2020 Recap: 10 Digital Workspace Takeaways

Ryan Purvis  0:00  
Hello and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the digital workspace inner workings. Hey, Merry Christmas.

Heather Bicknell  0:34  
Merry Christmas.

Ryan Purvis  0:38  
We have a different camera angle.

Heather Bicknell  0:40  
Yeah, so I got the Logitech webcam I've been wanting as a Christmas gift. So I needed to figure out how to set it up. But now it's a little bit high. Which I guess is better than my like, Upshot for my laptop. So I'll take it but need to figure it out again, I guess.

Ryan Purvis  1:01  
Yeah, no, it's one of those things.

Heather Bicknell  1:04  
Good. So yeah. How is how are your holidays?

Ryan Purvis  1:09  
Yeah, they've been busy. I mean, it's it's always busy when you Well, it's busy this year, especially because because of COVID. My mother or his car mobility. My dad is accountability. So we did two Christmases in one day. Three, technically, we can't my brother Noah and his wife coming in the middle of that. So busy. Yeah, so now it's so last push before I go and leave at the end of the week. So, so good.

Heather Bicknell  1:41  
That'll be nice. Is everything okay with your son?

Ryan Purvis  1:44  
Yeah, he's fine. He just tweaked the ligaments in his arm. Yeah, I was never sure if because I picked him up funny. While I say I lifted it, I pulled him up by his arm while he was getting up. And as I pulled it up, or the sort of click sound, and then he was already crying. And then he started really crying. So I thought, now, this occasion is almost something because you couldn't hold my fingers, you couldn't grip them. But it's very difficult with a toddler to try to get them to do things. So we have a first aid guy, they're here to look at documents probably just pulled a muscle. It happens with them when they do a lot of rough house stuff cuz he was doing a lot of we're running around and like and stuff. But then decided that actually I'm going to take him to get checked as the case is dislocated, because you don't want to sit with a pinched nerve for too long. So we went ahead and checked in those hidden nodes knew from the top it's just the is a ligament just goes to the front of your forearm here because he couldn't, he kind of like sort of put his arms straight. And that's just been tweaked. So he's got it now in order to cost but it's in like a fiberglass sheath. That's well it keeps on half painted and then wrapped up in bandages. So we'll leave it on for a week. And then he hopefully he'll be fine.

Heather Bicknell  3:05  
Yeah.

Nothing too serious. But having that on for a week, I'm sure will not be too fun for him. But

Ryan Purvis  3:16  
no show he doesn't know he doesn't know select, you know, he wants to go and swim and use any console now because you keep the thing dry. So we've had to put you know, plastic plastic bag around so that he can't get wet. And you know, some hot tips the degree so what's that? That's probably 110 Fahrenheit. You know, the only thing you want to do when it gets to this time of day is going to have a long swim. Because the pools of other pools about 10 degrees so you know you really cool down. Okay, he's young, made of rubber. Yeah. Makes makes me feel like a fantastic parent. When you know when you do something and you end up a 6000 hospital room waiting to get sorted out. What was it 6000 3000 exaggerated.

Heather Bicknell  4:07  
As a kid and I broke my collarbone. I broke my collarbone the first day of summer vacation after first, which was a bummer. I fell off of a swingset and broke my collarbone. So I had the same thing. I couldn't swim at the start of summer and all of that, which wasn't fun.

Ryan Purvis  4:24  
But as far as fun you said because we know as a partner, my folks place and we went for a walk yesterday to the park. And he gets on the swing and he's swinging. He's just learning is that you know, it's like a tiny toddler swing where they've got like a cage, and they put the legs through it's a normal swing. And he wasn't very, very fast. But you know, I keep telling him to get a hold on it and hold on it is as he's going up. He sort of ways that even with one hand you hold on the other one. And then the last time he does that he sort of could sit bone forward and he now tilted backwards. And he lets go he lands on his neck and I'm like oh geez. And then he gets up he's like oh So, you know, that could have been, you know? Thankfully, you know, half me to fall but but yeah, anyway, this is this is probably the most long overdue episode for us.

Heather Bicknell  5:14  
Yeah. Well, I think we're still getting it in in time.

