Like many husbands / dads, I think I do my fair share of work around the house. But it’s during weeks like this one – my wife away at a conference, two of my three children at home with exotic / challenging stomach bugs – where I realise the real work is at home!
Anyway, in a desperate attempt to feel like I was still needed and relevant at the office, and to take my mind off said exotic bugs, I thought I’d try my hand at tech savvy. Now, we already have the ability to log in to PD Law remotely from anywhere to cck on our matters and, since our recent foray into the brave new world of the Paperless Law Office (I think we’re the first in the region), this has become even more efficient as I could immediately entire client files with just a few clicks. A couple of skype conferences later with the team and I was up to date, making a meaningful contribution to the working day.
That said, the PDLaw team seem to pride themselves as early adopters of technology, and this environment promotes some fairly healthy ‘IT’ competition, so I was keen to let the crew know I was up for it. So after just a little gnashing of teeth, and on the promise of the app developers, I downloaded one app to turn my iPad wirelessly into a second screen for my laptop, and another app to use my smart phone as a wireless mic for my voice dictation software.
And – it all worked.
Eager to display my prowess to my work colleagues, I quickly snapped a pic of both screens working in unison and sent it to the team at the office.
Which takes me to my point: currently set up on veranda, freshly brewed coffee, dictating this blog from my smart phone direct to my laptop, with my iPad acting as a second screen to follow work matters, remotely logged in – and away from the exotic bugs for a short while – I feel like an IT whiz and I am excited to be working this way. It doesn’t really matter if my ‘discoveries’ were new or not – I feel like a bloody whiz, and very affordable technology is there for all of us to embrace and leverage from … and get a bit excited about.