Reinvention

Within the next several hours of my writing this a few hundred, or perhaps a few thousand, people will comment on this Manifesto written by Seth Godin .

Godin is a leading voice in what he characterizes as ’the new industrial revolution'.

Godin’s main assertion is that the way we communicate, relate and do business is undergoing total reinvention. As an example you are reading what I am writing right now. You can talk back to me and, simultaneously, to an audience of several hundred others.

Others can add their insight to the conversation and spur the creation of a new idea. We are all doing this over hitherto insurmountable distances of geography, time and culture. The benefit of all this is access to ideas and information that we could only imagine ten or fifteen years ago.

Godin writes: “We were isolated, now we’re connected. The typical individual didn’t have the time, the money or the connections to be heard just a few years ago.

Today, the door is wide open… … We grew up isolated. The future is connected. We grew up unable to have substantial interactions with anyone except a small circle of family and co-workers. Now, we earn the right to interact with just about anyone.” A decade or more ago I attended several different sessions of National Camp School over a few years to receive certifications to work at our Scout camp. This was the only time and place where the staff members of several different camps were together and shared information and ideas.

Those of us who attended camp school always returned with new ideas and methods from the formal curriculum and the informal association with other staff members.

Today, right now, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future we can exchange ideas, encouragement and brotherhood with Scouts all over the world in an ongoing conversation. Of 290 followers of the blog on Facebook 243 are from the United States and the remainder from eighteen other countries. Can you guess the next two top countries?

I was surprised to learn that they were Malaysia and Germany.

Malaysia?

Really?

I know so little about Malaysia in general and Malaysian Scouting in particular. What is happening in Malaysian Scouting ?

I would love to hear from you. The likelihood that I would meet a Malaysian or a German fifteen years ago was very small. That they would have any involvement in Scouting was even smaller. Now I am connected to Scouters from eighteen countries on a daily basis.

I think, in many ways, we are still kind of feeling our way around this new environment. We’re still just now meeting one another and learning to speak meaningfully to each other ( 9 different languages following me on Facebook).

I am excited to be a part of it and I look forward to the potential that will be release as we move on.