March Madness is officially upon us, and for me that means countless hours of watching college basketball. It also means filling out tournament brackets to compete with friends and coworkers, mostly for fun but more importantly for bragging rights. The first round of the NCAA tournament is always played on Thursday and Friday, and some sports nuts at every office will take time off or call out “sick” to stay home at watch all 32 games. That’s fine if you’re one of those people who are going to watch first round match-ups like Gonzaga vs. Akron or Missouri vs. Cornell. While every game offers the potential for an upset, I’ll choose to skip those games. For the rest of us who do not schedule vacation time around sporting events, how are we going to watch the games that we do care about? Fortunately for us, every game of the NCAA tournament is broadcasted live online, however unfortunate for employers. Isn’t technology great?
I have blogged about the inconvenience of my workplace blocking popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. However, either someone in IT department is a huge college hoops fan or they don’t realize that virtually every man (and some women) will be watching a streaming broadcast of college basketball for the better part of two days. Perhaps therein lies the issue for our IT department. Many sites will be streaming live college basketball come Thursday, March 19th, so how can a company effective block all of the sites? I guess they can’t, for now. Again, good for me, but not so good for the company. The NCAA tournament is just a current example, but streaming live sporting events is also common with the Olympics, World Cup Soccer, etc. So, is it possible for a company to block websites that offer streaming video of live sporting events? I would say the answer to that question is if the technology is not currently available it will be in the near future.
I wrote a previous blog about new software that allows organizations to pick and choose not only which sites they want to make available to their employees, but also which specific features of each site. So, while I plan on sitting in my cubicle and intently watching the Maryland vs. California game on Thursday afternoon, I cringe to think that the day may come when I won’t be able to watch March Madness at work. If that’s the case, I’ll be taking a two-day vacation. Go Terps!
I have blogged about the inconvenience of my workplace blocking popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. However, either someone in IT department is a huge college hoops fan or they don’t realize that virtually every man (and some women) will be watching a streaming broadcast of college basketball for the better part of two days. Perhaps therein lies the issue for our IT department. Many sites will be streaming live college basketball come Thursday, March 19th, so how can a company effective block all of the sites? I guess they can’t, for now. Again, good for me, but not so good for the company. The NCAA tournament is just a current example, but streaming live sporting events is also common with the Olympics, World Cup Soccer, etc. So, is it possible for a company to block websites that offer streaming video of live sporting events? I would say the answer to that question is if the technology is not currently available it will be in the near future.
I wrote a previous blog about new software that allows organizations to pick and choose not only which sites they want to make available to their employees, but also which specific features of each site. So, while I plan on sitting in my cubicle and intently watching the Maryland vs. California game on Thursday afternoon, I cringe to think that the day may come when I won’t be able to watch March Madness at work. If that’s the case, I’ll be taking a two-day vacation. Go Terps!
Ryan I will join you in anticipation of the Terp first round ousting. I was quite surprised by this past weekends performance, but I don't think they have too much more in them!
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