The coronavirus could have a silver lining….

People congregating is a dangerous proposition today. Do we really need to be everywhere that we think we are supposed to be?

A fascinating and intriguing piece in this weekend’s Financial Times, headlined

, makes us think. He maintains that the Coronavirus has taken us out of our comfort zone of thinking that we live in age of infinite possibility, to realizing that such is not the case and that “going viral’ has a new definition, and it has nothing to do with a YouTube video.

The most important reference in the piece, however, is that we begin to realize that we don’t have to be everywhere. In the author’s own words: “I thought about how few places I actually needed to be—how much of life can now be conducted digitally. Unlike the George Clooney character in Up in the Air, I couldn’t be everywhere at once and I didn’t need to be.” That may be the silver lining of the Coronavirus.

One cancellation after the other

As I am reading this story, I am emerging from three cancellations of workshops/conferences/presentations in different cities around the world.

I applaud those organizers who play it safe.

At Columbia University, where I teach my Monday class, we are still meeting the students in a regular class, but the Plan B is in action and all of us faculty members now have accounts with Zoom, in case we do online teaching in the days and weeks ahead. Stanford University has already gone to online teaching only for now.

However, the show goes on. I am readjusting schedules, doing more video conferencing with the clients, sharing the screen of my MacBookAir with the designers and editors, and realizing that, indeed, it is possible to do a lot of the work long distance.

I don’t think Lufthansa, my favored airline, would love this new approach and they have curtailed 50% of their schedule as well. However, the Financial Times piece resonated with me because it made me realize that we do not have to be everywhere that people expects us to be. Thanks to the technology available, we can conduct classes, workshops and even very high level meetings without the personal handshake.

In fact, in the coronavirus era, where handshakes are a no no, that may not be a bad thing.

Read the FT piece

https://www.ft.com/content/8044788c-5e05-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4

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