I have an answer to the question that has been floated by the naysayers in our industry. Over 40 DRI certified business continuity planners left the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning in May; the day before the DRI2012 conference. We rode in our bus towards New Orleans's Ninth Ward with our new DRI Foundation t- shirts, a water bottle, and a bit of apprehension about a day of work ahead. Most of us who spend our work days with e-mail, teleconferences and meetings, were now going to do some real work; the real work of recovery under the hot sun at a Habitat for Humanity work site.

It's been seven years since Hurricane Katrina did her damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The city has bounced back. The economy is vibrant, and southern hospitality in The Big Easy is welcoming to tourists and visitors. That week you could take the Canal Street trolley car to another "Bayou Boogaloo" in City Park, off of Jefferson Davis Boulevard. Cajun music filled the air from three stages; easy and nice for resting under the shade trees by day and a foot-stomping hoedown on portable dance floors for the evening. Marching Dixieland jazz bands mixed with local craftsmen. An appetite worked up from kayaking in the park bayou could be satiated from caldrons full of lips smacking spicy jambalaya.

As we pulled up to the job site, the lingering effects of Katrina became visual. The Ninth Ward is clean, clear of debris with shade trees healthy and growing. Yet, while the city and nature has recovered, many homeowners have not. Approximately 50 percent of the homes near the work site neighborhood were still boarded up and abandoned; exhibiting the infamous "X" markings of search and rescue teams from seven years ago. Electrical lines to these homes are cut, and some abandoned homes are nearly engulfed by crawling vines and vegetation.   Nine days previous to our arrival, our job site was bare ground. Now, the foundation was poured and the framing, windows, subflooring, and exterior insulation was in. This 1500-square-foot home was already taking shape. Our jobs for the day were to start the roofing, put up exterior siding, and framing interior walls.

It is amazing how forty strangers found work and meaningful tasks that day. There is something about business continuity and disaster recovery professionals that enable them to identify the gaps in a plan, and immediately fill them.   Everyone found a group with which to work. I gravitated towards the ladder to measure and then nail in the siding, using wood block templates as a guide. Total strangers became trusted workmates, as they cut the siding boards and handed them up to me. It's a good thing Habitat requires hard hats on a job site, since I only dropped my hammer about a dozen times. My workmates happily handed the hammer back to me; although I think I noticed the tally they were keeping with hash marks on a scrap of siding!

I had the privilege of working alongside the homeowner, as we nailed in the siding. He's a quiet, hard-working man; delaying his retirement so that his two sons can graduate from college and have a better life.   Here he was with me, putting in his 325 sweat equity hours of labor to build his house, with neighborly help from the certified business continuity and disaster recovery professionals of DRI. He would have to take a mortgage to pay the cost of land and materials, but after seven long years a home was becoming a reality.

The team had plenty of hydration breaks, and shared our stories over a lunch featuring po' boy sandwiches in the shade of the neighboring house; still abandoned and still marked with "X". We were all business continuity planners from financial services, health care and technology providers. We were from across the US, Canada, China, and Colombia. We started the day as professional colleagues, but ended it as friends and trusted workmates. We took a group photo at the end of the day that the homeowner says will hang in his new home. It's an enduring legacy of recovery. I am sure the homeowner never heard of DRI before that day, but that he would never forget us when we left.

So, what has DRI done for you lately? Don't just ask the Ninth Ward homeowner, but ask the people at New Orleans' Second Harvest. While we were laboring under the hot sun, 20 others thought they had the plum job of sorting food at this food bank. Guess what, no air conditioning! Well, I heard giggles and stories of "Lucy and Ethel" like antics as they tried to keep pace with the food coming down the sorting conveyor. The sorting brigade completed their work so that everything was done, and food found its way to the needy.

So what has DRI done for you lately? It's more than just sweat and work. The DRI Foundation paid the $25 per person registration fee with Habitat for Humanity so that we could have the privilege of work. Seven years after the catastrophe, donations have trickled down, and there are not enough funds to pay for insurance, procure tools and materials, and keep the pace of rebuilding active. Both houses adjacent to our Ninth Ward homeowner are still abandoned. Recovery is needed until New Orleans reaches that state of normalcy.

So, what has DRI done for me lately? Well, business continuity and disaster recovery planning is now real. Risk analysis, BIAs, DRPs, and testing are all necessary for a recoverable organization; yet our profession remains abstract. Our profession is absolutely necessary towards building a resilient society. Yet, watch the haze appear in the eyes of family and friends when you explain exactly what you do for a living. Now I can do my work in the context of real recovery. DRI provides me education and certification in my profession, but now balances the advantage of my work with sunburn and blisters to keep me grounded. I treasure my certification and my blisters together. They make me a total person, and contribute to the moral justification for business continuity.   Through DRI and the DRI Foundation, we do our work in business continuity planning, and help those impacted by disaster, because it is the right thing to do.

Daniel Mikulsky is a Business Continuity Professional with over 20 years in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning. He is certified by the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) as a Master Business Continuity Planner (MBCP). He is a writer and featured speaker for the profession, and a consummate mentor and instructor for Business Continuity Planners that seek certification and professional growth in their craft.