Ryan Purvis  5:19  
Yeah, no, it's good. I finally listened to all the episodes he listened to, again, took forever it took forever, but but it was, you know, you want to give every episode it's due. And there's a lot of like, and also trying to pick a highlight, or highlight or to an episode is so difficult because there are such interesting conversations flowing. And there's so much stuff that comes out, I'm sure you find the same? Yes, it was very difficult to to pick one or two things. But let's, let's see how we go. Yeah, let's

Heather Bicknell  5:52  
do it. So I guess we both chose five, five kind of top takeaways from I did the sort of earlier chunk of episodes, and you did the more recent chunk. So really, to recap, our first year of, you know, podcasting through the pandemic, though, then it's dirty. I guess my stuff is older. So but we can maybe trade back and forth? Or how do you want to do this?

Ryan Purvis  6:26  
Well, I think I mean, I think stocks gonna give it give me a first one. Then we'll just go from there.

Heather Bicknell  6:34  
So I sort of I took an approach of looking for, I feel like especially at the beginning, there are a lot of themes that sort of ran through the episodes, so I sort of grouped, chunk them into themes. So the first sort of takeaway I got from all of the great guests that we were able to interview was to that in order to get ideal outcomes, you need to do things by design. I know. You know, he and Bauer talked about design thinking on episode two. We talked about personas with credit Cooksey and episode three. And then security by design with Lauric and episode eight. And I think, really the you know, of course, they were sort of talking about, you know, whether it's product planning or personas for measuring user experience or security by design for making your it more secure. All of those things came back to the necessity of having that as an intention from the get go. Instead of trying to solve it, once it rears its head

as a problem.

So that was my that was my first takeaway.

Ryan Purvis  7:53  
Well, that's that's a very interesting thing, because the immediate thought I had was a discussion I was lean. Now, remember, what was the second episode or the first episode, it was the second episode, where we discuss having a fire break. And one of the things that I've noticed, you know, and it's always I mean, hindsight, is that we're so driven to deliver, that we aren't able to take a student's stop sometimes to take their breath to look at the big picture. And as usual design is a design is that big picture. And if you don't do that, then you could be delivering things out of sequence, you could be delivering things badly, you'd have to redo later, which creates technical debt. And I think it's something that is not really, at least in localization I've been, it's not something that is that is supported in the sense that go take some time, go design and then come back. And we'll build it, it's usually someone has committed to the date, whether it's realistic or not, and said, we'll have it done by then. And then that sort of filter through and someone has to go and deliver

Unknown Speaker  9:03  
my

Ryan Purvis  9:05  
ring doorbells going muggy. But it is it is interesting. So so taking that design thinking about it, considering and the other thing is you also don't want to go to analysis paralysis, you want to design just enough that you can and this is really where the Agile sort of methodology does come into really nicely if you've got a vision, which not necessarily the and this is also with Jackie Ruby. So unnecessarily, you know, avoiding the job too much but, but you have a vision that kind of gives you the picture where you want to get to but then you iterate as you're building towards that vision. And you've got to get your priorities right obviously, and that comes from your design but but it's getting to that it's a journey through the whole thing. And even though you might, you know, you know, six weeks or three sprints and you get there, it could be years he had the vision but you're constantly evolving and you've been led by your Customer whose needs you're trying to solve. He might be solving multiple needs as you go. So I think it's a good one to pick out. Definitely.

Heather Bicknell  10:09  
What's your first takeaway?

Ryan Purvis  10:11  
Um, yeah. So, so I, I looked at all of the people that that I sort of got to look at, you know, and it was guys like, like, those are kind of the research it was watching with the tech writer and animator jack, you know, and you know, Jade as well from from agile. But what was coming up commonly with all of the loves, forget, forget how easy it is to have trust in the toolset the technology, the people the process, for this all to work. And what I'd like to came out of the conversation with Jackie on that was two other things because we kind of get used to the people process, technology triangle. But actually, when talking with her, there was two others, which was structure and strategy. And I think those two tyeb really nicely as part of that framework, which comes back to design again, ironically, because strategy obviously, is towards a vision, but it's always gonna be high level instructions that help you get there. And then use a combination of people process and technology to get there. But all of that has to work together. And everyone's going to trust that it's going to work otherwise, you spend your whole life second guessing. Anyway. That was my first takeaway.

Heather Bicknell  11:33  
Yeah, I think also, just being with the exponential increase in remote work, I think trust also kept presenting itself as a theme, because everyone had to, you know, like, you're not learn to trust their teams to some extent, and that, like part of this is also the shift in the workplace, and how likely, you know, for most of us, anyway, not go back to what it was before. Which I think, you know, having all these tools for collaboration, and using agile and, you know, changing your methodologies is there's a lot of benefits. But I think there's also, you know, some risks with change that organizations haven't taken, that they've been forced to take.

