I got an email today from a company that sells bags (slings, satchels, backpacks, and the like) and the title in the email was “Going Small”. The focus of this particular marketing campaign was on the smaller bags in their collection, but it brought mobilism to mind. Many things bring mobilism to my mind these days.
As someone who identifies as a mobilist, I think the term can be applied more broadly than it is when you first think of it. Initially it conjures images of people on the go, commuters on trains, writers in coffee shops. And those people certainly are mobilists, but I think about it a little more broadly.
Someone who doesn’t have an office I think of as a mobilist. Someone who works in a lot of different places can be thought of as a mobilist. And that makes me think of people like college professors who go from classroom to classroom and have to connect to all kinds of equipment and be prepared for all sorts of contingencies from projectors that don’t work to laptops that won’t connect to Wi-Fi networks.
Mobilists have to be prepared for all sorts of things, but so do the people who support them! They need all the appropriate adapters, power supplies, and laser pointers, they need fresh batteries, and mostly, they need to be prepared for when those adapters fail, the batteries die, and the connections aren’t there.
As their support professional, I need to be prepared for all of those contingencies as well, and I need to be prepared for when my customers are not. That means having a “go bag”, sling, satchel, backpack, or the like ready with all the things that I might need when I get called into action.
I’ll have more to say about that in later posts, but I wanted to bring preparedness to mind, for when the rubber meets the road.