Trade Show Ideas & Inspiration

Email Apocalypse — The Joys of Technology

  • Mel White

    • Kevin Carty, VP Classic Exhibits

    Bunnies and Bounce Houses

    As a Classic Distributor, you know — or can probably guess — that the past two weeks have been nothing close to Bunnies and Bounce Houses around here. Why? Because our entire computer server/network came to a loud crash around April Fools Day.

    But the joke was not a joke. It really happened. Our systems puked. And while we were able to recover our Accounting and CRM systems quickly, our email system struggled. Actually, our email flat-out died. And as you can all relate, there is never enough adult diapers in the room to prepare you for a total loss of information and connectivity.

    Gross I know. Sorry.

    Well, the good news is that we have a solid disaster back-up plan that enabled us to recover all but three days of email and communications. And along the way, through the implementation of various hotspot, working from home, and good old-fashioned handwriting solutions, we were able to press through the mess and complete orders and quotes. And through this painful email apocalypse, we implemented a significantly better solution for our network setup.

    But man oh man. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time! It’s freaking April in the trade show industry! One of the three busiest months of the year for us historically. This year is no exception. But again, we are looking to the future now, and I’m not going to dwell on the evenings that I set my alarm to go off once every 90 minutes to check in with the IT folks to see how the recovery was going and answer questions that they had along the way. NOPE, not going to focus on that at all.

    Happy Happy Clouds

    We are officially a cloud-based communications business as of last Monday. Our Accounting, Purchasing, and Order Entry software will stay on local servers at Classic. But all our emails are now cloud-based, and we have implemented a better protocol for email, storage, etc.

    So, our apologies and our thanks to you, our wonderful customers, for your patience over the past two plus weeks. I honestly did not get one complaint. Which was appreciated. And if you had complained, I would have probably left you a burning bag of poo on your doorstep. What can I say. I was a little moody. 🙂

    And thanks to our staff for their patience. Once again, I am proud and impressed by your professionalism and perseverance.

    So, back to work on our fancy and now very speedy and reliable network.

    Hope you have a great weekend with your families. I know I will… finally!

    –Kevin
    http://twitter.com/kevin_carty
    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-carty/3/800/32a

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