It took a two year, and still continuing pandemic but it has finally become mainstream to teleconference. It took over a 100 years to become so easy inexpensive and routine to become commonplace.
Apart from saving time and money to communicate which are fantastic benefits, there is an even great outcome. Historically, the majority of meaningful human relationships have evolved and been maintained between people who lived and worked near each other. This is no longer the only way to generate a critical mass of people excited by an idea.
We can now much more easily choose to spend time with those whose ideas seem to feel relevant to us. New relationships now also form between people who have never “met” each other in-person. People can now work together for years never experiencing each others physical presence.
This is potentially extremely important to the creative outliers who often have a hard time finding likeminded companions to co-create products, projects, processes, prototypes and programs. We can now solve problems or simply hang out with people all over the world. Work groups and classes almost effortlessly span time zones.
I myself recently completed a New York City based composition class, where the majority of the participants did not live in NYC nor in the same time zone. Raj was in Poland and Germany, Maretha was in the San Francisco Berkley area, Kimberly was in Hawaii and Seattle, James was in Colorado and Russia, Robert was in New Jersey and Vermont, Ray our Juilliard professor was in NYC, and I was on the New York side of the Berkshires. We were spread across twelve time zones. Lifelong friendships now can and do form across the globe. Our extremes would require 19 hours $1000 flights.
Humanity has transcended geographic proximity!
What does this mean for SVII? It means it is time to expand from our regional roots in Silicon Valley on Sand Hill Road to become international and virtual. Stay tuned.