Saturday, July 24, 2004

Seaships and servers
Posted by behradmahdi@yahoo.com"> at 12:37 PM -

Whew! What a morning. With technology glitches, swarms of volunteers, and lots of coffee, I must say we're doing a pretty good job.

Today is the first day the Convention's operations around the city got underway, and we've been working in the Call Center doing the best job we can getting information out about the events, logistics, and general questions about what's going on. It always amazes me to see volunteers taking leadership roles and training other volunteers. At the risk of sounding sentimental, it's touching, really.

My most interesting encounter came from an exchange from a volunteer. I'll call him Bob, who showed up early this morning. Being observant of the many technology glitches we were encountering, he quickly offered his technology services to help out. After a few questions and a couple tripped wires, it became evident that his idea of technology services may not have been what we were thinking. Turns out Bob's experience came from his 22 years as an electrical technician aboard a navy ship. Not exactly servers and satellites, but he certainly had some entertaining stories. Needless to say, he wasn't much help with our technology, but assured us he could get TV reception aboard a Navy ship in the middle of an ocean. While we were all in the middle of all sorts of problems, I knew everyone was thinking, "Bob rocks."

Either way, it's clear that we're under way. So far every problem has eventually found a solution. I can only imagine how exciting it will get as the week progresses and things start really heating up.

-- Behrad Mahdi

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