Much has been made about the most recent Blackberry outage. Some have claimed that this is the end of the Blackberry. Others said it reduced traffic accidents.
For me, message delivery ceased around 2AM Pacific. Not a single message was delivered the entire working day. Around 8:30 PM, everything essentially delivered at once. After that, I haven't seen any issues. After all the press bruhaha, I thought it was worthwhile to look back at that 18 hour period.
My own personal productivity was certainly affected by this. I held meetings away from my desk that resulted in a focused discussions with fewer interruptions. All of the same, or more, work got done and it was probably of a higher quality.
Our users - even remote workers - were, surprisingly, relatively unconcerned. The important work also got done via phone and traditional email. Stuff was sold, orders were processed, customers were helped.
Don't get me wrong. The Blackberry is a wonderful convenience. It is very secure, has a physical keyboard to type on (most of the time) and is extremely manageable from an IT perspective. It is especially valuable during travel, crises events, etc.
But, I think that it is important to realize that the device in our hand isn't as important as those around us. Work still gets done as long as we effectively communicate with every one else - no matter what the channel.
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