Moose and JRock of UK national (and international) radio station Team Rock Radio had a crazy idea. They were going to broadcast the breakfast show whilst on the Tube.
To be precise they were going to travel from their bunker in a secret location under an an anonymous office building in Central London to Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford using the London Underground system.
They planned to travel during the songs and do the links live from the stations using the WiFi.
Today they’re doing it. In fact they’ve just left Liverpool Street Station. This might seem like just another silly radio stunt but actually there’a very serious point behind it for them, but moreover for a good proportion of our working population.
Until recently it’s been really difficult and expensive to arrange communications of the kind of quality that it would require to broadcast a live radio show.
So Moose and JRock wanted to prove – or perhaps really just test – the fact that this is no longer the case.
The programme isn’t over yet, but thus far it’s worked really rather well. There have been a few audio glitches, but nothing serious.
This proves to the Team Rock organisation that they can be much more responsive in covering events and festivals and indeed broadcast from anywhere in the world as long as they have a half reasonable Internet connection – which today isn’t a difficult thing to obtain.
The wider implications though are significant. I’ve been a remote worker for a little over 3 years so I know that technology has improved such that remote working (and indeed home working) is entirely possible for Software Developers like me. I also happen to work for the Computer Science Department at The University of Hull so they understand it too.
Not everyone happens to be a technologist or indeed work for a technical employer. What Moose and JRock have done is to demonstrate very publicly and very effectively to a much wider audience that the technology for remote working is now there.
I really hope this has the impact that it should.
PS: They’ve now added the show to their On-Demand section.