To the Future and Back

Today, we’re introducing OpenWorkspace®, and releasing it for general availability.

I started developing OpenWorkspace® at the onset of the pandemic, on a solo mission of sorts, inspired by my background in financial markets—where technology had largely outpaced that in traditional industries. The mission was to re-create the automation-driven desktop experience I’d grown accustomed to in the niche industry of ‘proprietary trading’. Initially, to regain my own efficiency, but ultimately, to adapt the experience to the general desktop experience, to populize it and share it with industry outsiders.

In transitioning from a 10-year career in markets to doing cross-functional work outside of it, I quickly realized how far the out-of-the-box functionality of everyday systems like Windows and macOS had fallen behind.  I’d grown accustomed to using high-frequency trading systems that delivered a nearly frictionless ‘real-time’ experience at the desk, processing new information algorithmically in ‘real-time’, then acting on it automatically—just as the user would, but literally one thousand times faster.  As it turns out, I’d been trading and developing technology through the digital transformation of global financial markets: a ‘golden era’ of automation.

The experience as a market maker on a trading desk is a different kind of desktop experience, where information management is a mindless task that happens in parallel with real work. And screen management (traditionally referred to as ‘window management’) happens automatically.  In contrast, the general desktop experience is manually-intensive and rife with friction, requiring users manage information mentally, then continuously surface it to the desktop to be arranged by hand—the all-too-familiar, but silent productivity killer that continuously impedes real work.  Yet, at 50 years old, the desktop remains the personal computing experience many of us know best.  As the comforting constant in our ever-changing world of technology, the desktop remains more critical to our work and professional development, and a bigger part of our day-to-day, than ever before. Yet, at the same time, it’s badly in need of an update…and long overdue for one.

OpenWorkspace’s purpose is to provide this very update; to represent an essential upgrade, a natural extension of your existing system, by infusing it with proprietary technology that goes beyond what’s been possible to-date even with the latest releases of commercial systems. Today, we fulfill our initial mission by making OpenWorkspace® generally available to knowledge workers, creative pros, students or others who are equally as invested in their efficiency at the desk as professional traders, but lack access to certain capabilities of proprietary trading technology (like, automated window management), and even brand-new capabilities (like, the ability to expand your classic desktop GUI), so you can take the next step beyond multiple monitors, if desired.

OpenWorkspace® is named after the feature I felt was most missing from traditional ways of working, in the ability to open a layout of windows across the desktop with no more than a single click.  Through my work leading cross-functional projects outside of trading, I quickly realized that being able to open a multitude of windows at once was even more critical for knowledge workers—many whom are tasked with managing information far more fragmented and difficult to locate than financial market data. This capability encompasses ‘Workspaces’— one of two new technical concepts OpenWorkspace® adds to your existing operating system.  The other is a completely new ‘Focal Contextual’ graphical user interface (GUI) I conceived from my experience working on a curved TV and discovering the classic ‘desktop GUI’ of commercial systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux was not compatible with the relatively larger size of today’s desktop monitors, which dwarfs that of the monitor today’s desktop was designed for.

But what we’ve built with OpenWorkspace® and WorkDisplay® is about something much bigger than performing window magic on the desktop or solving the multiple monitor hack. It’s about the opportunity to go forward and backward at once. Forward, by modernizing the desktop to better support the next 10 years of work and play in today’s information age, renovating it to possibly buy it another 50 years of service.  And backward, by introducing state-of-the-art technology built on a path that points in the opposite direction as the foreign concepts being introduced today.  It’s a road that leading backwards, down a path of nostalgia, possibility, and rediscovery of the magic and excitement that surrounded personal computing as it rose to prominence in the 80s and 90s: when the desktop was regarded as the next big thing.

And with that, I invite you to explore the significance and potential of OpenWorkspace® through its two-part introduction.  But first, take a moment to join the waitlist to secure a free upgrade to the Focal Contextual desktop and gain access to a complementary 14-day full-featured trial of OpenWorkspace’s window & tab management system.

Here’s to getting started,

David Adler

Creator – OpenWorkspace® | WorkDisplay®