Ryan Purvis  12:23  
So,

Unknown Speaker  12:25  
yeah, I guess on the on the trust, and that's what that comes to mind for me.

Ryan Purvis  12:30  
Yeah, which, which already leading to my second one, if you don't mind, which is investing in integrate, while I was at RSA integrated working, or results orientated, working, but moving away, that we that tries to go to move away from time watches, and shift the shift mentality, so allowing people to work very much in a tailored way, there's always going to be a need to overlap. So you're gonna have to do that, you know, like you're in different towns and to me by an even further now than normal. So there's still a need to overlap time zones and left for meetings and having those calls and stuff but, but you've got to do it in such a way that the work from home doesn't become doesn't impact the home life and home life doesn't impact the work. And that integrated working with some level of flexibility is, is something that came up quite a lot. And I think going into 2021, once we get out all these lock downs, and all that hard working will become very normal. And we look back on this continuous time and go, how did we ever spend five days a week in an office commuting three hours a day, etc. You know, we met

Heather Bicknell  13:44  
Yeah, I was just having this conversation yesterday with my boyfriend, like, I don't want to go back to the office full time, you know, if that becomes an option in 2021. Because I've been I've been talking for a long time about just upgrading my desk at home, but it's like, well, if I make this investment and then in a few months, we're back in the office like what are we going to do with this furniture so because I'm getting really ambitious now And not only do I want a standing desk, but I also want like maybe some sort of treadmill pad or something like that, because the thing that I miss is more than anything is my commute to work because I walked to work so I had that activity in the morning and in the evening. That was just set and I don't it's really hard to replicate that in my daily routine but I think if I had it you know just ready to go I could at least start the morning and and my day on that which would be you know, it's kind of a luxury I guess but I definitely miss that

Ryan Purvis  14:45  
selection. Oh, I think it's a necessity. You I mean you and I linked on Apple Watches so you'll know that I do my workouts almost every day religiously. And also watch the lights and Lewis and I make a point of it because I think likey that community is incredibly important. And I'm in two minds about going back to office and not go back to office. So you know, I was in South Africa now. And looks like we're here for the foreseeable future, if things don't improve in the UK, or even here in South Africa. But, but you need that commute for the buffer, between home and work. So that's useful, you're getting out walking, whatever it is. But I think that's a mistake I made this morning. What I what I would like to see is that you can do your brain work at home, that you'll go into the office for the brainstorming the meetings, you need to do face to face that kind of stuff, socializing. But it's one or two days a week. And maybe not every week, depending on what organization you're in. But the key thing is, you're a knowledge worker with the ability to, you know, have your lifetime and get your work done. Because I think that's probably something that if people complain about is the amount of phone calls I've had to be on, because now they're remote, and they spend the whole day going to meeting to meeting the meeting, which was no different than what I experienced working in banks, and I was going to hold down the phone. Meanwhile, I was in the same building. But you don't get any work done. And I'm hoping that the result of this is that people will get more work done because they will have a dedicated space. And not everyone can feel like they have a space in the house for dedicated space. But even me, I'm looking at when we get back, I'll have an office down the road from me 10 minutes walk in a rejas that'll become, you know, I've seen say to me, you need to get out of the house. I was you're getting work done. But it's not me commuting to London for an hour and 20 minutes, which is fine, even though because that's sort of train for an hour, which you know, you can still work on the train. But it is important to business stuff. And I think that's what I'm looking forward to. Personally and selfishly is investing in the home office or the look of the more local office for for people.

Heather Bicknell  17:00  
Yeah,

I think yeah, I think and that's kind of, I guess, also one of the, you know, the arguments for returning to some degree, or at least having a hybrid model where, you know, if people don't want to work from home, because they don't have the setup, or, you know, they have distractions, so there is still office space that people have the option of using, but maybe not required. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, too, because I've had a number of colleagues join during this time who I've never met in person. And I don't know, when I will. And I think we've also started a little bit, I'm sure this has happened to other organizations to hire more widely, you know, not as based on location. So I really don't know, you know, I have a new boss, who's, you know, on the East Coast, and I'm in Michigan. So I don't know when will ever actually we embrace it?