Check out this video from "Top Gear." A car that has a tough time handling turns is a great metaphor for
business continuity professionals to use when  explaining how you help your organizations navigate the sharp turns and avoid bumps in the road! And it's really funny (and no one gets injured; that's not funny!). Use it as you see fit to spread the word about continuity and resiliency...with a smile!

World Risk Day is the first-ever awareness day focused on the business benefits of taking smarter risks. It will provide a global forum for business leaders to share best practices on how taking smarter risks drives corporate strategy, improves business confidence, and grows profits. It will be held on June 26, 2012 and is planned to be an annual event.

World Risk Day is open to everyone who wants to learn how taking smarter risks can drive their business. If you are involved in identifying and acting on risks and opportunities within your organization, join the debate and share your ideas. Business executives, CFOs, risk professionals, and project professionals, across all industries will benefit.

World Risk Day is based on the premise that the smarter management of risk can create big benefits for an organization. Many enterprises today are trying hard to increase their corporate risk maturity to gain visibility of risks and opportunities across their business. Risk directly impacts profitability and drives competitive advantage, but many conventional approaches to risk focus solely on compliance, leaving these benefits on the table.

World Risk Day is all about elevating the conversation around enterprise risk management and discussing how risk management is a strategic imperative that can create opportunity for an organization. For more information, click here.

Thanks to those of you who joined us for DRI2012 in New Orleans last week. To download your photos from the Awards of Excellence Gala,  click here. And rest assured that we haven't forgotten about the speaker presentations. We're uploading them today, and you'll receive a link via email on Monday to download them.

Almost two weeks have passed since our Volunteer Day in New Orleans. I just wanted to publicly acknowledge one more individual who recognizes that there is no "I" in team. As assignments were being doled out and the day was drawing closer, I recognized that my Volunteer Day would be pretty busy, with assuring that each work site was ready for us, waiver forms were in place, the bus was on the way, the volunteers were assembled, the water, snacks, and lunch was poised for delivery. and directions were appropriately provided. But there was one task yet to be properly assigned. Who was going to get the food at Parkway Bakery? Who was going to deliver the Po Boy sandwiches to the hungry workers?   

Hmmmm? Do I ask DRI International President Al Berman to do this? He really wanted to be a worker and signed up to work at both sites.   Hmmmm?   So, what the heck ... I asked him. "Can you pick up the food and deliver it?" I asked.  Not one pickup, but two. First pickup, for the team assembling at the hotel getting ready to go the Second Harvest at 11 a.m.; and then again at noon for the food to be delivered to the Habitat work site. Al's response; "Sure, just tell me where you want me to go and what you want me to do."   Al, with capable and willing assistant Jerome Ryan, came through - lunches were picked up and delivered, extra sunscreen purchased, a supply of much needed Gatorade was provided, and a last minute dash to CVS made for paper plates and cutlery (as the restaurant failed to provide them with the first pickup).

As the first lunch group gathered in the street of the Roosevelt Hotel, Al, Jerome, my wife Lorraine, and I helped set up our "buffet" line (in the trunks of our rental cars) and get everyone their lunch. We even provided sandwiches to our bus driver, Charles, the valet parking guys, and a homeless man who happened by as we got set to serve. He now proudly carries a DRI Foundation bag for his necessary belongings. So, there we were an eager work team eating our delicious (but messy) Po Boy sandwiches on the steps of the Waldorf Astoria's Roosevelt Hotel. Ha! It was great.   So back to our delivery guys ... the top two officers of the Disaster Recovery Institute International were happily joining in the Volunteer Day effort by delivering and serving the lunches. Thank you, Al and Jerome. We do appreciate it.

The story gets better. As we finished our lunch at the Habitat site an ice cream truck drove by. One of the volunteers screamed for him to stop. Little by little, the now very hot (it was 90+ degrees and very humid that day) volunteers wandered over to get an ice cream. Al promptly invited all for this much needed cold desert. Before you knew it Al was making sure that the volunteers had ice cream and even invited some neighborhood children over for ice cream. As Al and I laughed and high fived at this most spontaneous event, our volunteers enjoyed their much deserved treat.

When ice cream was done and work was to resume, Al then became chauffeur as two women working at the site needed to go back to the hotel. Al's acts of kindness were indicative of the work of all the volunteers. Each volunteer worked hard, had a few laughs, and gave selflessly to the Volunteer Day. The only motivation was to work hard and help out those in need. What could be better?

And one final word of appreciation ... thank you Al and the boards of both the Institute and the Foundation for giving me the opportunity to chair the Volunteer Day committee and help to coordinate the activities of the day. Thank you. I appreciate the vote of confidence and I am most thankful for allowing me to provide a means to give back to New Orleans.

Clyde Berger

Disaster Recovery International Foundation

Director of Volunteerism and Vice President

p.s. We hope to make the Volunteer Day an annual event, but in between it is our hope to provide BCP guidance and community service as appropriate where ever the need arises.