Last night while watching the news I saw a report of an earthquake in New Zealand. I immediately thought of all of the people that I have shared e-mails with and the few that I have met from New Zealand. It got me to thinking about how much smaller the world has become, or how much larger my view of it has become over the last few years. This year alone I have been to Canada, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, and Italy. I have also traveled around the United States and met many people from different countries. I am constantly amazed at how well we can get along when we are talking technology, cars, or other shared interests and how that doesn't seem to scale as well when "governments" and "countries" get involved.

I am sure that most people just want to get along with their neighbors, no matter how far away those neighbors might live. The Regional Director program has helped me to meet people from many different countries. We don't always agree on every topic and the sometimes lively debate is one of the real benefits of the program. One thing we all seem to do is care about how technology will affect us and our parents, grandparents, and children.

If I can come up with some good predictions of where technology will take us in 2008 I will put them down in another post. Until then I hope that technology is making your life easier, your world smaller, and helping you to keep in touch with your friends and neighbors.

Read the complete post at http://www.grokdev.com/Blogs/scott/2007/12/21/ItsASmallSmallWorld.aspx