Connected, as never before

by Bharat Suneja

I spent last week thinking about couple of blog posts I wanted to finish, but it seems this year the holiday spirit took over a little sooner than it normally does (for me). It’s been a busy year with Exchange 2010, and now that it’s released and getting rave reviews, it’s time to take a break.

Seth Godin has put together What Matters Now – a collection of thoughts strung together in an ebook that’s available as a free download on his blog. I found parts of the book echoed my thoughts closely as 2009 makes an exit. Interesting passage from Howard Mann:

Connected

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits and still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs, or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it’s working for them. They’re more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they’re doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.

I’m continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and blogs , and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I’m also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.

More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue. We’ve become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.

I don’t have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts and facebook updates.

Howard Mann is a speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of Your Business Brickyard.

What Matters Now is completely worth reading, and the above passage makes one think about the changes 2009 brought and accelerated. The number of Facebook users is higher than the U.S. population. YouTube has served more than a billion videos. And an ever-increasing mass of mankind is forever tied to 3-inch screens. Blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking.

For the first time in a long while my holiday reading list doesn’t include anything about Exchange Server or security or technology in general.

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