Working at Multiple Sites

Previously titled: Working in Different Places

This page is intended to collect pointers to information on working in different places. The material includes people who work in more than one location and workgroups that are spread out over more than one location. Some of the popular current catch-phrases are teleconferencing, telecommuting, home office environments, virtual workplace, virtual office, distributed work, etc.

There are many different versions of working at multiple sites. One of the classic jobs which involves working at multiple sites is the traveling sales person. This page focusses more on "knowledge workers" or office work. It could be one person with different offices or teams that are not co-located. It might be a telecommuter who works at home part of the time.

At this time, this page is mainly a compilation of links and a few personal observations. My hope is that eventually, it will develop into a source of useful information, research summaries, guidelines and helpful hint for people affected by situations where their work takes place at multiple sites.

-Robin

Some topics are...

General
A relevant Dilbert cartoon
The Institute for the Study of Distributed Work
Working by Wire (TM)
Newsgroup: alt.support.telecommute
Do a fresh search for telecommuting in www documents using InfoSeek's search engine.
A position for a masters or doctoral students in Telecommunications with scholarship
The California Office of the Center for the New West
Describes various initiatives:
Telecommuting, Teleworking and Alternative Officing
The home page of Gil Gordon Associates -- a good collection of information.
"TELECOMMUTING, * TELEWORKING, . AND * ALTERNATIVE * OFFICING" "This WWW home page consolidates a wide variety of information from around the world, and from many different perspectives, on the subjects of telecommuting, teleworking and flexible work."
Gil Gordon Associates page on Teleworking Conferences
Telecommuting Advisory Council's Home Page
The national Telecommuting Advisory Council -- TAC -- is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the economic, social and environmental benefits of telecommuting."
Telecommute America!
"Corporations, small businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals across the country are invited to participate in Telecommute America! Discover a New Workplace the week of October 23-27, 1995."
Telecommuting, Teleconferencing and Telefacilitation through Web-based Meeting Support by the Performing Graphics Company (PGC).
You can see job postings from Employers and Job Searchers from the CIS (Custom Innovative Solutions) Telecommuting Resources page.

Other Related Collections of Pointers
Index of /pub/EFF/Policy/OP/Telecommuting/
"EFF Telecommuting Archive - HTTP (WWW) Links to Relevant Material"
Index of /pub/GII_NII/Telecommuting/
Another bibliography of interest might be Tom Brinck's Video Communications Bibliography
Patty Lewis's Telecommuting and Telework Info/Resource Page
Rick Watson's page of Telecommuting Articles (Some are already listed on this page.)
The World-Wide Web Virtual Library's pages under Communications & Telecommunications:
Yahoo's page on Science:Engineering:Electrical Engineering: Telecommunications
Telecommuting: Who What Where How
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Telecommuting
Telecommuting seems to be a popular topic in the business literature these days. While it is only one of the ways you can work at multiple sites, it probably has more web pages devoted to it that any of the other topic except for advertisements for service providers. (See Service Providers, etc.)
Informal results from COREComm
Gopher directory for the Smart Valley - Telecommuting Initiative
The Executive Summary
Telecommuting in Staunton, VA, U.S.A.
"The City of Staunton
"An Ideal Telecommuting Site
"Staunton is a city of 24,500 in the central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that is both rich in history and current in resources. It is located at the junction of U.S. Interstate Highways 81 and 64, two hours from the Washington, D.C."
Telecommuting page by [email protected].
The Bay Area Telecommuting Assistance Project
Telecommuting World
conferencein San Francisco, CA, USA, September 9-11, 1996.

