Like hurricanes and car accidents I have been in, September
24, 2010 is a day I’m not likely to ever forget. Not so much because I
was in the middle of writing a press release that needed to get out
and got lost when the server at crashed or because the 10 days of email
that were recovered look spotty like it isn’t all there. But because of
the reflections and lessons since.
I wasn’t affected as much as some of my
colleagues because I keep a lot of my work on a cyber cloud or thumb
drive so I always have access to it. Though this isn’t a tutorial on
external backup I’m going to tell you that if you don’t do it you need
to start or you’ll end up exploring ugly disaster recovery if you
have a systems crash.
Whether you run a one person
consultancy with a laptop or a larger networked enterprise with
multiple computers churning out mega data, it is a huge
disruption and inconvenience to conducting business as usual if
what you need is not available. If it’s not retrievable — and quickly,
might I add — you can suffer potentially irreparable loss. If you
back up to an external hard drive located next to your computer or
server that is located in the same building and that building burns
down or some competitor sends a ninja to steal it, you’ll wish you had
used an off site back up service and that your data was encrypted in a
vault on a cloud with multiple data centers around the globe for
ensured retrievability, security and peace of mind. With all the
technology available at very reasonable prices to back up and
secure personal and business data, if you don’t don’t do it and do it
the right way — don’t expect sympathy if all your digital media and
hard work go up in smoke.
The event reconfirmed to me why it’s a
good thing I monitor my reputation online to ensure it would never
be a liability or embarrassment to me, my employer or my mother (hi
mom =)). The first couple days after the crash I got filing and
cleaning done, went out for lunch and made calls about things I would
normally send email for. After the second day when I stopped
believing it “would be up in an hour” I started bringing my personal
laptop and picked up free wifi from downtown Public Square.
People found me.…
Facebook and LinkedIn message traffic
picked up and my personal email account started to receive work
related email. I received more text and instant messages. No one
complained, most never even mentioned that the email they sent to my
work account was being kicked back. The rerouting of communication
and data migration happened naturally without me posting even one
message anywhere about my email being down. It reminds me of a
documentary I watched in grade school science class about ant
colonies. The worker ants carried things many times their weight along a
path and if the path was obstructed they would just find another path.
But they would get there.
People who had my vcard info or to whom
I had given a business card did not have my personal email, social
media profile info or personal website URL. Yet, they found me. If
you are thinking I’ve lost it and that’s what Google is for… that’s
exactly what a professor at Kings College said when I met with her
after receiving a notice about a Global Landscapes Conference planning meeting to my personal email.
Well Karla, you know, in these days of Google… Dr. Bindu Vyas
**As a side note, if you are
interested in attending or speaking at the conference check it out —
I would love to see you here in Wilkes-Barre, PA!
She had googled me for alternatives…
To my credit, I was easy to find because I understand and practice
good SEO. To my credit what she found when she searched me didn’t make
her think twice about sending the planning meeting invitation to
me. To my credit, my personal email address isn’t something like
[email protected] — my email is innocuous and wouldn’t be
offensive to anyone, it’s my name. To my credit, I understand I could
jeopardize my credibility through carelessness or not
understanding the importance of positive professional branding.
There are many lessons here to consider if this has never happened to you.
The multiple ways I have enabled
people to communicate with me could be seen by some as a curse, an
encroachment on my personal life.. and I know people who do feel that
way. In my opinion they helped me survive the crash of 2010 in a
fairly seamless way with minimal impact.
Have you had to deal with a crash or extended downtime? How did you deal with it?
P.S. Because of this experience,
my mind is wheeling about the way we employ communication tools.
Another day I’ll post about my thoughts on individual unique
identifiers for seamless communication and in the meantime if
you are an Internet architect looking for the next big step in
evolution and would like to talk about it let me know.