So I have been thinking about despite how shitty the Corona virus is for Western nations, it could have some positive outcomes.
I have been thinking about what is already changing here in Australia, which I think will cause permanent change.

eHealth - Speaking to a doctor over the internet has become a necessity with the virus and the government is spending a bomb on it. The idea that we should have to go in a doctros surgery to get a prescription refilled is insane. When i got my migraine prescription refilled I caught a shocking bout of gastro from the waiting room.
Video Conferencing - In the past two weeks I have had meetings on; Zoom, Gotomeeting, Skype/MS Teams and I can tell you that I fully expect the number times I have to travel will decrease, it is better to meet more often virtually than less frequently in person.
eCommerce - So many companies have had a terrible online presence and unworkable eCommerce platforms, I already see this changing and I am sure there will be less bricks and mortar businesses on the other side of this.


I will probably think of some others...

I also wanted to ask how you guys are collaborating online these days?
Email is such a terrible way of advancing discussions and projects, I use Slack on occasion but I am not one of the biggest fans.
My most heavily used online tools are: Office365, Todoist & Notion.
I would like something like Slack that worked better with customers, a few of my customers are in love with Monday, but I don't like the "Everything is a table" factor.

This coronavirus stuff has me thinking Amazon really wishes it had been able to more successfully get its drone delivery supply chain model off the ground.

The problem we had this stuff all before and it was ready to go. Corporations however want control over people so ehealth, business and corporate environments will return to what they were after this. Corporations will gladly toss away money on property and utilities if they can have that much more control of their workers. Doctors do not run their offices anymore and the companies who do, want everything done in person as insurance does not want to pay them anything to write a script over the phone, and they do not want to give a service for free.

But since the dotcom era we been ready to go online for education, commerce, healthcare and more but corporations will lose power if people can engage with these services at home where they have more control (and information).

Mar 31, 2020 22:50:59 GMT c said:

The problem we had this stuff all before and it was ready to go. Corporations however want control over people so ehealth, business and corporate environments will return to what they were after this. Corporations will gladly toss away money on property and utilities if they can have that much more control of their workers. Doctors do not run their offices anymore and the companies who do, want everything done in person as insurance does not want to pay them anything to write a script over the phone, and they do not want to give a service for free.

But since the dotcom era we been ready to go online for education, commerce, healthcare and more but corporations will lose power if people can engage with these services at home where they have more control (and information).

I disagree, I see the status quo more as a reflection of levels of apathy and stupidity.
Corporations do not fear losing power, they fear losing customers.
It was hard for businesses to move online if their competitors didn't, because people are stupid and lazy they just move to a competitor.
This current state of affairs will force people to purchase and transact online and I think the driver for having a bricks and mortar platform will be lost.
eBusiness suits corporations just fine, less salaries, less overhead, more adjustable work flows, ability to surge with demand.

The last point is one of the things that has made eCommerce really accessible.
Once upon a time you had to pay for the internet load you would experience at your worst possible loading or your website would fall over in peak times.
Scale-able server architecture lets companies pay for what they need when they need it and lets the website not fall over during peaks.

I saw a video that listed a few of the companies and apps that came into prominence after the GFC..most are household names and a part of everyday life now.

I Assume similar things will come out of this.

So no one else thinks Amazon's drone fleet would've been killing it right now?

The largest barrier to change in the US is tort culture. One reason we have so much management is an entire layer of management had to be added to American corporations to focus on policy compliance. US companies want power because any mistakes can lead to multimillion dollar lawsuits. I am shocked so many are even doing work from home, as in five to ten years time we will see lawsuits about this ranging from leakage of privileged information to insecure access of company materials. Also workers being able to record their interactions with management is also very problematic, so I expect wrongdoing lawsuits to follow as well. Level before have so many people been in a place to record their entire interaction with a company. Almost no company would allow recording in their office, but this opened the door to do it and will likely lead to all sorts of sexual harassment and bias lawsuits.

For a good look at things look into what happened when colleges first suggested this change. And well why colleges are so expensive. Colleges got a shit ton of backlash from legal people for trying to move things online. Likewise, year after year, policy and legal costs of college continue to skyrocket as more and more things violate students rights. Moving online was met with such backlash as the mere change could trigger ADA lawsuits. Before the call was made for me to stop school, the program I was looking tried to go online only and they retired the program head. Turned out the government was not all cool with students accessing their databases from home, even if they went remotely through the school's security first. Corporations did not want to work with students who were learning from home either, and that doomed online cohort is mostly in China now.

My doctor told me sometimes things are so ingrained into people that the only way to change long held views is for a generation of experts to die. This is what will need to happen for many in business. Too many see working from home as lazy, and see it producing inferior work. Until they are removed, there is no change. Once they are out of the picture, then you still have the legal layer to get through. That is tougher as it will need the Supreme Court, but Trump court is the perfect time to push through tort reform and reduce some of the insane liability crap.