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Just got back from vacation.  It was incredible.

I suspended any reflection about “lessons learned” during our holiday until after I’d spent the better part of yesterday scrubbing the ol’ in-box of its 46,000 unread messages.  (That’s no joke: I get a lot of email!)

So, what did I learn during my time outside the echo chamber?

That the echo chamber doesn’t count for much to those who do not reside within it. 

Ask the lady who sells pigeon food in the plaza outside of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.  Ask the traditionalist Swiss farmers we met on a twisty road in the Alps.  Ask the paddleboat captain who ferried us across Lake Lucerne.  Ask the harried-looking Minneapolis-based CPA who rode alongside us on a bike tour through Munich or the jovial Australian businessman who joined our hike to the Disney-esque Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.

Ask ‘em and they’ll tell you:  they’ve never heard of Robert Scoble, or Mike Arrington, or Twitter or Facebook (or, hell, even “blogging”).  Haven’t heard much about all that New Age-y Internet stuff.  Don’t care a lick. 

For most of these folks, Life’s too interesting, or too hard, as it is.  Most of them lack the luxury of “time,” much less a broadband Internet connection.  They’re just scrapping to make it through each day.  

But, what does it mean, to say, “the echo chamber doesn’t count for much to those who do not reside within it?”  It can’t just mean, “Let’s stop taking ourselves so seriously all the time.”  That’d be a trite lesson, eh?  “I went on vacation and gained some much-needed perspective.”  That may be true, but, “zzzzzz.”

The broader lesson, I think, is this: as bleeding-edgers continue to blaze trails, via their creation/adoption of new communications tools, it’s important to remember that we shouldn’t just embrace “tech for tech’s sake” but rather should skew towards those technologies that are going to be readily absorbed by mainstream folks (and even Swiss cowbell coppersmiths).  These people may not be tech-savvy but they are tech-savvy enough to grok the easy stuff.  And, they are fascinating!  We will be the losers if we don’t find a way to engage with them, and promote ways for them to engage with one another.

Thus, I think a technology like Twitter is simple enough, and valuable enough, that a far-flung family might use it to keep in better touch with one another.  While in Switzerland, we met up with my wife’s uncle (a retired copier repairman and genuine saint) and her aunt (a brilliant psychologist) for the first time in years.  Both have Internet connections: why not get the whole family linked up via Twitter, to maintain the ties that were recently re-forged?  E-mail chains take too much time and thought; they ultimately peter-out.  A “family” Twitter network might just be easy enough to survive and thrive.

(By contrast, the thought of explaining and setting-up a Facebook profile for these middle-aged German-language speakers would have literally killed me.)

Anyway, had a great time.  More pics to come, in future days.  The Nikon D40 worked great – so glad I brought it.  We took almost 700 pictures and there’s hardly a clinker in the bunch.