In the United States of America, that means the bank, post office, and schools are all closed. If you have children that are school-aged, they'll be home from school on vacation, today. And unless you work for the school, post office, or a bank, chances are, you won't be.
For the past year, my team at work has been developing a database that takes complex information from all over the globe, and puts it in to a format that is intended to be very easy to use and understand. Data visualization is our future - and the more that we can take complicated topics and put them in to a bite size, easily digestible piece, the more we have succeeded.
For example, when you click on an app to see the weather, you want to see a sunshine, or rain cloud, in the exact location where you are searching; not only for that moment - but for the next 12 or 24 hours, or seven-day outlook. You're not interested in all the algorithms and development that goes in to pulling that information from some super cloud of multiple sources on to your phone, but I can tell you that teams of people - over several years - have made it so that understanding what the weather is like will be SO EASY for you, that you can glean everything you need to know in less than five seconds, and whether you should pack an umbrella for your upcoming trip to Dallas.
So that's kind of what my team is doing, but we're evaluating remediation systems which are machines that are engineered to remove contamination from soil and groundwater. And, by the way, I'm a Geologist, not a software developer or computer programmer. My ability to navigate things that are computer related are slim, at best, which is why it's taken the better part of a year and team of experts to help with this initiative.
All this to say, four weeks ago, when I sent out an invitation for a telecom session to 120 people for our global roll-out of this database, today at 1:00 PM CST, I didn't realize that today was a US national holiday and our children would be home from school. And because Charlie and I are neither teachers, bankers, or postal workers - we'd be working. For that matter, because I've been so busy with this database initiative rollout, it didn't even hit me until yesterday that the kids would be home TODAY.
Since I'm part-time, I'm not even supposed to be working on Mondays - but that's a different matter. Let's just say that because I was working today, my plan was to get to my office early. My office is a 25-minute drive from the house without any traffic, and the distance from the parking garage to my desk is another 12 minutes, depending upon what kind of shoes I'm wearing. So if I don't leave my house at least 40 minutes before my first meeting, the chances of me arriving in time are nil.
Today: the plan was to go to the office. But I woke up to a child that had a bad dream, and a puppy that had a face that looked like a balloon. I don't know what happened to him - but he had some kind of allergic reaction that is now under control, but which completely flipped my morning schedule. My first conference call was at 8:00 and when I was feeding Ollie Benadryl at 7:15 while still in my pajamas, I knew my window of opportunity for getting to the office had closed unless I wanted to show up in my 'Life Is Good' flannels and slippers.
After the 8:00 call, I had a 9:00 call … and then a 10:30 call, that wound up lasting for almost two hours. The chance of getting in to the office for my big telecom was not looking so good. One of the women from my team, who I consider to be my rock in this initiative, is located in Canada and we spoke this morning and walked through the presentation, together.
The plan was that I'd launch the meeting, and welcome everyone to the call. I'd then give a quick spiel introducing her - and one of the global managers that would be on the call. Then I'd pull up the presentation on my computer, and give her control via our platform, Skype. I should mention that my phone is my computer, I no longer have an office phone. So as long as I have internet connection, my "phone" works great. During our dry-run this morning, it worked swell as it does 99.9% of the time.
After my call concluded at 12:30, I took a quick lunch break to see the children and Charlie. They were set up in our kitchen area, playing a game of Risk with neighborhood friends. It was a beautiful sight. I told them that my BIG call was coming up and they needed to stay away from my office area of the house, so there would be no background noise. Everyone agreed, totally understood, all was good.
At 12:45, I went back in to my home office, closed my sliding glass doors, and launched the meeting. My plan was that I'd log on a good 10 minutes ahead of time so I would have ample opportunity to open the presentation, and "greet" people who logged in to the rollout session. There was peace in my soul: we were very ready to deliver this material and I was extremely happy with the progress our team had made with this complex effort.
That feeling of peace vanished when at approximately 12:56 my internet connection started to flicker and a pop-up showed that my system had lost signal. Before it cut out, I thought it would be best to transfer the call to my cell phone, so I could at least keep talking with the people that logged in. I tried trouble shooting the issue, and nothing was working.
At 12:58, my computer crashed and the whole screen went black. I'd just transferred the call to my cell phone and felt my blood pressure surge when I contemplated not having the ability to launch the presentation or share my screen with my colleague. With my headphone still on, I yelled out to Charlie, "HELP ME CHARLIE! HELP, HELP, HELP, PLEASE COME RUNNING NOW!!!"
He's got a lot more technical savvy than me, so he was the obvious choice. Even if he didn't know what to do, just his mere presence would surely help set things straight.
My husband barreled down the hallway with a look of panic on his face, "WHAT'S WRONG? JEN! ARE YOU HURT?" I was pointing at our wireless router in the hallway and yelling, "I NEED A CORD! QUICK I NEED A CORD!" He didn't know what this meant. I elaborated, "ACK! THE $%^&ING WIRELESS CONNECTION IS DOWN I NEED A CORD TO CONNECT DIRECTLY TO THE MODEM!"
At approximately 12:59, Charlie pointed out that we'd just moved the modem to the living room, so I hastily unplugged and grabbed my laptop with one hand, my cellphone in the other hand, and with my headset dangling, flew open the door to the office - and ran down the hallway to our living room. The kids were sitting at the table in the middle of their board game of world domination and I'm gushing like an absolute maniac, "SORRY KIDS! I NEED A QUIET HOUSE WITH SILENCE …. EVERYONE GO OUTSIDE! OUT OUT OUT!" I sat on the floor in the living room and desperately tried to plug in the modem line to my computer, and it still wouldn't work. So in that moment, I yelled, "DAMN COMPUTER INTERNET YOU BITE SUCK MEAN!!"
Thankfully, I didn't say anything terribly bad because I looked down at my cell phone, and saw that the timer was ticking on, evidence I was still on the call, and it wasn't on mute. I could only hope that when my computer crashed, so too did the transferred connection to my cell phone. But I didn't even bother to ask, "Hello? Is anyone there?" I just hung up the phone and figured if anyone heard me, they'd tell me later.
I sent an email to my co-presenting colleague which indicated, "Computer Froze!" She immediately responded that she couldn't dial in either, and was having her own computer issues. I pulled myself together to dial in to the session from another phone line, and was at least able to talk to the large crowd that had gathered, to let them know we were having technical difficulties. Kind of like the time when I led a session with more than 100 participants and someone put the call on hold, and everyone got to listen to hold music a la The Carpenters, "Close to You" for a grueling ninety seconds before the offender came back on the line. Global conference calls can be so hard, especially when you take the "RISK" to lead them from your home office!
(Have you ever seen this: Conference Call in Real Life? <<< This is my life.)
In the end, by some divine technical miracle, everything worked out - our global manager said a few words - we launched the presentation - it was well received, and our initiative was successfully conveyed to the global organization. After the call, when I dialed my colleague to convey what had happened, as I've conveyed countless similar "life" stories … she told me that she thinks I'm the incarnate of Erma Bombeck and need to write a book. I don't see that happening.
But I do see it happening that tomorrow someone will tell me that they heard my maniacal rantings, and feel compelled to illuminate this is precisely why we should make every effort to come in to the office to lead technical presentations where we have a more reliable internet connection. Assuming, of course, I have any better luck making it to the office, tomorrow.
My first call isn't until 9:00 AM so that's promising.
