What CES Said About Work

Posted By: Robyn Greenspan
Filed Under: robyn greenspan, russell bishop, worklife balance, gadgets, consumer electronics show, mobility, smartphones, ces

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The Consumer Electronics Show was last week, and while it certainly was a natural event for technologists, it was also a hot ticket for enthusiasts who were eager to visit the birthplace of all the new products they would adopt in their infancy.

Since I fall into the consumer-attracted-to-shiny-things category, I spent the week vicariously absorbing the online details of the gadgets I'd add to my wish lists, culminating with my own personal CES last weekend at Best Buy talking processor speed, OS, functionality and upcoming devices with a mobile salesman while I eagerly handled an early release HTC Evo Shift.

The latest in gaming, entertainment, 3D, toys, automation were well-represented at CES, but what seemed to capture much attention, at least for me and in the media I followed, was mobile computing. New generations of smartphones and a growing field of tablets were unveiled that could do the heavy lifting typically reserved for big, bulky desktops and high-priced laptops.

Consumer reliance on constant connectivity coupled with the rise of the knowledge worker are behind the demand to shrink the devices that make our everyday lives and jobs easier. Pasty faces and blinking in the sunlight are no longer telltale signs of hardcore gamers, social networkers, programmers or the Internet-dependent because you can now be outside doing the same thing!

That's good for work/life balance, isn't it? To have the ability to work inside, outside, daytime, nighttime, the office, home, car, caf�, vacation. Wait...what?

A working vacation may seem like an oxymoron, but ExecuNet research from a few years ago found that only about 10 percent fully disconnected while on holiday and weren't tempted to check email, take a conference call, go online or conduct any business.

Forget work/life "balance;" welcome to work/life "integration." Why else would these mobile devices herald so much excitement at CES? So we can scroll through BlackBerry email while waiting for our table to be ready in a restaurant; scan a report on an iPad with one eye on the TV; send a Twitter message before lights out in bed; update status to let colleagues know the view is great from the Grand Canyon.

But controlled integration is the key — to want to continue working after hours, not because you have to just to stay ahead. The great recession and not-so-great recovery, however, pose challenges to that distinction.

I spoke to business productivity author Russell Bishop a couple weeks ago to develop a presentation together for ExecuNet, and he succinctly summarized what I think is driving our need for products that enable us to blur the boundaries between work and life: "While we may have lost a lot of jobs in the past couple of years, we didn't lose any of the work required to succeed."

How about you? Are you buying the gadgets that enable you to work from anywhere? Is your company providing them for you? Do you feel pressure to always be connected?

Also, if you were at CES, what was the most interesting new product you saw?

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Robyn Greenspan's avatar Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan