Location, location, location!

For the last week I’ve been in Puerto Rico visiting a friend. Guess what the most interesting part of my trip has been. Do you think it was the beach, or the forts, or Old San Juan? Nope. It wasn’t any of those.

The most interesting part of my trip has been that I’m perfectly able to work. I have everything I need. Now some of you might think that’s horrible. The last thing you want to do on vacation is work and you wish that no one would bother you when you’re away.

That’s one way to look at it (and if you’re on vacation it’s a perfectly legitimate way to look at it). But what if you weren’t on vacation? What if, aside from any vacations you decided to take, you sometimes wanted to work in an interesting location so that when you weren’t working you could enjoy different scenery or the company of a far away friend?

We live in an amazing time. This is a time when we can architect our lives any way we want. It’s all about our priorities. Yes, we all have commitments and we all make our choices based on them. However, we have the opportunity to add flexibility and customization to our lives if that is something we value.

The point is that in the information industry I often get into debates about customization. How should we customize our content? How can we customize our user’s experience? There aren’t many who would argue with the statement that customization – even mass customization – is where we need to go.

Well what about people’s lives and their careers? Why can’t we customize where we work? Or how we choose to be associated with a company? (There will be more on that in my next entry)

Are your customers doing this? If so, where are they and how can you best meet their needs?

I hope you appreciate this food for thought. I need to do some work so that I can head to the beach in the morning. Good night!