After 3 days of presentations, many keynote speeches and little time to digest all the information coming my way, my flight back to Japan gave me enough time to write some comments on the workshop. Basically it was very interesting flying all the way to Canada, particularly due to the mix of professionals with backgrounds ranging from biology to intelligence and law to landscape architecture, all who created unusually interesting points of view on the concept of telework.
The last workshop I visited was in Tokyo in 1999, at that time the focus seemed to be on the details of telework from a business perspective while in Canada, the theme has definitely broadened. However, I noticed a division of viewpoints within the conference. Brian O’Connell, a self-proclaimed “techie/geek”, and past president of the IEEE started the Workshop’s opening keynote presentation with a warning that an over-reliance on technology is leading to a dualism of ignorance in new technology and our faith in it. He suggested that engineers should stop living in the models that they build for themselves. Brian summarized his thinking by quoting P. Goodman: “Technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not a science” and urged for the technological studies to integrate with social disciplines and use more reflective knowledge in their work. Mike Hollinshead picked up this line of thinking, and as a futurist he reminded us of the closed circuit of our ecological system. Mike painted a networked future for us with self-sufficient localities.
Some other presenters put more faith in technology and looked at issues where a technological approach could help to solve contemporary issues such as biological threats like SARS or the Avian Bird Flue. A presentation by Maya Hadzic on the creation of an anti-terrorist digital ecosystem seemed to look at bridging this gap, although it triggered a heated discussion.
Finally, I felt that some of the “old hands” of the teleworkshops seemed to be searching for a new perspective on the concept of Telework. Svein’s presentation: “Did telework fail?” or Reima’s presentation were a case in point. Svein mentioned that the term telework does not receive as much attention as it used to. Personally, I felt that telework needs a marketing revamp, as I mentioned above, the range of topics and the various professionals I met at the workshop was beyond what I thought of the concept of telework.

I mentioned to Svein that his question whether telework failed reminded me of the careeer of John Travolta. During the late 70’s and early 80’s Travolta was very popular but seemed to have a rather limited ability of acting. His great come back in Pulp fiction showed that John Travolta could do more than dance movies. Maybe that is what we need of the term telework: a shift or broadening of definition, looking back at the Workshop I feel that that is a definite possibility.