My goal with this blog

I write about relevant changes in the way that people use the web and how startups are built to provide services and products for this ever changing wonderful thing we still know as "the web." As a former entrepreneur turned early-stage investor, my greatest hope is for this to be useful to other folks that are like me in the hopes that they can avoid some of the mistakes I've made.

From:
Antonio Rodriguez

Productivity and being Always-On

tech
by Antonio on

I spent this past week in Europe visiting HP sites, partners, and vendors and was taken aback by how much connectivity we now take for granted in our regular work here in the United States. The last time I was in Europe for work was 9 years ago (when we'd be amazed just to be able to dial up from the hotel room), but I guess with all the talk of broadband being much better overseas and the 3G cellphone networks being ubiquitous, I was sort of expecting at least parity with the setup I've got here. Boy was I surprised. Here are some of the things you can expect to go wrong:

  1. Power (this one was on me for being unprepared). Between Spain and England, I discovered 3 different plug types. What is more, if you travel with a laptop and a phone (more than one device to plug in) and check in late, good luck getting the hotels to have anything to lend you to plug your American appliances in.

  2. Consistent SMS/data on your cellphone. Having just switched to a GSM network, I was really excited by the prospect of 3G networks and zippy-fast mobile data. While voice worked everywhere, SMS and data did not. In fact, SMS was the flakiest of all of the services that I've come to rely on— I could receive messages almost everywhere, but I had at best 50% odds of being able to send them.

  3. EVDO and Wi-fi. I knew my EVDO card wouldn't work at all; I guess I just hadn't realized how much I rely on it to stay in touch with the team back in Boston while waiting at airports, in cabs, or in dead times between meetings. And as far as the wi-fi is concerned, it does seem to be fairly ubiquitous, but in 100% of the cases it was expensive and encumbered by either its billing mechanism or by some lame proxy server setup that blocked most of the useful Internet services you'd want to get access to.

  4. Overall Internet speed. Finally, the speed of "broadband" connections (especially in Spain) is painful. In this new world of rich Internet applications, it's easy to forget that we've only just been able to get to the point where we can use them in the US and that this is far from a given for other parts of the world. For instance, in Spain Tabblo.com was completely unusable, and even Gmail was severely hobbled by the dearth of bandwidth.

I'm not just writing this to gripe about my technical defficulties with the "old world," or even to warn other innocent travelers, but because I realized for the first time this week how much I've gotten used to filling the small cracks of free time when I am traveling with little bits of collaborative work and communication. It made me think that the macro effect productivity boost must finally be something that economists can measure as a positive impact of PCs and mobiles— always-on connections to the data and people that you need to get stuff done.

And yet at the same time, it was sort of nice to have a few cab rides and airport stays to do some disconnected work. Or even better, to just sit and think.