5.13.09 | New York, NY | Andrew Laing, Managing Director, North America for the workplace consultancy DEGW, will be a featured speaker at WorkTech '09, an influential two-day conference for global workplace leaders. The May 19-20 event, to be held in New York City's Time-Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, NYC, will focus on innovative case studies and examine the growing trend of activity-based work, which centers around task and activity rather than office presence or assigned workspaces. WorkTech '09 is widely expected to prompt a rethinking of how corporations organize their workplaces.

Recognized as one of the best-known thinkers and consultants on workplace strategy, having worked with companies such as Accenture, Capital One, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Google and Microsoft,  Andrew Laing will present an overview of innovative workplace trends from a global perspective. Laing identifies that networked technology is driving a revolution in how we plan, design, and use office workplaces. Laing will share international case studies of workplace innovations that have resulted in significant cost reduction, increased employee satisfaction, and higher levels of business performance.

"Activity-based work, along with mobile officing and distributed workplace
models, are important trends that grew out of an urgent need to update our current conception of workplace, a change of mindset enabled by the latest mobile technologies," explains Laing. "The whole idea of work and workplace is being transformed. Now developers and designers of office buildings face enormous challenges in what they should provide to organizations and end-users. The demand for innovation in sustainability, global ways of working, and the diverse nature of world cultures all combine to create entirely new models for the workplace."

With topics ranging from "Work in a Synchronous Society" to "Co-working and Mobile Collaboration: Meetups & Unconferences,"the WorkTech '09 event is expected to produce a lively discussion of how to improve both work and the office itself. Dr. Laing's presentation will provide an overview of significant European and North American workplace trends, adding his unique geographic perspective to this global think-tank of most prominent experts in the workplace field.

With corporate participants also on the program, WorkTech '09 will present a picture of the world's most cutting-edge work environments. For a complete listing of Topics and speakers, visit www.unwired.eu.com.

For more information on Dr. Laing and DEGW, visit www.degw.com.