In particular, physical locale is usually the fi nal nail in that coffi n. At this point, I??™m intentionally
trying to confuse people. First, it can be quite a lot of fun if you do it right. Second, and more
important, it gets them thinking and asking questions in their heads, if not directing them
toward me. Anyway, why am I saying these key components of communication alone cannot
represent someone??™s presence? Because the fundamental concept of presence is communicating
with a person. Take a moment to think about that.
If you were in your car on your drive to the offi ce, and you needed to talk to one of your
coworkers, you would not really be interested in determining whether your coworker was at
his desk, on the road, at home, in a hotel, and so on. All you??™d really want to do is speak to
that person. How much time have you spent calling someone??™s cell phone, desk phone,
(maybe) home phone, and so on trying to reach him, and in the end leaving possibly three or
more voice messages without ever reaching him? What??™s even worse is when you leave those
voice messages, simply to tell him that he needs to read an e-mail that you sent him! Talk
about loss of productivity! In the end, it really should not be up to the caller to determine the
best means to communicate with the called party. In some cases, communications problems can
be easy to solve: Forward your desk phone to your cell phone or home number, right? Well,
that can work in some cases, but what if you need to change the number you are forwarding
to ???on the fl y???? For example, my cell phone doesn??™t get great reception at my house, but
I will often work out of my home offi ce.
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