There was a power cut and we all found ourselves
Yesterday there was an unusually large and widespread power outage in the area of Kent which Arc calls home. Or work. Never mind. Look:
Apparently 5,000 homes and businesses were affected, so not a trifling matter.
The power was already off when I arrived (the delicate car-ballet crossing the junction manned by dead traffic lights was a clue) and was not restored until 2pm. In the meantime we all experienced the feeling of helplessness that comes with the removal of one of the most important things to the functioning of a business, if not our daily lives, electricity.
There’s a kind of mental check-down you go through when it happens: Pop. Your screen goes blank. Your ears feel weird for a second as they are assaulted by the silence. Then (in our case) the shrill ‘BEEP!’ of the server’s surge protection battery backup thingy kicks in. Every. 15. Seconds.
So, you think, the computer’s off. Might as well put the kettle on. Oh.
OK, no tea. Better email Chris and explain that the proof will be a bit delayed. Oh.
Never mind, I’ll do some toast. Oh.
I should probably call Tony and let his team know what’s happened, but the phones are mains powered. Oh.
And don’t open the fridge, you’ll let all the heat in and who knows when it’ll come back on!
And it goes on from there until you realise you’re actually back in a pre-medieval barter culture of nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Yes, I know we’ve all got our phones, but as I’m used to plugging mine in to my Mac and charging it through the day, it was low on power when I arrived and soon gave up the ghost.
So there we were, sitting in the beeping gloom, thinking of something constructive to do. Jason, my boss, kept instinctively tapping his mouse to wake the computer. I found myself staring at the blank screen anyway, like I used to face towards the TV even when it was off as a kid (I did have a rich and fulfilling childhood, actually).
“It can get darker than a clown in a sewer around here, I tell you.”
Of course we tidied. That’s a given whenever there’s an interruption to normal service. Then when we’d tidied, we talked. We talked about how without electricity the cast of The Walking Dead would be dead from dehydration, starvation or infection long before any walkers got their rotten hands on them. We had a game of which would you rather? where two hypothetical alternatives are presented and you have to choose one of them. No caveats, no excuses. I will not repeat any of the subjects proposed here, or ever again in fact until my dying day. It can get darker than a clown in a sewer around here, I tell you.
We then focused a bit and brainstormed new ideas for marketing Arc. How better to reach people. We discussed ways to freshen up our website, new work we could showcase. It was even suggested that I write about the power cut and how it exposes just how reliant we are on our electricity supply. We discussed the particular frustrations of trying to build a relevant database of active subscribers to our MailChimp marketing emails against a backdrop of ever-increasing regulation and scrutiny of such lists. Damn you GDPR (not really, spam is bad and all that). Any tips on that gratefully received though.
Then, as the last remnants of breakfast caffeine ebbed away leaving a dull pain behind the eyes, we realised we could have a massive pool tournament! You don’t need electricity for that!
We played pool through lunch and right up until, mid-frame, the lights came on and the various drives and fans whirred into life and we were back on. After a few minutes rebooting the server it was business as usual.
“We live in an electrically powered electronic bubble of our own making.”
The crippling effect on our business was startling really. We couldn’t produce anything. We couldn’t communicate. We couldn’t do any admin. We couldn’t even have a cup of tea. Any longer than a day and work would seriously begin to slide. We live in an electrically powered electronic bubble of our own making. It’s amazing when it’s working, with instant global communications and fabulous, paradigm-shifting creations appearing on our screens (on a good day), but when it goes away for a bit, wow, do you miss it. Fortunately, despite the ever-increasing load on the power network, outages are less common than at any point in the past. Which is just as well really, as I’m not cut out for defending my property against looters with just a cricket bat.
So cheers, here’s to you electricity. I won’t take you for granted again, until about five minutes from now.
I won the pool, by the way. Doesn’t happen often, so I’m recording it here for posterity.
First published on LinkedIn, September 14 2017