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be your chance to have a direct say in how your organization will be managed and where it should go.  Elections to the STC Board and to the Executive Committee will be held, and the best way to have input is to be there.  And of course, if the spirit moves you, you can always be nominated from the floor and take a direct role throughout the year in managing the Society.

And Fun?

      A conference isn’t a conference unless we can have fun, and this conference won’t disappoint.  We’ll be starting on Wednesday with golf and tennis.  The welcome reception will be Wednesday evening. Our president, Joe Webb, has promised not to sing.

      Thursday evening after the VAC session is an open evening for members and VAC attendees to strike out on their own in Westminster, Boulder, or Denver.  The conference staff and hotel will have suggestions for restaurants, sports, or cultural events scheduled.

      On Friday, after the business meeting, we’ll be heading by bus into Boulder to the RedFish New Orleans Brewery for an evening of Cajun (and other) food and music in a private room. 

      It will be a fun, if somewhat poignant, evening of good music, good food, and good friends.

So, Are You Coming?

      It’s not too late. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, there is still time. Contact Cathy Cimaglia at STC headquarters, and register for the conference.

     Cathy can help out with hotel reservations at other locations if the Westin is full.

Fall Conference Preview

(From Page 2)

      Because of Hurricane Katrina, which brushed the Atmore area but caused widespread infrastructure damage nearby, the bank will continue to func-tion as it has been, with impaired customer service and data network capabilities until late October when the installation can be completed.

      The map on page one shows the arri-val dates and locations, as well as the relative strengths, of all three hurricanes, according to weather service data. The photos on pages 3 and 8 emphasize the severity of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina to one Gulfport office building.

      This disaster is distinctive from a business continuity planning perspective because of its damage to infrastructure over a widespread area.

Tim Proctor

      The STC’s Tim Proctor was already familiar with disaster recovery planning from his experience last year with the hurricanes that affected his clients in the Miami area of South Florida.

      In the weeks before Hurricane Katrina, however, he was engaged by a five-location, 14-partner law firm based in New Orleans to provide a network needs assessment. He discovered varying levels of awareness among the partners on the need for greater fault tolerance in its data network.

     He pointed out that all locations fed back to their Citrix server-based system in New Orleans, and this left them exposed to severe disruption. In fact,    he advised them specifically of their vulnerability, and even recalls saying, “even if [your headquarters] building didn’t get knocked out but you had a flood in New Orleans, all the other sites would be in bad shape for weeks, or even a month.”

      Among the partners, he said, some knew more of the need for an alternate site than others, but in general none of the partners were aware of the full ramifications of that vulnerability.
Text Box: Terms As Used In this Article Business Continuity The ability to ensure service and support to custo-mers after an unplanned event. Disaster Recovery Activities and processes to return an organization to an acceptable service level after an unplanned event. An element of business continuity planning. Fault Tolerance Having a backup system to activate during a primary system failure. An element of disaster recovery planning.

      Of course, there was no time to act on Tim’s recommendation before Hurricane Katrina, so the firm, with his assistance, had to deal with their current network configuration during the storm.

      Tim explains that the firm has now engaged him to help develop and implement a disaster recovery plan for the firm (now based in Houston).

      Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area in full force in the early morning hours of Monday, August 29.

      On that day, during the storm, Tim’s main responsibility was to work with BellSouth to remote forward the New Orleans office voice trunks to Houston.

      He managed to accomplish this Monday by 5 PM. By the time the city began flooding Monday evening and Tuesday morning, and the headquarters building became unusable, the firm was able to receive all calls in Houston, des-pite local loop failures in New Orleans.

     As for the data network, Tim said that  prior to the storm, the firm’s “I.T. guy” had put the Citrix server in the trunk of his car and driven 200 miles, to their Lafayette, Louisiana office, where he set it up temporarily to support basic office needs. Later that week, he put it in his car again and drove another 220 miles to relocate it to Houston.

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