Source: BBC / Paul Butler

Social media platforms like Facebook and Google+ are fast becoming a big topic for business. Consumers are embracing these communication and collaboration channels for more than just sharing holiday memories. Most of us also expect to use these collaboration channels increasingly in our work environments to improve the information flow. We want to communicate at work as we are used to communicating when off work – with or without the consent of our employers. Communication culture is part of business culture and work flexibility and as such impacts any business’ endeavor to attract and retain creative talent.

For IT and business leaders, these social dynamics bring their own opportunities and challenges, as social media communication:

• Provides an innovative and attractively priced communication infrastructure.Top management and business line managers alike increasingly recognize that social media forms a fundamental channel for informal communications. Social media offers cost effective collaboration and communication channels.
• Opens collaboration channels for supplier relationships. Large businesses do not collaborate with large companies only but also with smaller ones – and vice versa. Large enterprises interact with small suppliers or smaller customers that increasingly use social media collaboration solutions.
• Morphs into collaboration ecosystems.The emerging communication and collaboration solutions are based on the convergence of services (like document collaboration) by one provider, with communication and collaboration solutions (like voice, screen sharing, and instant messaging) from another provider in a partnership-type model.

How many of you suffer from at least mild “cyberchondria"? Do you run to the computer to Google your latest ailments? Are you often convinced that the headache you have is the first sign of some terminal illness you’ve been reading about?

Well, Symcat takes a new approach to Internet-assisted self-diagnosis. It provides not only the symptoms but the probability of getting the disease, using CDC data to rank results by the likelihood of the different conditions. It then allows users to further filter results by typing in information such as their gender, the duration of their symptoms and medical history. No, that headache you’ve had all week is likely not spinal stenosis or even viral pharyngitis.  But if you’ve had a fall or a blow to the head you might want to consider a concussion. 

As Symcat puts it, they “use data to help you feel better.” Never underestimate the palliative effects of peace of mind.

I had the chance to ask Craig Monsen, MD, co-founder and CEO of Symcat, a few questions about how they got their start with the business and their innovation with open data. 

What was the genesis of Symcat?  Can you describe the "ah-ha" moment of determining the need for Symcat?

As I sit at my kitchen table enjoying the quiet of my house before my kids come home, I know that I will move to my office and shut the door once that tranquility is shattered by their arrival. Then later this evening, once the house is again quiet with the monsters nestled in their beds, I might just take a few calls propped up on pillows in my bed. Yes, I do that regularly. Heck, they call it a laptop, right?  This is the "home" scenario. On the road, workplaces and spaces vary even more. I really work best from a hotel room, or the hotel bar if I have a good headset on.  None of this is new for me; I have played the role of an itinerant worker for years. But for a long time my employers continued to put my name on a door or cubicle. For me, that has now changed. No more nameplate for me. Employers are increasingly waking up to the fact that many employees (or "information workers," ugh... hate the term) just don't need or even want a fixed office or space. And, likely more importantly, the employers don't want that either. An empty office is an under-optimized asset. Both demand-side and supply-side forces converge to drive workplace and space diversity.

We hear a lot about empowered employees these days, and the changing nature of work and the workforce. Forrester's Workforce Employee Surveys investigate trends among information workers such as device usage, collaboration practices, workplace preferences, and attitudes about their employers. And, the signs are clearly indicating that the demand for workplace diversity and choice is on the rise: