 Want to Win a
Galaxy Tablet?
Register for DRI2013 now and your name will be entered into a prize drawing for a new Galaxy Tablet! You know you want to go to our second annual conference, to be held June 4-7 in Philadelphia, PA. So, why not register early to wrap up your travel plans and take a chance on winning a cool new tablet?
Here are the rules: Registration and payment must be received by December 1, 2012. DRI employees, board members, commission members, and DRI2013 conference presenters are not eligible to win. Drawing will take place on December 15, 2012, and the winner will be notified at that time.
Register today at www.DRIconference.com!
 Clyde's Corner: A New Leaf The fun thing about writing this column is that many of my old friends, former colleagues, new-found friends (especially those of you who volunteered last May in New Orleans) get in touch with me via my DRI International Foundation e-mail address. Many of you want to know more about the volunteer opportunities at our Philadelphia conference in June, 2013. Some of you have written to offer suggestions and to wonder out loud where we will seek to do good things to help those in need in the Philadelphia area. Although the details are not finalized, please rest assured that we will have construction projects, volunteer opportunities with local food banks, assistance at local community gardens and suggestions for 'on your own' rewarding activities before and after the conference. Our Volunteer Day last year was a success by any measure. I was particularly impressed that more than 75 individuals took part in the effort. This year, I'm challenging myself, and all of you, to beat that number. So, please plan to join us for a rewarding and meaningful day - you won't be sorry. As the fall season gets into full swing in the Northeast with the reds and yellows of changing leaves, why not consider turning over a new leaf? Get certified, volunteer to help out, take a class, attend the DRII conference, write an article, share your knowledge, sponsor a BC event at work, show support for the DRI Foundation, or just be a cheerleader for the good work we as BC practitioners do each day. As I wander the back-roads of Vermont and seek the perfect fall foliage photo, I ponder my own career as a BCP guy - turning over new leafs as the leaves fall around me. I am determined to further my education, meet new people with a common passion, teach a new class or two, give a new presentation, write a strategic vision statement for a new client, and ultimately figure out how I can best be a good ambassador for what we do to "keep the lights on." I am fortunate to have a good network of BCP buddies who provide meaningful insight into where our profession is headed and how we need to support the ever increasing need to be smarter, swifter, and more creative when developing viable strategies to respond to growing outage types. Please join a local chapter of a BC organization, come to our conference, and focus on that which you can influence, change or correct. Ignore that which you cannot fix and focus on the attainable not the impossible. Take time for yourself this year. While you and your boss are preparing your 2013 budget, make sure you have money allocated for this informative conference, the best volunteer day by any BC organization, the most diverse group of BCP individuals, the best conference "getting to know you" sessions and gatherings, and most importantly...the city of Brotherly Love. Have a great week, Clyde cberger@driif.org Director of Volunteerism and Vice President |
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| Issue #35 | October 12, 2012 |
Greetings!
Chocolate! Never there was (or will there be) a substance more precious or delicious! And now there's "proof" that it can make you smart too -- a genius, in fact!
According to a New England Journal of Medicine report, there seems to be a correlation between the amount of chocolate consumed by a country and the number of Nobel laureates produced by that country. Switzerland consumes the most chocolate per capita and tops the laureate list. Franz Messerli, a cardiologist at New York's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, wrote the article and did the math, which shows the theory holds true for 22 of 23 countries analyzed. The only outlier, according to Messerli, is Sweden - the home of the Nobel prizes. Its chocolate consumption predicts only 14 laureates, yet it has produced more than double that number. A bit of bias perhaps?
I say that if chocolate boosts brainpower, then business continuity teams should be fed a steady diet of the stuff. The smarter the BC professional, the better the plans, right? And since I write about what you do, I must need chocolate too!
Actually, given the amount of chocolate I've consumed in my lifetime, I should already be a genius. I'm not. But I've got a way with words, and that comes in handy. And chocoholic or not, I bet you've got some special talents too, and so do all of the people on your team. They may not be geniuses, but you should make it a point to find out what they do well.
For instance, take the guy who sent me the chocolate report. He's got an actual superpower. He has magic ears, perfect pitch (actually, the technical term is "absolute pitch"). When the elevator dings, he can tell you what note that is. He can kick anyone's butt at Simon...blindfolded. He can hear a song and then pick up a guitar or sit down at a piano and play it. That is killer cool. And he's also a really good, careful listener even when music is not involved. And who doesn't need a few of those on their team?
So, in addition to asking the usual questions like who can speak another language or who is CPR-certified, try digging a little deeper. Look for things like empathy and creativity. Do you have a born organizer among you? Who's the class clown? The more you know about your people, the better you'll be able to use their talents for your program's greater good. And that's important because if there's anything a business continuity professional knows it's that life really is like a box of chocolates and you never know what you're going to get.
Buffy Rojas
DRI International Director of Communications
brojas@drii.org
(610) 792-4802
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Zombies Perform CPR, It's a Sign!
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Here's some more zombie news you can use! Last week I told you about an awesome Red Cross app that (among other cool and informative things) provides video instruction for first aid emergencies. Well, that video is nothing like this!
A PSA, called "The Undeading," from Canada's Heart & Stroke Foundation has got to be the strangest training video ever made. In the video, zombies perform CPR on a heart attack victim (I'll give you one guess as to what caused the heart attack in the first place!).
The spot is creepy and icky, but I have to admit, it's also instructive. In the clip, a woman is chased through city streets during a zombie apocalypse. A mob of the undead surrounds her, and terrified she has a heart attack. Weird, right? But then it gets even weirder. One of the zombies, I guess he used to be a doctor, leads an effort to revive the woman (because I guess only live brains are worth eating?).
I say it's the perfect awareness campaign for the Halloween season,
particularly when paired with chocolate.
More zombie news this week. This time, zombie hackers! The Portland Press Herald reports that an electronic road sign message board in Portland, ME, was hacked. The sign, which was supposed to warn of traffic delays and roadwork, instead bore this message: "Warning, Zombies Ahead!"
And it seems to be a growing threat. The Herald reports that "Austin, Texas, had a similar warning in 2009, and since then it's appeared on signs in Washington, Illinois and New York." Herald reporter David Hench had some fun with this one. He writes:
"Naturally, city officials warned against the perils of unbridled goofiness and the need for people to realize that safety signs are there for a reason, warning motorists of real dangers.
'They're not a toy,' a very serious city spokeswoman, Nicole Clegg, said Wednesday when asked about the incident.
In other words, "it's all fun and games until someone's eye falls out."
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Earthquake at LAX? | |
"How would a major earthquake affect airport operations?" That's the questions a CSO online article posed yesterday as part of its coverage of a tabletop exercise conducted by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the department that oversees three airports in the LA area.
CSO reports that LAWA "recently implemented a business continuity and disaster recovery plan for the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). As part of the effort, the organization conducted a tabletop exercise on what would happen if an earthquake struck LAX."
The scenario? "At approximately 9:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, an earthquake began in the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles southwest of Malibu, [Calif.] at a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale. The epicenter of this quake was 53 miles from the Civic Center and had a significant effect on the area around LAX. The buildings sustained moderate to severe structural damage."
How'd it go, read the article to find out!
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Your Own MacGyver to the Rescue?
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Building crisis response plans would be a whole lot easier if you had a team of MacGyver's responding, able to restore operations with a paper clip, pocket knife, and a Pez dispenser. But since humans aren't typically that handy, the U.S. Navy plans to produce "a robotic MacGyver," according to this report.
The million dollar robot "could know or learn how to stand on a chair to reach a high object, brace a ladder, stack boxes to climb over obstacles, or build a temporary bridge from nearby wooden planks...Our goal is to develop a robot that behaves like MacGyver, the television character from the 1980s who solved complex problems and escaped dangerous situations by using everyday objects and materials he found at hand," said Mike Stilman, an assistant professor of robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and recipient of a U.S. Navy grant to fund the project.
"Professor Stilman's work on the 'MacGyver-bot' is the first of its kind, and is already beginning to deliver on the promise of mechanical teammates able to creatively perform in high-stakes situations," said Paul Bello, director of the cognitive science program in the Office of Naval Research.
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