The Future of Work

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

in 2009 i decided to leave a corporate

career

i started in california’s silicon valley

all the way to the uae’s oil and gas

industry

learned a lot met relative success but i

felt this continuous confinement in a

corporate

structure that left me yearning for more

i wanted to travel to exotic places

and i wanted to gain this freedom of

being to work being able to work from

anywhere

it’s then that i decided to join the

digital nomad movement

after a long sabbatical in the mountains

of lebanon i found myself in brazil

a business consultant speaking

portuguese

and learning how to dance for ho from

there i moved to thailand

writing articles on sustainability

online as i learned muay thai

and then i ended up in the green school

of bali helping promote

environmental sustainability between

days of silent meditation

as i moved from country to country i

started to see that there was more

people like me

lured by this freedom and living and

nestled in these communities and that

movement began to grow

in march of this year i came to tulum a

town that’s been transforming from a

counterculture haven in the 90s

to becoming the next digital hotspot i

came to see

and witness what all this change was

about and then covet happened

all of a sudden the streets were emptied

the beach was off limits

and the locals seem to be happy because

it was a throwback to the 90s on plug

days

but for us all of a sudden we had our

laptops

nowhere to go and we had no idea what

was going to happen next

as the months went by and the

restrictions began to ease

people started flooding in back from the

u.s to escape an extremely polarized

political

atmosphere and wanting to go somewhere

where they can work remotely

mexico with a six-month visa on arrival

much improved technology infrastructure

and healthcare

was the ideal spot for them all of a

sudden

we began to see an emerging community of

tech

entrepreneurs ceos freelancers all

coming together

and we witness an emergence of a new

community

of course the fallout of covet 19 is

still ongoing

many people have lost their lives people

have lost loved ones

personally for me my own sister has been

experiencing the same symptoms

since she contracted the virus in march

we’ve all been affected by this in some

way

socially psychologically and it would

take several ted talks to do the fallout

real justice but there is a silver

lining here

this whole process allowing people to

work remotely

has been sped up and catapulted from a

fringe phenomenon

to the mainstream and a new normal the

reason this shift to remote work

has been much slower pre-pandemic is

trust

business owners managers haven’t trusted

their employees to work remotely

they need to see the employees and

management was by attendance not by

results

being forced to work from home this had

to change

and it was clear that management by

results was the way to go

data is in distractions working from the

office

are at least double what they are at

home and this is taking into

consideration

that working from home during the

pandemic we’re all sheltered in

with our parents our partners with our

children

and still the productivity was higher

under the old paradigm employee

retention is becoming a lot more

difficult

the younger generation gets it they will

not commit to one company for too long

they already understand that there is

another possibility of them working and

living wherever they want

they’ve rebelled against this nine to

five work schedule

and they’re right the opportunity is

here for them to merge

their work and life balance and travel

while doing it

statistics are in global workplace

analytics shows us that 76 million

workers in the u.s that’s over half the

workforce

now wants to work at least part of the

time from home

if that happens and the projection is

that 25 to 30 percent

in 2021 will be working from anywhere

that has a massive impact on real estate

on office space and on office design

some projections say it’ll be over one

billion square feet of reduced office

space

we’ve all seen the clear skies during

the quarantine

as there was less commutes less plane

travel and

all replaced by zoom calls we’ve even

watched

animals returning to places that they’ve

long abandoned

urban centers when everybody cleared out

because of the quarantine

students are also going through a

transformation the pandemic has forced

them also to study remotely

i used to daydream about that option as

a student

but now with blockchain technology

universities can

engage and measure all the facets of

student life

from registration virtual or physical

attendance

credential sharing and even testing at

home

knowing that you are the one taking the

test

this has completely revolutionized

remote education

now students can work off campus engage

collaboratively with other students

and at the same time have comparable if

not better academic results

but the story here is when all of these

digital workers

and students come together we start to

see the rise of new communities

and it’s happening here for example

co-working hubs

as a platform that brings together all

of these different people

but now they don’t have to put on a work

persona they no longer have direct

competition with employees

they don’t have any internal hierarchy

so they come together look

looking for new meaning and the norm

becomes to help each other out

let’s be honest we come to co-working

hubs

not just for the digital technology and

to be able to connect to the internet

we come to be a part of the community

co-working hubs for example

are embedded in the social fabric of any

town or city it’s the perfect platform

to connect to collaborate with others

and to coordinate resources

the question here is whether we’re

physically or virtually together

what are we going to do with these new

emerging communities

especially after covid with this renewed

sense of purpose

in my mind i think an easier one is the

existential crisis of the environment

why not start there by some estimates

we have one decade to get that right

it goes without saying that in 2020

collaborating under the same roof has

its challenges

but with a safe environment there’s

still room for people and ideas to come

together

it’s this sense of togetherness that’s

going to play a significant role

in the actual recovery from this

pandemic

for our collective recovery we’re

creating a new environment

a new consciousness this is a new

culture

where we really want to get things done

we’re incentivized to get things done

and we’re willing to empower other

people to do it

this is the new frontier

[Music]

[Music]