THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

A ping on IM from a fellow hurricane zone survivor, Frank in Florida alerted Jeff in Louisiana to take a look at the weather report.  Within 30 seconds of looking at the storm projections Jeff had already formulated his plans.  Pack up and move out and get out of town.  And when we say pack up and move out, that meant going to the businesses that he controlled for his wife and photographing the existing location and equipment for insurance purposes.  Grabbing a backup/deployment server, laptop and his 'travel' kit, they hit the road with the bare necessities and their cats and family members in a car behind.  Being the geek that he is stopping along the way with his laptop to log into the Internet via the GPRS modem on his cell phone to hit folks on IM and to give them status reports.

Once arrived in Texas, he set up his 'disaster' server and logged into the DNS to move the DNS records.  Making plans to buy more servers tomorrow to put the business back into full operation.

Agility.

Planning.

Knowing the bare minimums you need to move your business, lock, stock, and barrel out of harm's way.

But in all of this, planning to ensure the human part of disaster planning is taken care of as well.  You can always replace things, you can't replace people. 

People say technology is cold.  That the Internet is annoymous.  I so disagree.  For when I see a friend's tag line pop up on IM so that I can ping him and say “You in Texas now?  You safe?” and he can assure me that not only is he and his family is safe but he's already been 'doing his thang' and changing DNS, ensuring his wife's business maintains a constant business level, making sure his own business keeps going and that his lines of communication stay up, and using the power of the Internet to check on his local TV reports to see what they were reporting.

NOAA still reports it's a Category 4 storm and the satellite images are pretty amazing.

To all of those still in harm's way, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

[To donate to the Red Cross, the link is here]