Our family dinner this week was set on a table as long as the continent.

Ten of us gathered in Toronto, and on the west coast our daughter and a friend joined us via Skype.

We balanced a computer with a camera on a pile of phone books, on a chair at the end of our table, so she could see and hear us, as if she were sitting here. At her place, she put her computer across the table from where they were sitting.

We ate and talked together for several hours. Sometimes, at their end of the 3000-mile table, they chatted with each other, ignoring us. We did the same. Exactly the way it is at family dinners when everyone is physically present.

If we'd attempted such a connection a dozen years ago, it would have cost $50,000 and required an army of technicians. This week we did it for free, with no techies, using the Internet.

It was the most lovely, and natural, high-tech experience I've ever had. This sparkling event allowed the seniors at our table to see how beautiful their granddaughter is today.

I mention 1998, a dozen years ago, because that's when the first successful 360-degree feedback system appeared on the Internet. It was Panoramic Feedback, which instantly became and remains today, a world leader in multi-source feedback.

Admittedly I'm boasting here, but I'm also thinking about you and your work.

The technology you would have used, back when we released Panoramic Feedback, was the best and most convenient form of 360-degree feedback anywhere in the world. But, from today's perspective, you would have found it pretty clunky.

If you're now a 360 user, you're experiencing a highly streamlined version of our system. And I'm working with our developers to adopt new technologies that will make it more intuitive, responsive, engaging, and natural for you.

Curious, isn't it? Improvements in Internet technology, providing solid benefits to users of 360-degree feedback, also contribute to our family's 3000-mile meal.

About the phone books? Well, we don't use them to look up numbers these days, because it's faster to use the Internet. But they're a perfect new technology for holding up the computer.