In the QUBE no one can hear you weep...

For decades we have been promised that technology would imminently conquer distance and time and enable us to work together at a distance as if we were side-by-side.

Video conferencing missed the mark and quickly became known for its cost, unreliability and the need to go to a ‘special room’ to peer into the faces of distant colleagues, email has evolved into he electronic version of those birthday candles which once blown out immediately relight themselves. Audio conferences and webinars are simply one person talking and 18 doing their emails in on mute – occasionally replying yes or no to a poll!

On the 12th of July two things happened. The first was the launch at Cape Canaveral signalling the final end of the space race and the second was that Professor Eddie Obeng led the first conference in the Pentacle QUBE entitled Innovation Without Boundaries.

QUBE is our attempt to create a natural working environment for collaboration at a distance. We designed it as a way to enable our business education applications so that we could seamlessly intertwine education with real work for our global clients. But we got more than we bargained for. Instead what we have created is perhaps the most natural collaborative environment available when people around the world need to work together. Because everything stays where it’s left, even across time zones, we can create the equivalent of ‘sticking a post-it on your monitor’. The secret is not just in the technology it is also in our understanding of creating environments where people wish to share and also in our skills in driving and influencing the behaviour change needed.

Key speakers were David Williams CEO Amari Plastics, David Kester of the Design Council, Sebatian Conran, Dr David Lonmas and Professor Eddie Obeng.

Perhaps the best comment we received on the day was one very animated participant who at the end said in a tight voice, “When I think of all the time in my life I have spent, wasted, miserably watching Powerpoints and been bored rigid listening to audio conference monologues and not progressing the work itself, I could weep.”

You can find out more about QUBE at http://QUBE.cc