Ryan Purvis  18:02  
Yeah, then I think that's a good reason to travel. So I think traveling will go and we'll come back once you know, it was we vaccinated? Probably whatever the solution is. But then you said, you're doing that for purpose, you're not just doing the trip, because you got to go see that office. And, you know, also, excuse for travel, I think people would have gotten used to being home with the kids, and if and the wives and husbands and partners, and don't want to give up that extra time, you know, saving three hours a day. You know, that's, that's two days a week. So, yeah. Which is crazy. You know, if you think about it, that was a second thing was at the gist

Heather Bicknell  18:38  
of what my third one was about remote hybrid work. I mean, it's hard not to have that as a takeaway, because that, you know, it, we couldn't not have that pretty much as part of every single conversation because, you know, having a podcast about work, and especially about the digital aspects of work, that's all this year was for those of us who, especially those of us who are able to work from home. So I just came up again, and again, I guess the episodes that I sort of noted in that theme that maybe are a little bit different than what we've talked about so far. So there was Episode Five about VR at work. This was an earlier one, and it was a recast of, of what I published previously on another show, but I think you know, I think it's still to me, a lot of that stuff seems a bit futuristic, although I I've heard of, for holiday parties, people using the VR tech to simulate that office party environment and then using voice proximity technology. So like your avatar would walk up to, you know, someone else's avatar, and then you can hear them but if you walk away, you can't. So it kind of simulates that instead of having you know, and 100 faces on a zoom call, which I'm a little bit I had, like, I had at least like five Christmas zooms, you know, different people, which is great. It's great that we now have this enforced to be able to, you know, see people and see people's faces on the day. We wanted a little bit of already, but now, seeing more people is awesome. But it's also, I think that zoom fatigue is very real. So, you know, there's sort of that that VR aspect that's kind of interesting. There's Episode Seven iPad work day where you talked about how you spent a whole day working on your iPad, I think with flex working hybrid working, you know, the idea of having lighter devices, you know, relying more on tablets, I think, could be something we see more of in 2021, as well.

Ryan Purvis  20:48  
But sort of the point, I mean, you think about where web is gone for Microsoft, I think there's an equivalent Amazon as well. I mean, that is exactly what I think we're gonna end up you know, sort of what we discussed about my frustrations with Windows 10. And that I didn't bring my Linux laptop with Apple and Windows 10. One with me. But while I've been sitting here, I've been building a Windows web image for myself. And that's what I when I get back, that's what I'm going to use. And then that'll be a you know, we'll have my tools on Earth, we're going to delete and rebuild it. And that's, I think that is the future that I use my iPad or whatever the device to connect to it. So that's happening, I think, I think it's a really huge progress, or progressive step forward. For for many businesses where, you know, having virtualized desktops was that was a too expensive problem. Now, it's, it's more a case of, why wouldn't you do it? Yeah. You know, so, if you sit together, today, today,

Heather Bicknell  21:53  
no, no, you're fine, we can, we can move on to the next one to know, we don't have a lot of time to dwell too heavily on on each topic as good as they are. So I guess my my second one, because that was my third was that tool tools or communication tools matter, but it's really culture. That's the cornerstone of communication. And I think we noticed this. So I guess one of my favorite episodes that we've done so far, and something that I'd be interested in trying more, I'm in 2021, is just challenge challenges. So I really enjoyed that inbox challenge that we did the email challenge, where we spent a month trying to reduce the not only the flow of email to our inbox, but also reduce the number of cents. So doing, you know, moving things over to a chat app, like Microsoft Teams, or, you know, sometimes maybe picking up the phone or just like looking for ways to reduce. But I think a theme that came up again, and again, there was that, you know, it matters also not just that you you can't just change your habits and have with without your culture aligning with them. So you know, if you have a culture of anytime anyone sends me a message, there's an expectation that I'm going to respond, then if you're sending your colleagues a team's message, you know, at 9pm, that's not ideal. But if you have a conversation, or if your culture is such that you can work at different times, you can send messages on platforms, and it's okay, they'll know to pick it up the next day, then you're all set. But there's still that, you know, whether it's generational, or team by team or organization or whatever it is that there's no, we're not very standardized yet on how to use these tools in that way.

