Relating to earlier blog posts (“Are all IT projects worthless?”) there has been a number of new apps and webb-based services that has made life easier during the pandemic, at least in Sweden. Shopping online for groceries, with home delivery or packing and picking up the groceries at planned times has boomed. Zoom, Teams and other online meetings has been a global phenomenon. Online training is not a new thing, but it has definitely been a lucrative business the last years.
Yesterday I went to my local gym for the first time since early 2020. I live in a small town in Sweden, and the few spinning classes they had each week tended to be filled to the last spot pre-Covid. So when I got my new membership and saw in the booking app that there are virtual instructors now in several classes, and that there are several spinning classes each evening, I was thrilled!
Finally at the gym, I was alone in class. Not one other participant in spinning class. Just me and my virtual instructor đ

The instructor was english speaking (yelling “hee-vee, hee-vee” a lot, which I realized after a while ment “heavy, heavy”). And there was no real music. Just some loop to keep a beat. That part was kind of disappointing.
I think that this IT project is a good first step in the right direction. It has some child diseases, the next steps should be to get Swedish speaking instructors and above all have real music! And perhaps more than two different spinning classes, or people will get bored. If anybody goes to gym that is.
Am I still thrilled? No. Will I go again? Yes!
As a customer it is great to be able to chose between different classes and times, and as a business owner it is good to not have the room empty 80% of the time.
Many jobs are said to disappear in the close future due to digitalization. But my guess is that the gym instructors in Sweden can sleep at night for a while longer. They might be complemented by IT, not replaced.