Our Pandemic Summer - Printable Version
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Our Pandemic Summer - stupac2 - 04-14-2020
Here's a great, long read from Ed Yong at the Atlantic about the road ahead of us: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/
I don't think there are any key excerpts, but I liked this from one of the doctors he interviewed:
Quote:Over the coming months, we need “to normalize COVID in the public psyche, and reinforce that this will be a part of our day-to-day lives,” said Kissler, the Harvard disease modeler. “Many people I've spoken with are aghast at the thought. We thirst for a swift and decisive 'victory.' But I'm reminded of images from World War II as people in London walked to work, briefcases in hand, against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings. I think we are in store for a similar period in history, as we learn to make greater peace with the world's chaos and our own mortality.”
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Mick - 04-14-2020
Social distancing will be necessary until well into 2022, recommends Harvard study.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/14/some-social-distancing-may-be-needed-into-2022-to-keep-coronavirus-in-check-new-study-says/
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - BostonCard - 04-14-2020
My wife went into a grocery store, and was chatting up the manager (from a safe distance, with a mask on). The store had installed plexiglass shields separating the clerks from the customers in the check-out stand. She was commenting on how they seemed like a good idea and looked pretty nice. The manager replied something to the effect of "the plexiglass shields are going to be a permanent fixture".
There are a lot of things, big and small, that are going to change permanently as a result of COVID-19.
BC
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - magnus - 04-14-2020
(04-14-2020, 10:30 PM)BostonCard Wrote: The manager replied something to the effect of "the plexiglass shields are going to be a permanent fixture".
BC
Probably the cheapest solution (as opposed to having to remove and dispose of them).
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Mick - 04-15-2020
(04-14-2020, 10:30 PM)BostonCard Wrote: My wife went into a grocery store, and was chatting up the manager (from a safe distance, with a mask on). The store had installed plexiglass shields separating the clerks from the customers in the check-out stand. She was commenting on how they seemed like a good idea and looked pretty nice. The manager replied something to the effect of "the plexiglass shields are going to be a permanent fixture".
There are a lot of things, big and small, that are going to change permanently as a result of COVID-19.
BC
I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC. Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year). Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).
Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022. So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?
Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event. He invited 450 people. I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60. We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar. More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end. Similar experience for the next three webinars. And no one misses the in-person events.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - 2006alum - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 07:41 AM)Mick Wrote: I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC. Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year). Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).
Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022. So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?
Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event. He invited 450 people. I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60. We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar. More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end. Similar experience for the next three webinars. And no one misses the in-person events.
Your experience seems to be confirming my intuition that I would not want to be invested in or work in the conference, hospitality, and travel industry. I can't see air travel, car rentals, hotel bookings, conference bookings, and related enterprises rebounding to their same levels any time in the next 3-5 years, now that people are discovering that a lot of money can be saved and relatively minimal lost, COVID-19 aside.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - stupac2 - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 07:49 AM)2006alum Wrote:(04-15-2020, 07:41 AM)Mick Wrote: I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC. Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year). Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).
Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022. So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?
Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event. He invited 450 people. I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60. We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar. More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end. Similar experience for the next three webinars. And no one misses the in-person events.
Your experience seems to be confirming my intuition that I would not want to be invested in or work in the conference, hospitality, and travel industry. I can't see air travel, car rentals, hotel bookings, conference bookings, and related enterprises rebounding to their same levels any time in the next 3-5 years, now that people are discovering that a lot of money can be saved and relatively minimal lost, COVID-19 aside.
While there's obviously some value in doing things face-to-face and having serendipitous encounters, my experience has always been that conferences exist mostly as a way to pay for some employee travel to a fun location. Not that I'm complaining, as a conference in Paris saved me a chunk of change on my honeymoon, but it always seemed to me like it falls mostly into the "wasted money" bucket.
There may be an exception for academic conferences (I've seen both sides argued there), but I assume those are a minor player in the game.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Mick - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 07:49 AM)2006alum Wrote:(04-15-2020, 07:41 AM)Mick Wrote: I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC. Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year). Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).
Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022. So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?
Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event. He invited 450 people. I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60. We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar. More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end. Similar experience for the next three webinars. And no one misses the in-person events.
