Most days, I take the dogs for a walk around the neighbourhood. While I’m busy looking at house renovations, they have their noses to the ground sniffing the messages left by others of their species. They think I’m nuts to waste a perfectly good walk by sticking my nose in the air when anything worth smelling is near the ground.
Goes to show that, with goodwill, we’re able to get along with those whose world view conflicts with our own. Probably because we have a clear understanding between us as to who’s the boss. It’s my wife, Pauline, of course.
While the dogs wouldn’t know the difference between K-9 and Covid-19 if it came and sniffed their bums, human thought since early this year has been consumed by the affects of the pandemic. What’s clear to me as we take our theraputic walk around Surry Hills, whose terraces have stood for around 100 years, is that those that have undergone major renovations in the past decade, or so, have had their floorplans modernised by demolishing the small front bedroom that was typical of the era when the originals were built.
While the majority of these terrace houses still retain their front bedrooms, every fourth or fifth one of those has been re-purposed as a home office. As we’ve previously discussed on radioinfo, if this trend of staff working from home continues long after COVID-19 has gone, it would have a profound knock on effect for both business and society, of which radio is an integral part.
Most people I’ve spoken to in the broadcast business predict that most staff will be back in the office before long.
ARN’s Duncan Campbell told me, “Most of our staff would love to come back to work. We’ve got people putting their names down to come back the day after the next set of restrictions are relaxed.
“It might not be the same for everybody. There will be a left-over effect and there’ll be some people still working from home. But I think you’ll find by 2022, if there is no more pandemic then you’ll find people back to pretty much the way they were in 2019.”
Wouldn’t you have loved to buy ZOOM shares last December?
Instead, I bought Bitcoin on the premise that if it’s endorsed by Karl Stefanovic it’s worth investing in.
But as much as ZOOM has been somewhat of a saviour for interoffice communications during lockdowns, according to some, it has only served to highlight the importance of face-to-face meetings.
“From my perspective face to face interaction with people is far more beneficial in terms of the relationship and in terms of reading body language, says Campbell. “The Zoom ‘newsreader view’ is not a great view to have. Particularly, when the video’s off, you don’t know what the hell’s going on.
“When people get back together again, they’ll go: ‘This is actually really beneficial.'”
While Nova Entertainment’s Paul Jackson agrees that face to face meetings have a certain energy, ZOOM will still have a role to play.
“I was certainly racking up the QANTAS points shall we say. And yet, I think, one of the lessons this year is just how effectively we’ve been working remote from each other – looking at each other through our computers even more regularly.
“That’s not to say we shouldn’t still be getting together face to face. There’s a different energy you get from being in the same room as your colleagues. But a more hybrid model is definitely emerging which is how, I think, ourselves and our industry and other industries will work going forward.”
Some early inspirations for ZOOM Meetings…
From top: Blankety Blanks with Graham Kennedy; The Muppet Show and Hollywood Squares
Peter Saxon (above) and his walking companions Poochini and Porter as a puppy
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