Ryan Purvis  23:46  
Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. And a lot of ways I think the businesses and I was thinking I was talking to Jackie about this. The businesses that you expected to succeed are failing their businesses that you expect him to fail that are doing really well, is the middle one, which is our only option was but but it does, it has come down. I'm sorry, no, this is going to be a sneak peek into an episode with Mike Stockport, he and I were talking about this. The leadership that drives the cultural change and the progression of the business and the ability to pivot and the ability to to make decisions that that really transform the business. I mean, not to use the sort of digital transformation piece but you know, what we're saying is that why is it that these is some companies that, you know, when you look at something like Kodak, Kodak was the player was the company photography, photography products, and all of a sudden they weren't, they weren't. They got overtaken by smartphones and all the rest of it. But now they're suddenly coming back and they're coming back with what they believe in. Got a couple, they're still around, they haven't gone anyway. But, but they are this sort of vision and their their preparations are not quarterly based, like a lot of companies, they are looking 10 years, you know, in a team's future Japanese cultural thing. Which, which is interesting because you know, as I say, a very simple example, like a pub, you'd have a pub that closed down during the lockdown can do takeaways, versus a pub that didn't takeaways. And then when they opened up again, when you went, they were still using the same app to order food to the table. So now they become a scalable digital business. So when the lockdown eat again, that purpose of operating, there hasn't really only differences where you're sitting is different. You know, in fact, is it, they probably charge the same, probably the same, they have less operating costs. But they're scalable now, whereas the businesses that didn't adapt, our pubs didn't do that, or the ones that are shutting down. And it was a shame that someone was someone else's picking up that building, turning into another pub, and, you know, digitizing. Don't remember why that was important. But But that was the thought of when you said and she said, yeah.

Heather Bicknell  26:15  
Yeah, I guess it comes, you know, I guess, you know, the common thread, right is just ability to adapt, and, you know, the cultural will to, to change, which I think, you know, maybe has been, I think digital transformation has been super busy for a long time in the enterprise and, you know, mid market world for a while.

Ryan Purvis  26:41  
I mean, to talk to talk to you is that your audience has the ability to adapt for that adaption has to come from from a culture of being willing to willing to change the status quo. Yeah, so we use the pub example, you have the one pub that doesn't tell you what, it does change, they're still doing the same, it's still operating the same thing. It's still serving food, still serving booze, provide a lot of service. But the only difference is they are paid to try new things deliver the same service, you know, so you might, you might find it, and this didn't happen to me, but you could find that, that the the one that's using the app, you know, as a person to the real deliverable note with with the delivery, we say, well, we didn't have you in the in, in the pub. But next time when you can please come in, and we'll we'll be happy to serve you just a little thank, you know, Henry, whatever it is, first of all types of changes that pacifically with, you know, go to public change of service, and you might visit that pub. So that's, that's adapting and being more proactive, versus the other one saying, What if I just shut down and negotiate my rent and rent for those three months ago, lockdown, when I will go re engage, when we're allowed to do it, there's always a huge, huge risk, the customer that will spend money, they miss their regular, now we'll spend money with a one they got a personal touch with the connection. And we took a you know, view that when takeaways were allowed, and we were allowed to go restaurants, we would order deck takeaways twice a week. And one more than normal, because we needed those, we wanted to support the local community, we wanted them to grow. Now we're going to spend your money you spend the money with your connection. Yeah, and, and that's why I think the culture is so important. And that's what we're saying is that if you have that willingness to adapt, and willing to drive the change, your business will, will do exponentially better. And that means adopting futuristic, or future proofing tools may just be technology per se, like computers could be anything. But you got to be willing to to do it or develop a new product that doesn't exist.

Heather Bicknell  28:44  
Yeah, I think we see in this year is all of those ideas, you know, come down to the local business level. Whereas before, there was a, you know, a mom and pop shop might might do better with a digital ordering system with being able to ship things online when doing, you know, takeout or delivery through some online system. But it wasn't a business imperative, whereas now I think it's become one.

