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TMCNet: Technology helps businesses overcome obstacles of winter weather [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

[February 09, 2010]

Technology helps businesses overcome obstacles of winter weather [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Feb. 9--The snow was thigh-high Monday morning and Aria Charles had to bribe a neighbor with beer to help shovel her car out. Getting to her office at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne wasn't an option.


Not a problem.

Ms. Charles checks personal and professional e-mail on her iPhone, and she set up a conference call to replace an in-person meeting on her schedule. The Food Bank's computer system runs on a virtual private network, so she could access work files and documents from her laptop.

And she did it all in jeans. So much for snow days.

Who needs contingency plans when we're always connected anyway? The white squalls and slushy streets may look the same, but the workplace has changed since the blizzard that hit Pittsburgh in 1993. Smart phones have long allowed employees everywhere to carry a pocket-sized office, and the empty parking lots Downtown this week allude to the thousands of makeshift offices set up on living room tables thanks to cloud computing, 3G networks and private servers.

It's a truly 21st-century response to the first great snowstorm of the 21st century.

As Jordan Messina sees it, his workday on Monday actually saw a boost in productivity after he skipped pesky morning rituals such as getting dressed and showering. He's the chief technology officer at 25eight Inc., a young computer software start-up.

Mr. Messina set up shop at home in Mt. Lebanon, forgoing a 10-mile commute to his South Side office and opting for a scruffy look. Besides, he'd gone to the office over the weekend when his powerless house got too cold.

"I was just reading and trying to stay warm," he said.

His company has a virtual private server that outsources website hosting, which means he can dial into that machine from any computer. "In a way, we're working remotely all the time," he said.

The portable office -- available anywhere cell phones are sold -- has certainly replaced the black-and-white days of the time clock. Michael Edwards, president and chief executive of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, noted that a fluid workplace can "create some personnel issues that are never very clear." His own operation equips all employees with smart phones to stay connected but he said such measures can be a "little bit of a leap" for some businesses.

Printing Industries of America CEO Michael Makin was surprised by the healthy showing of cars that had made it up the Sewickley hill to his business's parking lot (even the Ben Franklin statue was buried).

Still, about 15 percent of his employees worked from home because of the snowstorm.

Having that capability is great, but he hopes the convenience of working from home in arctic weather doesn't lead to telecommuting on a sunny Friday.

"It can't be a carte blanche kind of thing," Mr. Makin said. "Obviously safety is the most important thing, but connecting person-to-person is important to our culture." That might have to wait. More snow is expected today and Wednesday.

Amanda Mushrush, a partner at Third Person Creative in Wexford, said she and her partners were drawing up contingency plans for the week ahead.

The firm has technology to forward office calls to a cell phone. There are still a few bugs to be worked out, and most of the calls go to one very busy cell phone.

"We'll probably be drawing straws to see whose it is," she said.

Erich Schwartzel: eschwartzel@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1455.

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Copyright (c) 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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