Your experience seems to be confirming my intuition that I would not want to be invested in or work in the conference, hospitality, and travel industry. I can't see air travel, car rentals, hotel bookings, conference bookings, and related enterprises rebounding to their same levels any time in the next 3-5 years, now that people are discovering that a lot of money can be saved and relatively minimal lost, COVID-19 aside.
So let's take that a step further. For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home. All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion. Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute? Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.
Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place. And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices. The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them. So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.
I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - 2006alum - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 08:32 AM)Mick Wrote: So let's take that a step further. For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home. All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion. Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute? Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.
Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place. And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices. The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them. So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.
I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.
Look at us - models of consensus! Completely agree with all of this as well. If Congress were smart they'd look for ways to either subsidize employees to enhance their WFH technology/ergonomics, or else subsidize employers covering those costs for employees. I've never understood why people thought WFH led to reduced productivity - my experience has always been that my productivity is negatively correlated with the number of people around me. So much so that in my position, where I have had WFH flexibility, I basically tried to stack my meetings and other required "in office" activities for 1-3 days a week and wrote off most of those days even when I didn't have meetings, because of the amount of chatter, etc., in the gaps between meetings. The WFH days were pure productivity. (Not to mention the approximately 1.75 hours I saved when I didn't have to commute - if I even split that commute time 50/50 with my employer the employer would be getting almost an hour extra free per day.)
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Mick - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 08:58 AM)2006alum Wrote:(04-15-2020, 08:32 AM)Mick Wrote: So let's take that a step further. For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home. All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion. Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute? Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.
Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place. And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices. The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them. So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.
I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.
Look at us - models of consensus! Completely agree with all of this as well. If Congress were smart they'd look for ways to either subsidize employees to enhance their WFH technology/ergonomics, or else subsidize employers covering those costs for employees. I've never understood why people thought WFH led to reduced productivity - my experience has always been that my productivity is negatively correlated with the number of people around me. So much so that in my position, where I have had WFH flexibility, I basically tried to stack my meetings and other required "in office" activities for 1-3 days a week and wrote off most of those days even when I didn't have meetings, because of the amount of chatter, etc., in the gaps between meetings. The WFH days were pure productivity. (Not to mention the approximately 1.75 hours I saved when I didn't have to commute - if I even split that commute time 50/50 with my employer the employer would be getting almost an hour extra free per day.)
I've had the same experience. Even today, WFH, I have 12 scheduled conference calls. The pick-up/put-down factor of being in an office is terrible. I used to value the weekends as days when I could actually get some work accomplished. My son is a technical program manager at a large SV startup. He's reported a similar leap in productivity.
And to your other point, the majority of firms in our business are giving $400 to $500 technology allowances to WFH employees, basically enough to buy a monitor and a printer/scanner.
Great consensus. And here's to a new, more productive post-pandemic workforce.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Genuine Realist - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 08:58 AM)2006alum Wrote:(04-15-2020, 08:32 AM)Mick Wrote: So let's take that a step further. For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home. All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion. Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute? Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.
Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place. And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices. The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them. So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.
I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.
Look at us - models of consensus! Completely agree with all of this as well. If Congress were smart they'd look for ways to either subsidize employees to enhance their WFH technology/ergonomics, or else subsidize employers covering those costs for employees. I've never understood why people thought WFH led to reduced productivity - my experience has always been that my productivity is negatively correlated with the number of people around me. So much so that in my position, where I have had WFH flexibility, I basically tried to stack my meetings and other required "in office" activities for 1-3 days a week and wrote off most of those days even when I didn't have meetings, because of the amount of chatter, etc., in the gaps between meetings. The WFH days were pure productivity. (Not to mention the approximately 1.75 hours I saved when I didn't have to commute - if I even split that commute time 50/50 with my employer the employer would be getting almost an hour extra free per day.)
I do believe a great many of those involved in travel services and the like are going to be involved in personal delivery services, messengers, and so on. The challenge will be to see that they are fairly compensated, which is the same challenge we face now.
