It was twelve years ago to the minute.<\/p>\n
I worked as a graduate on the control systems for Australia’s DVN – digital video network – for your classic Aussie, battle-hardened technical boss. He’d personally designed or built much of Australia’s media infrastructure to that point.<\/p>\n
I recall walking into scene of open mourning in our office in Melbourne’s CBD.<\/p>\n
Half the floor were IT consultants from the USA – huddled around PCs refreshing CNN.com and nytimes.com manically. Searching for news of friends, family, anything.<\/p>\n
Most of us locals had been up all night too, transfixed by the images you’ve all seen and that don’t need repeating.<\/p>\n
We had nothing we could say to help out these grieving souls from across the Pacific.<\/p>\n
I remember overhearing their local Project Manager tell them they could go home for the day if they needed to – an empty gesture as (like most consultants) they were all living out of hotel rooms. Even more, they needed each other’s company & support to cope with what they were witnessing.<\/p>\n
So they almost all stayed. Standing around in group-shock. Staring, slack eyed, at little CRT & LCD PC monitors.<\/p>\n
Into this muddle of semi-catatonic disorganisation strode my boss.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With typical dispassionate precision, he began directing his team to relocate our video-monitoring gear, our data projector & screens, our spare chairs into the main conference room.<\/p>\n
Cables were run. Pay TV services were requisitioned. Switches & high-speed Internet was deployed. The conference desk was dumped out in the open office, replaced with banks of computers to run MSN & AIM & other comms tools of the era.<\/p>\n
Our conference room became the main meeting place for all of our American cousins.<\/p>\n
I still get emotional thinking about that day and the weeks that followed. I still picture them there, staring at CNN on the projector screen, crying on each other’s shoulders, ordering in pizza, praying with each other, sleeping under desks.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
I’m not really sure if there’s a point to this story.<\/p>\n
I just really wanted to document the experience of an Aussie nerd feeling the human pain of my colleagues.<\/p>\n
And to say that it’s the response to a crisis that determines the person it turns you into.<\/p>\n
From my boss, who had appeared a technically gifted but unmovable man, we saw the human side. I don’t think he was ever thanked for what he did, and honestly doubt he cares for thanks.<\/p>\n
But it made me respect him more. So I thank God for Frank’s example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was twelve years ago to the minute. I worked as a graduate on the control systems for Australia’s DVN – digital video network – for your classic Aussie, battle-hardened technical boss. He’d personally designed or built much of Australia’s media infrastructure to that point. I recall walking into scene of open mourning in our… Continue reading Nine-twelve<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,35,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreview","category-life","category-work","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RxuW-76","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1081,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gearfamily.net\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}