Take Your Network with You!

For better or worse — we live in a networked world. Even in the remote Hida Alps on a recent trip to Japan (to partic­i­pate in the 50^th anniver­sary of the estab­lish­ment of Sukyo Mahikari) — telephone and Internet connec­tions were in demand for my fellow travel­ers who had made the trip to make a spiri­tual connec­tion (with the spiri­tual lineage of Light). From this remote location, they felt the need to stay connected with people on the other side of the globe.

Those who travel often know well the impor­tance of staying connected with family, friends, and colleagues. Despite the sometimes annoy­ing omnipresent demand on us to respond immedi­ately to calls, email, and SMS — there is indeed a sense of comfort through being inter­con­nected with the knowl­edge that remote contact is only a few keystrokes away. This need is height­ened when we are travel­ing and especially when such travel involves long distances and may take us to remote locations.

Despite the seemingly perva­sive­ness of network­ing, there is still a signif­i­cant portion of the planet where the ability to easily connect a phone or computer is a pleas­ant surprise. In many other places, it is not possi­ble without bring­ing your network with you. More and more we are finding ourselves in these locations for work or for pleasure. For most working people today, NOT being connected is a huge detri­ment to their produc­tiv­ity and when they travel to locations where connec­tiv­ity is not avail­able, they must bring their network with them. Thanks to advances in mobile broad­band technolo­gies, this is now an easy matter to address.

Portable commu­ni­ca­tions systems are readily avail­able at reason­able cost from any number of service providers for connect­ing from anywhere on the planet at anytime.  OODAkits are one example of self-contained mobile broad­band commu­ni­ca­tion kits that support five to ten concur­rent users making phones calls, access­ing the Web, and trans­mit­ting live video. Iridium satphones are examples of single-user telephones that work nearly every­where on the planet as long as you are willing to use the phone when you have a clear line-of-site to the sky.

If you depend on connec­tiv­ity for your work, consider taking your network with you for those criti­cal missions where you must, without fail, make connec­tions, talk with others, and get online.