A Cloud with No Silver Lining

Posted by JR on August 5 at 4:52 PM The bits blog at New York Times has announced the coming of Zscaler, the enemy to anyone who has ever spent a second of their day not working. Created by Jay Chaudhry who has already founded such companies as AirDefense, CipherTrust, SecureIt, and CoreHarbor, Zscaler will let your higher-ups monitor your every click from a network cloud of computers.


What does it do?
Now the technology is no doubt complicated, and I haven't the time to go and figure it out. Why? Because I should be working.

But here's the basic idea: your company's IT group doesn't need to monitor your computer in-house any longer. They can click a few buttons and have a mass of brilliant machines do it instead. And they can do so specifically and categorically.

• The technology group can't use Facebook on Tuesdays.

• HR isn't allowed on any site except Craigs List and Mediabistro.

• The accounting group is banned from MySpace except during the Monday bagel meetings that they're not invited to (budget cutbacks forced the bosses to cut back on schmears).

So what does this mean? Less pain for the IT guardians, and more pain for everyone else.

Call me a trailblazer, or even worse, call me a slacker (of course you'd be wrong to do so). But I think that this is terrible. I have many friends who are not allowed to access web sites at their jobs. No Livejournal. No Facebook. No YouTube. No Instant Messenger. (No Wikipedia!? Really??) It makes them very jealous that, here at DMD, we have complete internet freedom.

Does it make DMD lazy? Does it mean that Rowland and Duke spend all of their time on Twitter? No. On the contrary, I think it means they are more enlightened than their equivalents in so many other companies.



A silly waste of time
What is gained by blocking access to the web? Aside from adult content (which, of course, is inappropriate and should be kept to the homestead) why should employees be forbidden to take a few seconds to themselves every few hours on the job?

I think that this web protection business is bunk. It comes from a fear that Stewart in PR is going to be on Yahoo Games all day, trying to beat his top score in Root Beer Tapper 3. Or that those new trainees are just going to slack in their cubes, wasting time on MySpace updating their status messages every five minutes (Maureen is: STILL BORED AT WORK, OMG!)

Of course this isn't the case. Or it shouldn't be. If someone is really spending all of their day not working, it will become evident in the turnaround times and quality of their deliverables. Then action can be taken. But aside from that, I believe that we as responsible, driven, satisfied employees and humans will know our limits. We may keep our personal email tab open on the browser so we can respond to an email when it comes in, but we'll still work hard and plenty.

Why? Because we're happy. Because our company doesn't lock us in the digital equivalent of solitary to toil in the dark and produce endlessly without a breath of fresh air or a glint of daylight.

Furthermore, those folks who can't access the web? They'll find other ways. I know one man who started bringing his laptop into work so that he could update his Livejournal through his Verizon wireless card. I know other folks who take care of their private business on iPhones. Others still find the countless web sites and services that have sprung up to effectively undermine IT security by streaming forbidden content into the system via phony-looking Windows Vista imitation backgrounds.

Guess what? Those employees are wasting even more time, and now they're aggravated, because they are being cut off from their day-to-day life.



Fun on the Web is a good thing
So many of us spend our days trying to understand how users will best interact with our Facebook widget, or that new blog we're going to write. But how will we have any insight into this if we spend 8-12 hours of our day effectively tied up and kept away from the Web? We need to be on the Web to understand the Web.

And what's the difference between updating a blog for five minutes a day, and descending upon that tray of black and white cookies left in the fourth floor conference room after the big client meeting? Both involve not-working. However, one might involve the employee gleaning some web insight (hey, check out this really smart functionality they just added to Flickr!) or conversing with a friend and getting that tiny spark of inspiration to help them bust through creative's block.

Some of the greatest ideas I've helped to sell to clients came from ideas the team here formulated based on things we encountered on the web while living our lives. And those ideas are successful because we came across them while in a similar mindset to the target audience.



Be kind
A final yell before I close this out. Sure hundreds of companies will use Zscaler to drop an iron curtain around their office buildings. But allow me to be the voice of reason here: don't do it. No matter what the employee does (it doesn't need to involve the web!) they can benefit from some free time on the Internet.

Why? Because the web fosters social interaction and information and idea exchange. It transcends the same brainstorms that happen day in and day out and gives a friend from Canada or a younger cousin who's bored in advanced geometry a chance to influence, inspire and invigorate your employee.

Because, in the end you can't beat what web freedom brings us: a brief moment of respite, a chance to bounce ideas off of un-involved humans, and a wide world of information at our fingertips.

• Tell them to keep their eyes open. Any new Facebook widgets they received? What ad banner on the site they were visiting caught their eye, and how?

• Be mindful of structure. We so often blaze through a web site to get to the information we desire... this is good - it means that the strategists built a successful web site. But what makes it successful? How is the navigation organized? Are there any interesting tools or technologies at play?

• Expand their horizons. Sure, they can read the blogs they like (I'm assuming blogs like Perez and Gawker)... but why not ask them to add a new blog to their feeds... something germaine to the business they work in.

• Interact! Encourage them to join communities and message boards that pertain to your field of expertise, you never know what they'll come back with.

These are just a few ideas, of course... and it's all about balance. Don't turn their free web time into a homework assignment, or your employees may end up just as bitter as those in companies that can't make it past their corporate intranet.

Experiment with ideas, encourage exploration and observation, and, above all else, keep an open mind. I assure you that your employees, and stakeholders, will thank you for your innovative approach to the internet and its use at work.

Topics: free write, interactive        SHARE: