Backups for My Backups – Snowmageddon, Florida Weather, and Webinar Production

That is not my desk. That is way neater than my desk is right now. Mine looks like the computer department at Best Buy threw up. For the last 5 hours I’ve had four computer monitors including a laptop, plus two landline phones, two cell phones, and an iPad running to make sure my current webinar doesn’t go down if I lose power or internet. I wanted to take a picture before I started breaking it all down, but that would have required unplugging something and I’m feeling risk averse today.

I realize that Snowmageddon 2016 is nowhere near me, seeing as how I’m in Florida and all. But today’s weather has been downright bizarre. One minute the sky is black, it’s raining sideways, and thunder is rattling my poorly sealed windows. Literally seconds later, the sky is blue and sun is shining. The wind is alternately nonexistent and terrifying. Welcome to the Gulf Coast.

I can’t take the chance of my system going down when I’m the only producer and my presenters, all up north, could also go down at any minute. Multiple logins on multiple machines, printouts of every slide, and cell phone hotspot backups probably sound like overkill to some people. Let me tell you this, though: The only time I have ever needed a backup is when I didn’t have it.

What’s your worst public tech failure? Mine is probably a tie between the time I went to take myself off mute when my moderator introduced me for a major presentation and accidentally hung up the phone, and the time my cat leaped across my desk to attack a lizard outside the window and disconnected my phone in the process.

Give me your best horror stories in the comments.