Last week I was watching winter sports with friends and had an interesting learning experience. Suddenly the TV was just showing a spinning circle.
So I tried to figure out what the problem was. I’m using a gigabit Internet connection and I suspected that the internet provider would have a technical problem as it had happened before. However, it turned out that this was not the case, their services were just fine.
Looking at the situation in more detail, I noticed that with my router just one LED was blinking but nothing else. So my router turned out to be the problem.
And the impact was quite serious: no TV anymore, no music either as I am using a wireless LAN access point with my active audio speakers for streaming purposes. My home automation system didn’t work either which for example hindered the light switches from working properly.
Even worse: for about 10 years already, I’m scanning all paper documents and store them on a NAS system (network attached storage). So I didn’t have access to my documents either, but then I was thinking:
Hey, shouldn’t be a problem I’m just connecting my iPad Pro via LAN cable directly to the NAS and things should be fine.
Which of course wasn’t the case and it took me like 20min of research before I could access my documents again. Those technical documents that would have helped initially.
My learning experience: documentation is everything BUT needs to be accessible as well!
So I’ve not only updated my technical documentation, but also setup a service that synchronizes a whole folder of technical documentation from the NAS to my iPad Pro and my iPhone automatically.
So next time, I should have all necessary documentation available right away…hopefully 🙂
Within an hour, I also had installed a spare router and almost all services were up and running again!
This is why I like to say: “Leadership is making things happen”.