The online business world - about time and culture
Posted by MattE on 21 Aug 2008 at 01:11 pm | Tagged as: Communications, Web
I was reading a blog about how the world was no longer round, it was flat.
This was written from a marketing and branding approach and used McDonalds as the example. No matter where you go there is a McDonalds - a type of constant on a world of changing cultures and beliefs.
Which started me thinking about how the internet fits into all of this.
When I first heard of the internet, when really he only think available were those old-fashioned BBS services, I was fired up at the thought of being able to access NASAs site and look at their pictures of Mars.
Then I started online businesses way back when having a web site was a real novelty ad marketing your website dealt with issues that by today’s standards seem totally bizarre. Things like the main challenge was finding people who were actually connected to the internet and then at speeds higher than 14.4 kbs (56 kbs was BIG TIME!).
The novelty of having customers not only on the other side of the country, but even on the other side of the world was amazing. It even made phone lines seem slow (when there was still a delay on the line back then).
Then the world shrank. Soon the USA was only behind my computer monitor.
The world had moved from a huge place to even smaller than a global village. It was now inside my computer.
As my online business interests evolved to include the caricature business and I was having more one-on-one contact with my customers distance still has not intruded. Sure there are some great places where customers order from, like the Green Zone in Baghdad about a year after the occupancy started, or a large town in the desert in the middle of the UAE, or more typically a house on an ordinary street in the USA, UK, or a flat in Singapore or Paris.
Today the internet and global business means we are more like split shift workers. Our day is influenced by time zones more than distance.
Later today I will be dealing with a customer in London who is checking their email over breakfast while I am thinking about dinner and tomorrow I will be dealing with clients in the USA who are thinking about bed while I am thinking about lunch.
The online business world is about time, but is also about culture.
Again in the caricature business my artistic team are scattered around the globe and come from very different cultures and language capabilities.
This keeps life interesting and provides a focus for international events.
When the Russians invade Georgia, my concerns go to the artist who came within 40km of being able to sketch the Russian troops or when a plane crashes in Spain I think, gee… I have an artist there.
The internet is many things to many people. What is it to you?
