In organizational communication, there is a body of research on teleworking (defined as being not physically in the office at least three days a week while being connected to the office through electronic means). It has, of course, examined issues such as isolation (no more water cooler conversations) and the decrease of organizational identification, issues of career pathing, technological dependence, and the all important (and over the long term disintegrating) relationship between supervisor and subordinate. There's also been some research on space - both physical and virtual - in the organization. As Barry pointed out, teleworking or being a road warrior is not a new phenomenon. Instead of selling brooms, now our virtual busy-bees deal with digitized work. I do think it might be interesting to study this not from an organizational/management/work perspective, but from a technological perspective. I bet many technological developments and social adjustments have been driven by the need to work from the road. As to community forming among these road warriors - this reminds me of a message I posted last October when I wondered about relationship forming and maintenance among long term backbackers. I think the issue Barry brought up is extremely multi-facetted. Maybe worthy of a workshop at AoIR in Toronto? ulla ************************* Ulla Bunz University of Kansas Starting summer 2002: Rutgers University bunz@scils.rutgers.edu *************************