There's also going to be a brobdingnagian growth industry in refitting buildings for social distancing purposes.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - magnus - 04-15-2020
The folks on here and elsewhere who are so productive when they work from home...can't be the norm can it? I've worked from home for many years and I can say that unless I'm meeting a deadline, I'm definitely less productive at home than at work. There are just too many distractions for the undisciplined. =)
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - stupac2 - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 09:24 AM)magnus Wrote: The folks on here and elsewhere who are so productive when they work from home...can't be the norm can it? I've worked from home for many years and I can say that unless I'm meeting a deadline, I'm definitely less productive at home than at work. There are just too many distractions for the undisciplined. =)
I find it depends a lot on what I'm actually doing. Then again much of my issue is a poor setup for WFH, and that most of my productive work is impossible to do from home anyway. I've been tackling a lot of deferred, low-value documentation and such during these last few weeks.
I'd be shocked if my wife were less productive doing WFH, given how much I see her working, but she has a job that transfers and most of a real setup (we need to get her a real desk instead of using the old kitchen table).
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Leftcoast - 04-15-2020
For me working from home is much different than when I did the same under non-pandemic conditions. Prior to this my work from home days were organized around a set of tasks that could be planned for the day, required focus and isolation which I had at home since everyone else was at work/school, and specifically DID NOT require collaboration with the wider team.
Now it's different.
1) Now no one is at work/school and everyone is working on school work or their job in the same space. Bye-bye focus and isolation. "Where's the xxx, didn't you have it?", "I need help with my homework!?!", "Can I borrow your cool workstation for my Zoom call? I need it quiet and want to use your second monitor and faster computer?". "Can someone get the door? Might be Instacart!" Argghhhh!
2) Work isn't specifically planned for a work-at-home-Friday. Collaboration is not only nice but necessary. I'm trying to be good about using concall tools diligently but it's not always easy to track folks down. Truthfully, this hasn't been as big of a problem as expected. My team has done well here but I hear this a lot from others.
3) It's very easy for small problems to build into big ones when working across departments. I've spent a lot of time explaining this to folks and telling them to stop sending out flaming e-mails and start picking up the @#$#% phone. Folks are stressed and it's way too easy to feed the stress monster by sending an ill-advised e-mail.
It sure helps if you have a real office that's not your bedroom or kitchen table. It also helps if everyone in the family group respects your work time but lot's of folks are making do without that ideal. Turns out the ideal is elusive, most houses don't have an quiet office and reality will bully it's way into the best laid plans!
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Mick - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 10:52 AM)Leftcoast Wrote: I've spent a lot of time explaining this to folks and telling them to stop sending out flaming e-mails and start picking up the @#$#% phone. Folks are stressed and it's way too easy to feed the stress monster by sending an ill-advised e-mail.
Those can turn into real ho1y he11 moments. E-mail can be passive-aggressive. As Jerry Seinfeld said "e-mail is the ultimate insult. It says 'I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear from you and your opinion is completely unimportant. But I want you to listen to every word I say."
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - 2006alum - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 11:45 AM)Mick Wrote: Those can turn into real ho1y he11 moments. E-mail can be passive-aggressive.
Totally agree. I find a 5-minute phone call can often save 1-2 hours of time writing emails, misunderstanding each other, causing unnecessary tension, etc. The only time I prefer emails is for one-on-one communication with superiors or inferiors where a documented paper trail can be useful. I can't tell you how many times over the years that I've had a superior say, "Why didn't you do X?," and I've been able to follow up with an email forward of the earlier (almost always forgotten) email exchange in which they said, "DO NOT DO X." As I've moved up the food chain, it's also been nice to reply to my prior email (from weeks ago) with a friendly, "How's it coming on thing X I just showed you I asked you to do three weeks ago?"
(04-15-2020, 11:45 AM)Mick Wrote: As Jerry Seinfeld said "e-mail is the ultimate insult. It says 'I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear from you and your opinion is completely unimportant. But I want you to listen to every word I say."
OTOH, "'I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear from you and your opinion is completely unimportant. But I want you to listen to every word I say" probably could apply to many of the posts in this forum, mine included! ;)
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - Genuine Realist - 04-15-2020
(04-15-2020, 10:52 AM)Leftcoast Wrote: For me working from home is much different than when I did the same under non-pandemic conditions. Prior to this my work from home days were organized around a set of tasks that could be planned for the day, required focus and isolation which I had at home since everyone else was at work/school, and specifically DID NOT require collaboration with the wider team.
