Last month, my family and I finally took the great leap into the 21st century and signed up for an unlimited home broadband contract. While the main difference has been an increased willingness to always use the HD option on iPlayer, it’s also meant that working from home is now near-identical to working from the office. I must admit that when I first thought of the idea of working from home I did scoff a tad: how exactly would I replicate my work PC there, let alone get access to the Spark servers and the massive amounts of information I need to send and receive every day. However, with a laptop, a mobile ‘phone contract with sufficient minutes, a Skype account for when I need to ring abroad and a broadband contract that means I’m not paranoid about going over my allowance every time I open a load of images from the server, it couldn’t be simpler. I’m not about to start living in hotels or anything, but for the moment it does provide a good occasional respite from the office.
After all, that’s what working from home tends to be for me: an occasional change from the office. It’s not like there are less distractions: indeed, with postmen, milkmen, other deliveries, children, confused neighbours, next door’s kids’ football and chimney sweeps it can be a wonder anything happens at all. However, it does provide a valuable element of flexibility. Whilst we’ve all heard of the freedom that the cloud and broadband can offer workers, in my experience this freedom tends to be something you need thanks to utilities companies, deliveries, school trips and shenanigans on the Underground.
At the same time, this freedom isn’t going to benefit everyone. Yes, those of us in PR, journalism or other related fields can benefit from the ability to fix our working lives around our private schedule, within reason. We can order online for when it suits us, make sure we’re at home to meet the gas man and structure our days so that, when needed, we’re always free to pick the kids up from school. Yet there are many, many more who won’t see quite the same advantages: your average bus driver, factory worker or shopkeeper might well be able to order their shopping online but making sure they’re home to receive it will be a very different matter. Like many developments in technology, the benefits of mobile working aren’t really being shared equally at the moment. Admittedly, given the needs of various jobs such equality could be hard to attain. Yet those of us who want to shout the life-changing virtues of much technology, and I count myself among them, still need to bear in mind how lucky we are to benefit from those changes in the first place. After all, in terms of its grand impact on society in a lot of opinions the internet is still some way behind the washing machine.
As another recession looms, recent stats from the PRCA have revealed that many PR agencies expect reduced client budgets and over-servicing of accounts to increase during 2012. 51% of respondents expect the economic condition of the industry to get worse this year, with only 12% expecting it to improve.
Painting a thousand words
At its most basic, a simple image can help explain a complex concept to a reader or even to a PR themselves (for example, my understanding of virtualisation was kick-started by, essentially, a drawing of a load of rectangles chopped into pieces and linked together). It can also give an appreciation of what some technologies actually look like in the flesh, to coin a phrase. Although there can sometimes be a bit of confusion between useful business technology and evil robot-spiders.
It has also been drummed into many PRs’ heads that images can help sell a story, which is certainly true: after all, anything that can help make a concept more understandable or make a story jump off the page will be more attractive, especially when publishing space is limited. In this case, the image should be appropriate: while it may be tempting to use the old archive photo of a tank at every opportunity, a picture of a data centre, or a business, illustrating technology in use might be a tad more useful. That said, some views are rather more cynical about just what pictures might be appropriate and when.
Lastly there are spokesperson pictures: always useful when illustrating a story or simply for getting an idea of what the person you’ve never actually met in the flesh looks like. Of course, there are a few simple rules to follow here too. They should be decently lit. There should be a variety, in different poses and format, to choose from. They should show the subject at ease and in a somewhat formal situation. And, while taking indoor or outdoor shots against a simple or complex background is mainly a matter of taste, it’s worth checking to make sure the final composition won’t contain a hidden message.