How to avoid travelling to work

In chatting to Caroline Thomson, the BBC's COO, on Monday I came across a really good example of how she has used technology to make a speech at the International Media Congress in Germany.

Faced with the dilemma of having to be two places at the one time, Caroline opted to harness video conferencing to keep the commitment to deliver a keynote address at the medienwoche@IFA conference in Berlin (www.medienwoche.de) whilst also being able to take part in a conference at Television Centre in London.

This is yet another example of agile working and should prompt us to re-think our approach to doing our job. Essentially the big difference today is the ability to maintain personal contact and still speak face to face - whilst not having to be in the same place for these meetings.

In this particular example the benefits are clear:

• more efficient use of valuable time
• cost of travel avoided
• Reduced impact on the environment 

The technology used in this example in simple and is now readily available to most of us to use. All we need to do is to ask ourselves the question - can I do my job differently?