This morning’s coffee companion is a social media consultant based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
We talked about how remote working is much more accessible to people in all sorts of places, and how most of his clients are in the UK.
We chatted about how university has become so much more an exercise in seeking a demonstrable return on investment given the levels of charges and debt that it now incurs for so many.
We talked about the culture clash of being surrounded by lots of people from private schools when entering certain workplaces.
We talked about a soft drinks company and how it became a media IP company.
We talked about physical dislocation in offices and how maybe the move to hybrid working started when people stopped smoking, breaking the informal communication networks that smokers had across organisations. People didn’t talk to one another on different floors in offices unless they were outside having a ciggie.
We talked about how even electronic drum kits make a lot of noise.
Another great conversation to start to the week.
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Stats update…
mmitII 
Wholeheartedly agree on the shift with the loss of smoking spaces. (And in the days when you could smoke at your desk but before the automated coffee machine, there was another easy inter-departmental connection point: the tea trolley.) Those social, or at least, easier, non-directed connections were the lubricant that helped with many problems.
And, clearing tabs today, came across this on the potential effects, especially for those first coming into the workforce: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/screens-and-water-coolers-why-young-knowledge-workers-need-special-attention-in-the-world-of-hybrid-work/