I'm in England for 2 more days. It's partly thanks to the good folks at Flight Centre.
(Follow some of the links below to see some of the places I've visited on my trip "back home".)
I'm a big fan of social media and am presently studying it to better understand it's implications on business, the charity/non-profit world, and work. Many people use tools like Facebook and Flickr to also keep in touch with friends and family from around the world.
What do these two separate, but related, topics have in common?
Because of, in my case, Facebook, Twitter, email and YouTube, I've been able to "document" my life for everyone to see. And I'm not vain enough to hope that millions of people will follow me. Only those interested will - family and friends.
And as a result, I've also been able to keep track of the lives of my family and friends. So what do we do when we finally meet at a family wedding after years of being apart? We laugh, tell jokes, and enjoy each other's company without having to resort to the always polite, but sometimes boring, "How are you?", "What have you been up to?", "My your kids have grown!"
Conversations tend to be more in depth. We don't feel like we've wasted time visiting a museum , shopping or getting toys for kids. We enjoy the time while it lasts.
For example, my sister and I may see our brother once a year or maybe once every two years. However, because of the relative low cost of long-distance calls, email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and our yearly hockey playoff pool we feel like we are in constant touch. So when it's time to say goodbye, well, it's not really goodbye.
It's more of, "Talk to you later!"
