The end of the office in virtual meetings world

This is a quote from a computer world interview with Xerox and one of two interesting pieces this week that foretell the future of online meetings and virtual meetings..

"How will the office be different five to 10 years from now? Just the notion of having an office might not exist in the future. Everything will be connected, so it doesn't matter if you are physically in an office or around the world. It will be easy to communicate and collaborate and connect to the right experts and the right partners."

Yes, Xerox are deeply into Second Life exploring what the virtual office means for their document business.

And this is from statesman.com reporting a talk given at SWSX by Jane McGonigal a researcher at the Institute for the Future..

"McGonigal showed a game designed to motivate and reward people to do ordinary household chores. Another, called "Seriosity," is designed to make work more like a game. It involves using virtual currency to motivate employees to do certain tasks. So if you're someone who hates meetings, you would demand a certain amount of this virtual currency before attending a meeting. I started to see the logic behind designing life more like a game."

Both these pieces point up the fact that as online and virtual meetings become more a part of the mainstream we may have to rethink moral systems and reward systems. The latter particularly alerts us to the fact that many people are growing up with a world-view forged by gaming and their reward systems - the workforce of the future will inevitably be influenced by that. What we curently lack is a knowledge of how to plan that into HR systems.