Ryan Purvis  29:15  
Yeah, which. So the thing that I was that I sort of picked up is speed. And a sort of road speed, just as, you know, whatever you whatever you want to put that onto. So the ability for a problem to be solved quickly. And as always gonna be ready to identify, we'll use the phrase with you the slowest fast and fastest slow, which is a military, the military mantra. And the idea behind that is when you rush things, you actually do it slower. So you know faster, slower and then when you do something slowly, but you do it, you know sonically in with with the right attention to it. The more you do it, the faster you get, and if you look at it, building software or anything like that. And then this goes back to the goal, that book that I recommend all the time decreasing the size of your batches. So you need smaller amounts of work more regularly builds up your momentum. And your order of sequence is easier to see, because you've broken it down into smaller chunks. So you can see a little more head, when you take on bigger things. You don't see necessarily everything because it's the wood for the trees, you're doing the forest instead of just the tree to see another way to approach that. But the speed, you know, the ability for for and calibrate adaptability to an extent as well. Your ability to respond to the problem, can people be put into lockdown in March and be able to work remotely? The businesses that could do that quickly? Yes, for some of them was flicking a switch, because they had the business continuity plans in place, and they didn't execute on them, versus those that didn't, you know, led to me to my sort of fifth item, which is usually the big one we talked about, which is in user experience, in the sense of ability to do their work on any device anytime anywhere, to be productive. And you're you're sort of costs of doing all the friction to do that would have been greater if you didn't have the plans in place and the infrastructure and the tools and processes versus those that did it. For us. For us it was a case of all the way around for the foreseeable future. Okay, well, my laptop's with me, I'm ready to go. Where some of the guys had no laptops, they had no personal devices, they had nothing had to go and provision all that and set up all the security stuff they needed, etc, etc, which is not he doesn't month long projects. Usually they're not fixed switch projects, if you haven't done it from the get go to speed was a big thing.

Heather Bicknell  31:48  
Yeah, that kind of ties into my my fifth one as well, which is that I had that understanding the remote employee experience, work from home boundaries, flexibility is key, moving into 2021. And I think you said even around hardware procurement, because we saw a lot of, you know, BYOD, out of necessity, we saw, you know, getting a portable laptop, you know, didn't even matter. The specs at some point or you know, whether it was a Chromebook or what it was just like everything was gone. And people were snatching it up to be able to send people home. But I think working remotely, I think there's still a lot of it, issues that haven't been ironed out things like how to do remote support effective when you can't go to that person's machine and service it, how do you figure out what's wrong? How do you diagnose the root cause? And then how do you actually take the step to resolve it remotely? When you can? You know, what do you do about people's home Wi Fi network, you know, Wi Fi, network quality is a big issue for a lot of people. And especially when, you know, video conferencing is such a big part of it, you know, if you're the colleague that you know, let's say you don't have an ideal webcam, or your video quality is terrible, your sound quality is terrible. And, you know, I have network interruptions all the time. And I'm sure you know, my network is you know, one of the better ones I can get for a you know, a home Wi Fi plan. So at some point you know, I guess to come back to the main point here is just that I think these these end user experience issues and their effects their knock on effects on productivity are something that came up again and again in our episodes but are also not going away anytime soon.

Ryan Purvis  33:44  
Forgot about connectivity. That is that is huge. I mean, you know, I'm sitting in a third world country with at least now I can use teams. Last year this time I was really struggling and that's just because they've improved the connectivity, you know, leaps and bounds in fact, they've doubled the connectivity the bandwidth put through but i think you know, if you look at one of the the sort of pros out of this pandemic and out of this year it is that we've all leapt forward five to 10 years depending on where you were maturity wise to use the tools that have been available for a long time but the average user who who is a you know, the mom and pop or you know, generational might have generational version to using the technology now use the technology like they use anything they've been able to zoom or teams or whatever call or anything like that which was usually for a select few now everyone who's got technology is comfortable doing that okay are people that obviously don't have the means to buy all these tools and has a continued home that at least a good amount have gotten it which is which has opened up you know the world to to more progressive stuff, I think

Heather Bicknell  35:00  
Yeah, it's kind of incredible seeing not that there weren't any technical glitches, but seeing all of my older relatives joining, you know, a zoom called play. We did a family trivia game on Christmas Eve. So seeing everybody get on board with that, which is something I wouldn't have ever thought possible. You know, when I try to FaceTime my grandpa, he holds the phone to his ear, partially because it's easier for me. But I'm not really used to the video calls with them for whatever reason, so. But yeah, I think you're right that those, you know, it has really changed, you know, everyone's technical proficiency. And that just forced a big shift forward.

