Daylight Savings has had a significant impact upon my blogging activities.
A few weeks ago we put our clocks backward forward an hour to get an extra hour of daylight over our upcoming Summer. The same weekend much of the Northern Hemisphere put their clocks forward backward (signifying the end of their warmer months).
An hour here – an hour there – it doesn’t really make much difference does it?
Initially I didn’t think it did but today I realized that there are quite a few people who I used to regularly talk to on IM that I haven’t seen or heard from in weeks. That hour or two window of opportunity in the evenings or first thing in the morning has now shifted.
It also impacts my blogging rhythm in other ways including a new time of the day to check earnings stats (instead of Adsense starting a new day at 5pm now it’s at 7pm – other stats packages have shifted from a last thing at night check-in to a first thing in the morning one).
It’s not really a big deal – but enough to put me a little out of whack and become even more aware of my location in the world.
I was listening to an interview with Richard McManus a few days back and he talked about a trip he did to Silicon Valley earlier in the year. One of the things that he said that he found surprising was the amount of real life contact some of the Web 2.0 people there had with one another. A lot of it seemed social – but the opportunities that must come from such interactions, from actually knowing those you work with, must be significant.
As much as people talk about how the web is making the world a smaller place and that it breaks down the barriers to opportunity in business (and it does in so many ways), I’m still keenly aware of how distance impacts those who are not physically at the centre of the action. While I can think of places that are a lot more isolated than Melbourne – I suspect there are quite a few bloggers around the world who from time to time feel the isolation from the rest of their species.
It’s a pity we can’t all meet up on some tropical island once a year for a year’s worth of networking, BBQ’s, parties and talking about the Pro Blogger life.
