Sneak was recently persuaded to attend a briefing on the future of work by the Orange-sponsored Orange Future Enterprise Coalition - a self-styled panel of industry experts and opinion leaders with the delightful acronym of OFEC, which always makes Sneak think of Father Ted.

If anyone was hoping for some real insights, they would have left disappointed. Those who like to be buffeted by copious quantities of hot air and buzzwords like “empowerment'” and “brand challenges”, however, would have found themselves in hog heaven.

An OFEC report unveiled at the event outlined four possible future workplace scenarios, which Orange quirkily labelled “Disciples of the cloud”, “Electronic cottages”, “Mutual worlds”, and “Replicants”. These represented extremes extrapolated from the present day to a possible future world a decade hence.

It was Orange’s own representative at the event who ruled, quite early in the proceedings, that discussing technology was off the agenda. That's right - at a forum assembled to discuss the future of the workplace, participants were welcome to focus on everything and anything except technology.

Two hours of drivel followed, while various talking heads pontificated about the social implications of mobile working, all without a single mention about what kind of technology would be needed to make possible the level of collaboration assumed by the scenarios, or who was going to be expected to pay for it all.

The sole exception to this was when one attendee opined, “In future we'll all own our own laptops, so there’ll be no need for a company to have IT support staff.”

Sneak will not be attending future OFEC events.