Ryan Purvis  35:53  
We have a in laws as a church just as you walk out the complex. And, you know, Christmas Day, obviously, you'd expect it to be rammed with people for the for the masses and stuff, you know, they do the mass of Christmas in the mass in the morning. But because of the restrictions, they couldn't do that. So you walk outside, and they can't go into the church, they have to do it outside in a tent, which is fine, because the weather's always relatively good. But what we what we noticed, actually is the amount of cameras and setups actually, they might have had, you know, just the people running the service, there may be 10, or 20 people attending the service, but everyone else is dialed in on zoom, or whatever they're using for this thing, and almost completely resolved, but you think Well, actually, they must admit they should have increased their coverage of prayer parishioners, because now anyone can attend imagine you you lived in that area, then you move to another area, but you really liked their church. And you haven't really gone back to church because you haven't found an alternative. But now you could just connect to your old church, it could be 10 hours away, it could be two hours away, timezone dependent, you could you could easily connect and, and do it. And that that sort of aversion to using the technology now has has hopefully gone away, which means we will actually speed up with other investments in AR or VR or, or something like that. is quite exciting, I think.

Heather Bicknell  37:16  
No, I mean, you're so right, that you know that connectedness and that ability to you know, connect anything's You know, I've

Ryan Purvis  37:23  
watched

Heather Bicknell  37:26  
you know, I've attended live events from home, I've attended concerts from home, I've, you know, done all these things where normally it would be a big hassle to travel or a new you know, it's a different state, I'm not going to be able to go to this event has become so much more accessible. And I think it'll be interesting moving forward to see what things revert and what kind of take that along as a second side option and have the two in parallel, where you have people in person for, you know, the church service, and then you also stream at for anyone who, you know, can't attend that day for whatever reason, or isn't even in a convenient location anymore. So,

Ryan Purvis  38:09  
yeah, we was with just the one kid, you know, we'd go to church, and we very difficult to keep him entertained for 40 minutes, even though it's a good service and stuff and he's running around and whatever it is, but I can imagine quite easily sitting in my living room, you know, the services on you know, we can we can partake to it to an extent obviously the Masonic communion and stuff. But if a kid wants, you know, kids in its own safe environment, they can go play in the playroom and stuff. And then as they sort of see that things are interesting, and they get older, then you can start taking them back to obviously post pandemic. You can you can sort of slowly introduce them to them, and you can actually talk to them to the server. So this is why this is important or why you should listen or whatever it is to continue completely different perspective to us. Yeah. It can be as comfortable as you want.

Heather Bicknell  39:06  
Yeah. And I think you know, I think it's great for those, okay, it's also great for you know, the elderly, the disabled, you know, like it really has opened up the world is more accessible virtually for all the, you know, kind of the zoom fatigue and the difficulty of of having things over video and not seeing people in person it is, you know, even just virtual conferences and everything is very, very accessible. We're a lot of ways

Ryan Purvis  39:39  
Did you have a favorite episode are the ones you reviewed or in total.

Heather Bicknell  39:46  
Other ones I reviewed, there's it's hard to pick a single favorite I think. If I did, I think it would have to be probably that inbox detox when we did just because And there was something so satisfying and doing challenge and collecting the data and doing a recap. And it was sort of a whole experiment. So I think just the spirit of that episode was really fun for me. Well, maybe

Ryan Purvis  40:13  
maybe we need to look at happening for this for next year, a set of challenges to think about. Oh,

Heather Bicknell  40:20  
I was thinking, I'd love to do that. I know. And I think you've been trying out fitness class, right? I've seen the Yeah, so I have to. So that's something can, we can park but we can talk about that soon. I have a lot of feelings about the app. So

Ryan Purvis  40:36  
I think we should because, you know, I keep tweeting to them. And they keep sending me down these rabbit holes of do this, do that. And I noticed that one thing, actually, there was an update that rolled out literally after the next day after I sent it. So I was wondering if maybe I did actually hit a nerve. Yeah, I think that'd be great. I think I think some challenges for next year would be good. I mean, from my point of view, just so I enjoyed all all the guests episode, I mean, I think talking to an expert in their field is is hugely valuable. One, because I'll be honest, two things you haven't thought about. And two, there were stories to share that really, you know, teach you stuff that you wouldn't have learned elsewhere. I think my favorite monitors, there's a Star Trek Captain ones, one. Only because I've been watching Star Trek again. And thinking about what we talked about them and applying. If you have this project, who would you pick? And I think that is you know, it's the hero's journey, really, who's your hero and how you, you know, that is that and this goes back to the culture and the leadership that you need to hear to, to follow or to be, you know, if you're the hero. So that was my favorite, I think of all of them. beyond, beyond the guests, at least.