Now it's different.
1) Now no one is at work/school and everyone is working on school work or their job in the same space. Bye-bye focus and isolation. "Where's the xxx, didn't you have it?", "I need help with my homework!?!", "Can I borrow your cool workstation for my Zoom call? I need it quiet and want to use your second monitor and faster computer?". "Can someone get the door? Might be Instacart!" Argghhhh!
2) Work isn't specifically planned for a work-at-home-Friday. Collaboration is not only nice but necessary. I'm trying to be good about using concall tools diligently but it's not always easy to track folks down. Truthfully, this hasn't been as big of a problem as expected. My team has done well here but I hear this a lot from others.
3) It's very easy for small problems to build into big ones when working across departments. I've spent a lot of time explaining this to folks and telling them to stop sending out flaming e-mails and start picking up the @#$#% phone. Folks are stressed and it's way too easy to feed the stress monster by sending an ill-advised e-mail.
It sure helps if you have a real office that's not your bedroom or kitchen table. It also helps if everyone in the family group respects your work time but lot's of folks are making do without that ideal. Turns out the ideal is elusive, most houses don't have an quiet office and reality will bully it's way into the best laid plans!
Good points, but it's also useful to remember that we are only about three weeks into this strange new world. I expect you (and others) are going to adapt in all sorts of ways that you can't even anticipate at the moment.
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - stupac2 - 04-15-2020
Well count me as an outlier because I would vastly rather communicate via e-mail rather than phone for pretty much anything where it would be an active consideration (obviously somewhere where you're debugging in real time is different, but this is relatively uncommon). My main reason is that reading is so much faster than listening, and typically writing is faster than speaking if you're not dead certain in what you want to say. I can process something via e-mail in probably half the time it would take to do a call, and I've found that to be true with customer interactions, collaboration between companies, internal discussions, etc etc.
But it seems like this is something peculiar about me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - BostonCard - 04-15-2020
My experience is that it is roughly a wash. I save about 30 minutes each way on commute (door to desk). I also save time not going to and from meetings (about 5-10 minutes of travel time depending on which building the meeting is in). On the flip side, I'm interrupted more frequently. I find that I get easily distracted in meetings that are not face to face, and the whole mute/unmute thing leads to a less natural conversation. Lastly, the challenges of informal consultation with colleagues nearby "Has anyone seen X before?" is annoying. Maybe that could be mitigated if we had a team active on slack (or the google equivalent, hangouts), but people don't seem to use it except as an alternative to texting.
Even once we are cleared from the SiP order, I expect my company would revert to either "work from home is recommended" or "work from home if you want to". It already was fairly permissive in terms of remote work, and I would guess half my colleagues worked from home on Fridays.
I expect the trend towards "open office plans" to revert rather quickly. That's our setup, and I could see the company going back to assigned desks and cubes and/or offices.
This will be a big boon to telehealth, which has been slow to being adopted. Obviously, not all visits can be converted to telehealth, but a lot can, and I expect they will.
BC
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/14/21211789/coronavirus-office-space-work-from-home-design-architecture-real-estate
Quote:She predicts that 30 percent of people will work from home multiple days per week within a couple of years. Lister added that there has been pent-up demand by employees for greater work-life flexibility, and that the coronavirus has made their employers see the light, especially as they themselves have had to work from home.
Before COVID-19 "only about 4 percent of the US workforce working from home at least half the time."
BC
RE: Our Pandemic Summer - OutsiderFan - 04-15-2020
The CRE industry is in a world of hurt. Office buildings face a perfect storm for disaster:
- People being forced to stay home from work
- Whole companies having experience with their workforce working from home all at once
- Companies in need to cut expenses in pandemic aftermath
This could actually be a boon for the housing crises. So many buildings are going to be unable to lease their space that they are going to have no choice but to start converting to residential space that isn't as lucrative and will require investments in conversion. And CRE mortgages are based on valuations assuming commercial leasing tenants.
The world is transforming before our eyes.