Without wishing to throw out the fresh thought, it
might be well-advised to be very cautious before abandoning
the physical headquarters concept. A main contributor
to the present debacle would appear to be that nobody
on the Board, and very few ordinary members, was ever
in the office to see what happened day to day. Cat's
away, mice play. An internet-distributed office might
be an even harder situation to supervize.

Has anyone had any first-hand experience at actually
running such a 'virtual' headquarters ? How did it
work out in practice ? What sort of safeguards were
used to ensure productivity and financial integrity
were maintained ?

My own limited experience with teleconferencing suggested
that it was lousy for management purposes, but very
effective for engineering. Things that can be reduced
to hard numbers can be disseminated easily; anything
that has human factors or personalities involved tends
not to travel well through the ether. Or perhaps I'm
just a reactionary old fuddy-duddy on this.

Ian





At 00:54 13 September 2006, wrote:

Bill Daniels wrote:
Tom, you make a eloquent argument against the 'edifice
complex' that has
plagued so many organizations. The organization is
not the building nor is
the building the organization. Broadband internet
makes communication and
collaborative tasks vastly better and cheaper that
anything possible when
the Hobbs site was selected. I use internet based
VoIP and
videoconferencing and prefer it to physical travel.
However, allow me to become the 'devils advocate'
for a moment. There are
many outsiders who will first ask, 'who are you guys
and what do you do?' A
headquarters in a real building on a soaring site
where one could point out
the window to answer that question would be a real
asset. Many of these
visitors might be people who could help us if the
headquarters were located
near places they pass through anyway.

I don't know exactly where that magical building site
is but I note that the
AOPA is in Frederick, MD on an GA airport near Washington,
DC and the EAA is
located on their 'Aviation Center' campus in Oshkosh,
WI. Putting the SSA
on a year-'round world class soaring site near some
international crossroads
might have some advantages.

Bill Daniels

Yeah, that old 'nesting instinct' rears its ugly head,
pushing us into
making irrational decisions. In reality, our public
persona is really
our web site. Have you ever been to the SSA headquarters?
I haven't and
don't intend to in the foreseeable future.

The SSA is in dire circumstances requiring an equally
dire response. I
admit that I am thinking 'outside of the box' here,
but it is
definitely worthy of consideration.

Tom