Teleconferencing
Teleconferencing includes various ways of conferring with remote colleagues. Some of these methods involve the use of standard telephone lines (and of course the definition of a "standard" telephone service may be evolving from what used to be known as POTS -- plain old telephone service). At its simplest teleconferencing is a phone call. More advanced versions include multi-way calling (funny how the "party-line" bug becomes a feature), video-conferencing, desktop conferencing, sharing an application or screen, or combinations of these abilities.
Leigh Anne Rettinger's Desktop Videoconferencing Product Survey
Some tech reports from ISI.
MONET
"MONET, the High Data Rate MObile interNET, will demonstrate the technologies required to develop a Department of Defense network with various capabilities" including teleconferencing.
The ATM Research Consortium (ARC)
"The ATM Research Consortium (ARC) is a team of universities and not-for-profit research institutes in the Southern California area."
A telecomputing bibliography (Includes several articles about teleconferencing.)
The International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium

Managing at a Distance
Managing yourself and others at a distance requires some additional skills from what is required in a traditional environment.
Institute for the Study of Distributed Work
This document is more general than just management issues.
Center for Telecommunications Management (CTM)
"Founded in 1985, CTM is part of the Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Southern California."
Telecommuting Policy Guidelines
by the Bay Area Telecommuting Assistance Project
The section on Leading in the on-line guidebook: Successful Management in the Virtual Office
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Computer Mediated Communication
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), like teleconferencing is one of the technologies that make it easier to work remotely by supporting communication and sometimes helping share the work objects (e.g., schedules, blue prints, etc.)
Bibliography of Organizational Computer-Mediated Communication
Looks excellent!

Spirit, Motivation, Cohesiveness
Many people believe that it is difficult to create a sense of loyalty or cohesion in workgroups when they don't get together regularly.
Working by Wire (TM)

Working at Home
Working at home has advantages and disadvantages over working in an office or other location which is specifically intended for work.
Advantages
  • Shorter Commute (saves time, energy, frustrations)
  • Often a more comfortable work environment
Disadvantages
  • Less Social
  • May require purchasing extra equipment for home use instead of shared office use

Productivity Issues
A major concern of many companies experimenting with telecommuting is the potential loss of employee productivity. However, a gain in productivity appears to be one of the major selling points of telecommuting.
On March 8th, 1996, NPR's Morning Edition had a story about telecommuting in which they mention some research showing that telecommuters had a 10-20% increase in productivity. (I'd really like to hear more about this -- a reference? -- could anyone help fill this out?)
In the usenet teleconferencing group, someone claimed that 80% of the travel time saved is put to work for the employer. (reference?)
The Bay Area Telecommuting Assistance Project has collected some estimates of productivity gains through telecommuting at various companies.

Problems
Like everything else in this world, working at multiple sites has advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the things that can make it difficult.
"It's in my other office."
No matter how much work we do electronically, there are some physical items that you don't want to have to carry back and forth all the time.
Working alone at home can get lonely.
Sharing desks at work can get odd.
Some people don't believe you're actually working if they can't see you doing the work. (See managing at a distance.)
Contacting a "live" person
The more people who work at multiple locations, the more difficult it can get to quickly arrange for a chat. If you don't know which location the other person is at today, you may need to try many different locations or phone numbers. If you both reply on pagers, then you can play "pager" tag for quite awhile.
Also with no central office, there are fewer people who can help you know where to reach someone who isn't in the office.
Some people are notoriously bad at returning phone calls. If they're in an office populated by other people, sometimes you can use one of the other people to help you make contact (let you know when you can reach them at their desk, etc.)
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Desktop Conferencing
Using your computer and its communication capabilities as a conduit for communication. Some applications provide sharing capabilities for other applications over a network; others provide video conferencing through on a computer screen.
Leigh Anne Rettinger's Thesis on Desktop Videoconferencing: Technology and Use for Remote Seminar Delivery
DeskTop Conferencing (DTC), a Windows application.
ICL's TeamVision