Heather Bicknell  42:01  
Yeah, no, that was a fun one. And even, you know, myself not knowing all that much about Star Trek, I still had a good time recording it and listening to it. So I think I guess the common theme here is to do you know, whether it's the challenges or some different angle on it, that the just to do some some fun episodes, I think and yeah. I agree. All the guests and everyone we've had on, you know, I've provided a lot of great insights. And I think we've, we've gotten a really great catalogue of nuggets of wisdom this year. And I think a lot of it will be relevant for, you know, years to come. But I think it is also interesting that we have sort of this time capsule of working through a pandemic. And the way we talked at the very beginning about how things were going and how on remote work was happening for and it was always like a question of, you know, what month are you going back? How many, you know, what, what quarter and now Oh, my goodness, you know, Microsoft delayed, they're not going to do any in person events this year. That was like wild, you know, back in March, that they were talking about delaying until July I think of 2021. And now I'm like, they're not doing pretty in person in July. That's not happening. So I think we really captured that, that, that huge change. But but cool. Yeah, I mean, this is, this was fun recapping, you know, all that our initial start all those episodes from 2020.

Ryan Purvis  43:39  
You know, when we first talked about doing the sausage list to tenants, here we go. And I think I think we're in 36, or 30 was supposed to be the 37th, I think, or something like that I lost track of how many we've done. But we started recording a year ago, sort of November, December. And here we are. But it's actually been, I think, for both of us, and I'm talking on your behalf, because a lot of a lot more fun than normal, interesting, and it's always gonna be

Heather Bicknell  44:09  
a lot more sustainable. You know, any taking any extra projects on especially with the podcast, I think and, you know, we've talked a little bit about maybe having a side show where we just talk about sort of the nuts and bolts and what it takes to really get one off the ground and to keep on going, but it is a lot. You know, I think anyone can have a podcast but sustaining a podcast is really where the you know, the challenge comes I think part of that is, you know, being, you know, being excited about the subject matter, being able to find great people to talk to and to be able to come back to it again and again is really where the you know, the key is for keeping it gone.

Ryan Purvis  44:55  
Yeah, spot on. Super serene David. end of the year. Yeah. Pretty not the December.

Heather Bicknell  45:04  
Yeah. I hope you know, I think I'm sure you know, I don't even know what to say about 2021. I'm optimistic. I don't want to be foolishly optimistic. I don't want to be, you know, too disappointed in the first half of the year. But yeah, I think it's gonna be a better year.

Ryan Purvis  45:25  
Well, you know, I challenge people only when they say this was a rough year, because I mean, think about it, I think, look, unless someone in your family has actually died. or been seriously ill and you've had to worry and stress. And all you've lost your job, you know, completely and no, no funds. I mean, it hasn't been that bad for most people. Most people have had to work from home. They've had time to spend with their families, they've had time head the ability to do other things I probably wouldn't have had time to do. The only things I had to sit at home, which watch TV, but it's not working. And it has made some sort of mental shift. But it hasn't been that I think the uncertainties made the feeling sometimes that your respective governments making up as I go along, and imposing or pressing you, you know, it has sort of caused some anxiety. But yeah, I can't really complain. I mean, I had a baby born during the period, we work from home, nothing really changed for us, we still went out and did our fitness every day, we still walk around, we still get our take away, you're still thinking cavity with three months. We did and it wasn't that bad. Yeah. But yeah, as I say, I think for some people that obviously was, but it wasn't so. Yeah,

Heather Bicknell  46:51  
I think well, in a few years, be able to look back with more perspective. And I think even come back to a lot of the things that we talked about in this episode and see whether or not they were truly permanent changes. And you know, what happened as a result. So

Ryan Purvis  47:10  
I just hope we don't rebound back into the old ways of working. And I think, you know, I

Heather Bicknell  47:15  
think some organizations will, I think that's inevitable, but I think a lot Well, I think a lot have realized the benefits far away, you know, scary aspects of not being able to look over employee shoulders and whatnot.

Ryan Purvis  47:31  
Yeah, I think you're right. All right. Let's leave it at that. Happy New Year. Thank you for listening, today's episode, and the big news app producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. for your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW w podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website WWW dot digital workspace works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace that works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

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