some circumstances, yes. The presentation covered a lot of ground, including the advantages and major challenges for teams working across distance, the top ten best practices for distributed teams, and trends in virtual collaboration.

What Does Research Say About Distributed Meetings? This is an edited excerpt of a discussion on how distributed teams handle brainstorming and other idea-generating tasks:

Question: My team is working on developing guidelines for distributed meetings. I'm looking for your response to a specific question, the answer to which has eluded the members of my team: When engaging in creativity-based group work (brainstorming, ideation, etc.), and one or more of the participants are remote (unable to meet face-to-face with the others, but able to connect via technology), is it best to conduct the session entirely "virtually," where all participants "call-in," in order to level the playing field?

One of the earliest discussion threads on the NewWOW site was sparked by a news item (in the San Jose Mercury News) about Hewlett Packard cutting back on telecommuting. All IT employees were going to be required to move back to an office environment or be forced to quit. For excerpts from the conversation, see

Invited to speak at the EC's 1st Conference on Collaborative Working Environments, a NewWOW member reached out to the community for suggestions on identifying key research themes in the area of collaborative working environments. A rich discussion ensued and a number of helpful suggestions were offered. Here’s a glimpse:

• It’s difficult to introduce the possibility of "surprise" into routine distributed collaboration when it's best to minimize surprises (i.e. common expectations, processes, etc.)
• Establishing trust is highly important. If an initial face-to-face meeting is not possible, sharing resumes (with pictures) is a cheaper but less effective alternative.

SMART Technologies Inc. and Haworth have both announced their commitment to be sponsors of the New Ways of Working Network for a second year. Haworth has also expressed a desire to host at least three tertulia in Haworth showrooms around North America. We're grateful for their continued support and look forward to working closely with both companies again this year.

Ann M. Marcus and David Coleman, Collaborative Strategies, have completed a NewWOW.Net report on virtual team spaces (VTS). VTS tools are a subset of collaboration tools that have become a valuable web-based solution to the challenge of information and document sharing for distributed teams that must work together across distance and time. There are VTS tools that incorporate a wide range of specific application, as well as others that meet the needs only of a slender niche market.

The New Ways of Working Network is a membership organization that:

• Provides an opportunity to interact personally with other thought-leaders in a community that spans all the disciplines relevant to new ways of working
• Provides easy access to timely, practical and reliable information on new ways of working

The New Ways of Working Network brings together thought leaders from disciplines such as workplace design, information technology, knowledge management, human resources, human factors, and organizational culture to dialog about new ways of working in a distributed world.