Infrastructure, Supporting Technologies and Service Providers
In searching for information on related topics (e.g., tele-*), I came across many web pages advertising service providers. In this section, I've listed some sites with information or free services at the top, followed by an alphabetical listing of commercial service providers.
Software packages from LBL
"The Major Software Packages available via anonymous ftp from the Network Research Group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory"
Information about Cornell University's CU-SeeMe
courses on telecommunications listed by the Training Registry (At the moment there's very little listed here, but...)
Ascend Communications
A service provider.
"© Copyright 1995, International Helfrich Ltd."
ConCom
Hybrid Networks, Inc.
A service provider.
INTELSAT
A service provider.
MALLARD ELECTRONICS INC.
A service provider.
Mikado Connection Services
A service provider.
Network Intensive
A service provider.
PacBell's page on "Telecommuting with ISDN"
"High Speed Telecommuting for: . Software developers . Engineers . Graphic artists . Desktop publishers . Architects . Multimedia developers . Anyone who wants high-speed Internet access . (c) 1994 Pacific Bell - Switched Digital Services."
A fairly contentless page when last checked.
Teleconferencing Technologies Inc. (TTI)
Telecommute SolutionS, Inc. Home Page
"Welcome to Telecommute SolutionS, Inc., the leading provider of turn-key telecommuting services. This server provides information about both Telecommute SolutionS and pointers to a variety of other information services."
Voyager Information Networks, Inc.
A service provider.
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Telemedicine
While individuals in telemedicine are not necessarily working in multiple places, the work is occurring at multiple locations.
Telehealth Center
Canadian Society of Telemedicine
The Telemedicine Network in Utah

Tele-education
While the people in tele-education are not necessarily working in multiple places, it is a related area.
11th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning
Open Learning Agency
Open University of British Columbia
CoVis
Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis) at Northwestern University
On-line Projects
A list of on-line educational projects some of which involve teleconferencing.
Otago Polytechnic Distance Teaching Service
When last checked (30 May 1995) this page had a logo, but was contentless.
Centre for Distance Education

Related Areas of Interest
Tom Brinck's CSCW and Groupware Page
David Lawson's home page lists several articles he's written relating business real estate (aka. property or facilities) practices and alternative office arrangements.
Virtual Workgroups Magazine
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Some Related Books and Other References
These are books references I've found, but do not necessarily recommend. I haven't seen most of the books yet.
* Belson, David The Network Nation Revisited
David Belson's ([email protected]) "thesis, presented to the faculty of Stevens Institute of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts."
* Berkley, James and Nohria, Nitin. 1991. Bureaucracy, technology, and the virtual organization. [Working paper. Harvard University. Graduate School of Business Administration. Division of Research. [no.] 92-033.]
* Bundy, Janice and Llambias, Luis. "Antelope Valley Telebusiness Center: The Launch of UCLA's Telecommuting Pilot Project" ["This article was originally published in Perspective, Volume 19, Number 1, 1995, pp. 15-19."]
* Cross, Thomas B. 1986. Telecommuting: The Future Technology of Work (With contributions by Marjorie Raizman.) [ISBN: 0870946455]
* Davidow, William H. and Malone, Michael S. 1992. The virtual corporation: structuring and revitalizing the corporation for the 21st century.
* Grenier, Ray and Metes, George. 1995. Going Virtual: Moving Your Organization into the 21st Century. [Prentice Hall, N.J. 0-13-185299-X]
* Hurley, Brian and Birkwood, Peter. A Small Business Guide to Doing Big Business on the Internet [An ad for the book, includes links to ordering information, table of contents and reviews]
* Hurley, Brian and Birkwood, Peter. >Effective Remote Collaborative Writing [A short article located on the the web.]
* Kelly, Bernie and McGraw, Bruce. Successful Management in the Virtual Office.
* Kinsman, Francis. 1987. The Telecommuters [ISBN: 0471917893]
* Lewis, Patty, A Feasibility Study of Implementing a Telecommuting Program at Booz-Allen and Hamilton
* Ramsower, Reagan Mays. 1985. Telecommuting: The Organizational and Behavioral Effects of Working at Home. [ISBN: 0835716287]
This is the revision of a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Minnesota (1983).
* Scott, Robert. 1985. Office at Home.
* On Telecommuting: A PS Enterprises Research Paper
* Other collections of references and pointers are listed above.
Go to...

Caveats and Notes

Please let me know if you have something I should add here or comments on how to improve this page. -Robin Lampert ([email protected])

Note: In some cases the descriptions are copied from the page the link connects to. These are indicated by quotes. Several of the sites listed are commercial establishments. No endorsement is implied by listing them here.

This page last updated: 15 November 1996
by [email protected]
This page is available at http://www.crew.umich.edu/~lampert/wtele.html.
Thank you for visiting. (-: