Last week I was in Ft. Lauderdale at the Business Information and Media Summit, a publishing industry conference. It’s a good conference, and if you haven’t heard of it you should consider attending next year. (Here’s a slideshare of the presentation I did with Education Week’s Matthew Cibellis.)

Whenever I go to an industry conference I struggle with the technology question. Do I take my laptop, which is unquestionably the best for productivity, but is bulky and a pain to carry around. Do I take my iPad, which is basically a laptop, only not as good. Or do I try the 100% smart phone route?

I opted for the smart phone.

My Droid Turbo is a good device for staying connected, but it’s not a good productivity device. If you want to do real work — on a real document, for example — nothing beats a keyboard and a mouse.

Taking notes on a smart phone isn’t so bad. I can type with my thumbs about as well as I can use the on-screen keyboard on my iPad. Maybe better. So I simply created an Evernote document for BIMS and thumbed my notes in there.

It’s somewhat astonishing the range of things you can do on your smart phone while you’re away from the office. Unlike Hillary Clinton, I do know that you can get more than one email on a single device, so I can keep up with all my email accounts. I was also working with my daughter on getting her a new (used) car, so I was in constant contact with the sales guy. (He goes to the car auctions to purchase the car on our behalf.)

Of course I was responding to office emails, and keeping tabs on the regular tasks I would be doing if I had been in the office.

All the while, of course, I was rubbing elbows with fellow publishing industry professionals, chatting with the event sponsors, learning about the latest technologies and services, listening to interesting presentations and drinking too much Earl Grey.

At times I was tempted to wonder why I need to be in the office at all. I was getting work stuff done, and at the same time my brain was getting stuffed with ideas — both from the presentations, and from my sideways manner of thinking. IOW, when the speaker is talking about A, I’m usually considering how that relates to B, C and D, because I’ve usually heard A before.

Attending a conference is a very creative time for me. Getting out of the office, away from my jar of M&Ms, from the phone and my stand-up desk, I think about things in a new way. Then I come back with my head full of new plans and concepts that will be mercilessly squashed by the inertia of the office, but … some small bit will change. I’ll get one or two actionable things that will move the needle, and that will more than justify the cost of the trip.

People need this sort of “get out of your head” experience on a regular basis, but in case you think I’m going to advocate working from home, I’m not. Working at home doesn’t get you out of your head the same way. It’s just exchanging one normal environment for another. You need to be elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, working from home can be very helpful. It can be a good opportunity to drill down into a project and get it done without distraction.

But people who study such things say that the office coffee pot is important as well. There are things that only get done because you happened to be gettting your tea at the same time as the head of editorial, and you chatted about the status of whatsit. There’s a very important cross-polination that takes place in the office — in the halls, even in the bathroom. A company where everybody worked from home would miss that.

If you google “benefits of working remotely,” there are lots of articles about the benefits of working from home, but I think that misses the point.

Yes, there are benefits to working from home every once in a while, but there’s more benefit, in my opinion, in working from an entirely different place.

When I take the train to New York for a one-day event, I get tons of work done on the trip. That’s often a time when I load myself up with white papers and various research on some topic and study it — to learn a new technology or tactic. I’m much better at it on the train than I would ever be in the office.

I think managers should encourage their employees to take one day a month to work someplace else. Not at home. They should go to the coffee shop, or on a train, or even in the pub. The point is to get outside of your ordinary routine and think creatively.

As a general rule, people should be in the office. It’s important to have face time with colleagues, and there has to be some structure and order to the way business is done. But from time to time, get out. Go somewhere else.

You’ll still have your smart phone with you. You can still answer emails, take calls and be connected. Just get your brain out of its rut.