1 week - disconnected and loving it

So how hard is it for you to disconnect? For me -- not so hard if i'm busy. Two weeks ago we kicked off the summer camp we run for the young men at our church. No cellphone, no internet, no nothing access. I mean we have power, flush toilets and the best 3 square meals a day -- but we aren't on the grid.

So what does a guy like me do? Just disconnect. It is a pretty good feeling - no i don't go into withdrawls, but yes i miss the access. I bought an antenna kit and an amplifier, but it didn't make the connection -- so oh well - no high speed access (via my verizon broadband card) and no cell phone access. I'm kinda glad in a way -- otherwise you would have had a bunch of adults checking email and having to jump in on critical issues like "FWD: RE: need latest research on dual vendor implications for large scale enterprise networks" (yes, so that was a real request -- added the fwd, re for effect). Guess what? out of the office for 5 days solved the problem -- they FOUND IT THEMSELVES. Beautiful thing.

I also found it very interesting -- in a world with so many communication tools, we don't seem to communicate well at all. I was responsible for a new portion of our camp and in the first 48 hours - the issues we had to settle circled around things we could have resolved last APRIL, but nobody (even the ones that told me they had) read their email and properly responded..... ARRRRGH..... so what does this mean?

I think it means that the more we "communicate" (blog, wiki, IM, text, SMS, chat, iChat, TP, phone, vmail, email, etc....) the less we actually have time to DO. Things like - record our action items, follow-up, not blame technology (my email ate my homework, or i didn't get that email - must have hit the Junk Filter).

So -- did i enjoy being disconnected? yes very much. yet did i miss CNN.com, news.com, slashdot.org (yes, i'm a nerd) and a few of my fav blogs? of course. but i really enjoyed that the only way someone could communicate with me was to talk to me. issues were resolved faster, "action" items became just that - items that i took action on.

maybe we learn from this -- maybe when we want to get something done -- we stop all the "communication" and go to work.