I want a remote control for my office

Considering the magnificent rise of technology, it’s surprising not how much, but how little it changed how we work and operate in our offices. Even the elements that became seemingly digitised, were often done so in the simplest of ways.

Take for instance meeting room booking. In many offices it is still being done by receptionists or by some funny paper system. In the offices where it’s digitised, it’s often done over Outlook or Google Calendar (both being really a slightly more convenient version of a paper system). Yet technology allows us to have a panels at the meeting room door to book the room & display its availability. It allows us to have an app to quickly specify what we require (beamer? catering?), and if we don’t show up a sensor could detect lack of movement and free up the room for the others. It could also send as a slightly reprimanding e-mail urging us to cancel a reservation of a rescheduled meeting in the past. We’re not talking cutting edge, expensive solutions here.

It’s very similar with reporting fault. We are all used to malfunctioning printers or leaking toilets staying this way for weeks with a chain of post-its left on them with comments like “it doesn’t work” or “please repair!”. The experience for an FM professional can be equally daunting - imagine getting 40 e-mails about a broken coffee machine, where one would suffice. Half of the e-mails probably fails to specify the exact coffee machine or even the right floor or… building!

Access control is already in a slightly smarter space. Yes, a badge is basically a key, but it allows central management of access (you don’t need to change locks, if someone loses their badge or if an ex-employee fails to return it - you just deactivate it in the system). The next level is represented by apps - not only you don’t have to carry an extra item, but you can be granted access completely remotely. The moment you’re facing the door a swipe-lock could show up on your smartphone.

There are also things not digitised at all - ordering food from the canteen, payment… Smarter digitisation opens the door to using gamification and to great understanding of human needs in the workplace.

Working in the workplace strategy field for over 8 years now I have been surprised how few tech companies thought holistically about these solutions. Companies like Slack, Kisi or Workplace Fabric got me immensely excited, but I was looking for something that will become a platform linking it all and providing a true ‘remote control’ for the office. Well, in the end I found a seed of something like that in spaceOS, which is why I took a scary leap and left the corporate world to help develop it.

We are now creating the future of working in great co-working spaces like New Lab in New York, Business Link Astoria in Warsaw or Silicon Allee in Berlin. Corporate real estate and campuses come next. And what is even more exciting there are more companies entering this field - if we fail at bringing this positive revolution, someone else will.