I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
I had a fascinating dinner last night with the British High Commissioner Richard Fell, who returns back to the UK shortly after over 4 years in New Zealand.
There was an exceptional group of people at the dinner with a long history as diplomats and in the Foreign Service for both New Zealand and the UK. Some of the people had over 40 years experience in international trade and I got a sense of what was required for commerce with physical goods without the modern communications network. It gave me a benchmark to realize how fast global business is changing.
In the taxi home I was thinking about how low the barriers to trade are now with technology. That morning I’d spent 15 minutes IM’ing a person I know in the UK, made a probably 5 international phone calls and helped out on sales presentations all over the globe.
We demonstrate globally from our office in Wellington, install our products remotely and receive funds electronically. We have US phone numbers in our office. The barriers to global commerce are minimal. We don’t really even think about, we just do it.
Further, Trade is happening at the desktop. Not through a chain of contacts, passing messages to each other. We talk directly to end customers in many cases, and build relationships with them even though they are geographically and timezone dispersed. Our distance disadvantage is becoming much less of an issue.
Spending time with people who were at the pioneering edge of international trade before the internet renewed my appreciation of the opportunity we have in our generation.
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