Groove in emergencies

An article in Microsoft’s TechNet Magazine post Katrina on Louisiana State University’s Emergency Operations Center, highlighted some deficiencies in ordinary IT during crises.  First, you can’t depend on vast bandwidth or even any bandwidth at all in an emergency.  Second, your constituency can increase dramatically.  One day you’re managing the IT needs of staff, the next, [...]

Blogs as breadcrumbs

As I’ve explained - our mission is to gather together all the digital breadcrumbs to give organizations a better view of who is available and where they are in times of crisis. To buy time.  Yesterday I went to a great seminar in London by Unicom on social networking tools and their business use.  With all [...]

elastictime – the mission

On the morning of July 7th, 2005, I was jet lagged in Minneapolis, watching CNN at 2:50 in the morning, when reports started coming in of a general failure on the London tube due to possible multiple electrical explosions.  When, an hour later they reported the bus explosion in Tavistock Square, I knew that this must [...]

elastictime – the name

Originally we used the name to describe our activities with mobile computing.  I was struck by image of a businessman checking his email standing in an airport check-in line.  He was filling in dead space – time that could have been spent wondering whether he had once again picked the slowest queue.
In November 2005, Gareth [...]