The Workday Will Be Televised

B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• The fast-approaching conjunction of social analytics, the YouTube generation, and pervasive mobility will radically alter the workplace as employees begin broadcasting the telemetry of the workday.
• Companies that head down this road must prepare now for the inevitable ethical, legal, and even technical conundrums that will follow such ubiquitous and pervasive exposure.

When I go out for a bike ride, I never go alone.  That is, anyone who has befriended me on MapMyRIDE can follow my progress in real-time, noting some very specific telemetry data generated by my iPhone and the MapMyRIDE app, including my altitude, speed, direction, and exact location.  Later, my friends and I can review a given ride, analyzing my performance (like average speed over distance) or just going along for a virtual fly-along ride.  With bespoke devices, the gobandit GPS-HD, for instance, I could take this to an entirely new level, recording and later broadcasting my daily sojourns using the same telemetry data tied to a high-definition video feed.  Soon, corporate employees will begin broadcasting their daily work routines in much the same way.