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When I was studying at a local University to become an elementary school teacher, there was some sort of mandate at the school to prepare us all for the global village; this concept that, someday, the world would be interconnected in such a way that all of us would compete with folks throughout the world for our jobs and other resources. At the time, this was not my experience of the world and I had difficulty believing it could ever happen.

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One thing that doesn’t figure in to the global economy equation is patronage. It’s nice to contribute to the local economy when possible.
I tracked down my internet hosting in my home state at least, they’ve been very good to me.

Global communications are just great, on any day here in the forums the worldwide community is fairly well represented.

Interesting thought, maybe we ought to have an EE forums skype fest, or maybe not 😊

It is amazing Kurt. I did one a couple of weeks ago…we all had Macs so used iChatAV…People in Paris, the south of France (close to the Spanish border), Atlanta and me in the midwest.

@tz3ee - Supporting your local economy is good. Lucky for me Rick moved the EllisLab to my home state a few years back when it was just starting, so even EE is local for me.

@PXlated - Considering both you and I arrived on the scene back in a time when television screens we’re round and/or black and white (grayscale), international video chat is pretty darn cool. Now if I can just live long enough to experience the holodeck in my 1st Life.

It’s not always brilliant though. I was once in an audio chat session with around 35 other people from all over the place such as America, Canada, UK, Afghanistan when I was designing a magazine all about Military Helicopters. The delay was a little annoying to say the least!

Saying that though it can be very very good when it works and you don’t have loads of people on the line. I remember at my job previous to the one I am in now that we got one of the first ever video-conferencing suites when they first came out. Everyone was really really hyped up on it but back then we had to have a dedicated line running it and then we only knew two other places that had the system so could only ever talk to them!! Not very global really 😉

Nowadays with SKYPE and the many other IP chat applications work has definitely become a lot easier.

Best wishes,

Mark

Now if I can just live long enough to experience the holodeck in my 1st Life.

I’m just hoping for iChat on the iPhone 😉

Well we already have SKYPE on the iPod Touch and I’m sure when all the developers tools are fully out for the iPhone then there will be a whole slew of other applications ported across for it.

Mark

we already have SKYPE on the iPod Touch

Unfortunately the Touch doesn’t have a microphone. So much for voice chat 😉

we already have SKYPE on the iPod Touch

Unfortunately the Touch doesn’t have a microphone. So much for voice chat 😉

but if you follow the link in the post above 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

Their description… “pics of this hacking masterpiece” ...I’ll wait for iChat 😊

Their description… “pics of this hacking masterpiece” ...I’ll wait for iChat 😊

Well if you want to get ahead sometimes you just have to take a sledgehammer to your prized possessions 😉 Well perhaps not! 😊

As usual, Kurt makes an interesting and thought-provoking point.  In fact, I’ve been wrestling with something similar in the back of my own mind…

US politicians seem to like to make a big deal of all the mundane tech-industry tasks getting shipped over-seas.  Though I know that the first and most obvious side-effect is a loss of jobs here at home, the less obvious (and perhaps more important) side-effect is that these people (who took our jobs) now have money to spend on things that WE CAN SELL TO THEM!  This trading back and forth can ultimately result in great mutual benefit.

The question I’ve been pondering is…  What can I sell to these people and how?  If anyone knows of any good resources ( books, articles, blogs, etc. ) on doing business with countries like India, who are developing technologically, I would love to hear about it.

Once again Kurt, thanks for the inspiring article!

> What can I sell to these people and how?

I think maybe it could be summed up as “affordable turnkey solutions”. 
Years ago I read where HP was offering rental digital camera/printer
packages for taking photos of weddings in rural areas of India. 
A photography business could be started without requiring a lot of
capital up front. Multiply small profits from such a business by
millions of customers, and you build name recognition, trust,
goodwill, and quite a lot of long-term growth…

I also read of an American inventor who developed a molded plastic eyeglasses
solution which allowed a business person with no special skills or training
to measure eyeglass prescription and mould instant plastic eyeglasses in a
single operation. Multiply small-ticket sales of such an essential by millions
—by making eyeglasses affordable to millions of people who otherwise
couldn’t afford them, and…

Apparently a British English textbook has been adopted for use in primary
schools in China—something like a million copies, I believe.  It is a
tongue-in-cheek portrait of cultural differences (British are wierdos
who eat with knife and fork rather than chopsticks, ha ha) the humor
of which appeals to primary school kids.  An item like this can create
cross-cultural goodwill plus a lot of profit (a few dollars in profit
per copy, multiplied by a million).  Books have a lot more good effects
on the next generation than bombs.

It also seems that companies that try to lock customers in to proprietary solutions
are losing out to companies who understand that wide adoption and continuing enhance-
ment are more important… 
Compare Fujitsu’s MO drive and Sony’s MD with HP’s GP-IB : both Fujitsu and Sony
tried to keep these products proprietary rather than have them widely adopted
as defacto standards.  The effect was like burying their money in the garden:
the business didn’t grow, and their inventions have essentially been obsoleted.

By way of contrast, HP put its GP-IB interface in the public domain, made a standard
of it, and—as a result—they sold a lot of measuring instruments (with GP-IB
interfaces, and superior ease of use) that they had already developed.
Like giving away the razor and selling the blades (or like the “our software
is essentially free, but you pay for support and updates” model of RedHat, etc.)

The lesson that “High Impact” and “Openness” are the most valuable factors
in “virally” developing new “markets”—creating an impact far greater than
any organization could create on its own—seems to also be the theme of the book
“Forces for Good” (about high-impact nonprofits).