#Snowmaggedon, #Carmaggedon, and the Vulnerability of Our Information Systems
John Mancini

By: John Mancini on January 23rd, 2016

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#Snowmaggedon, #Carmaggedon, and the Vulnerability of Our Information Systems

Intelligent Information Management (IIM)

I live in the Washington, DC, area. That admission is the first step on the 12 step recovery process from Snow Panic Addiction.

Washington, DC LOVES nothing better than a snow panic. We close our schools, not when there is snow on the ground, but when it is still 200 miles away.

Just to give you a sense, this is what the snow looked like at 1:05 p.m. on Friday. And our schools had been closed for two days at that point.

Snowmaggedon in Washington, DC 

 In case you have been living in a bunker without communications like the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for the past week, the East Coast is in the middle of a MASSIVE! HISTORIC! EPIC! snowstorm. And even better, we in Washington, DC, are going to be the leaders in snow accumulation. Take that, Syracuse and Philadelphia and New York and Boston! Speaking of Kimmy Schmidt, that might be a good binge-watch during the storm.

We are calling this a #SnowMaggedon. Just because. It is better than our usual Washington, DC naming convention, “SnowGate.”

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But before this storm, we had Wednesday night, and many outside the DC have confused this “storm” with what is going on now. The “storm” on Wednesday was about ½ inch of snow, at exactly the right time. Evening rush hour. And then…

 CARMAGGEDON

Technically, this was CarMaggedon II – almost five years to the day after CarMaggedon I. This is a DC phenomenon we have about once every three years that dramatizes the delicate edge of traffic insanity upon which we live.

People coming home from work on Wednesday had 4, 5, and 6-hour commutes to go about 10 or 15 miles. Even President Obama was stuck in traffic for over an hour. Hundreds of accidents and traffic snarled everywhere.

CarMaggedon in Washington, DC

Whenever things go this terribly wrong – often unpredictably and under the most modest of causes – it reminds me of the challenges of operating and maintaining systems at a massive scale.

99.9% of the time, DC traffic, while bad, is somewhat predictable. But chaos can enter into complex systems from the most benign of causes. I work in the IT industry, and it makes me think about the unbelievably complex and massive information systems that we rely on day in and day out without giving them a thought.

Every business, every organization, relies on complex information systems smoothly handling massive amounts of information, just like commuters rely on complex transportation systems to handle ever-increasing numbers of cars until they don’t.

At their core, modern organizations are systems of information networks. They rely on the smooth flow of information within and across networks. The information flowing through and across these networks is growing at a compounded rate of 50% per year. And like our transportation planners who think that the only solution to congestion is more roads, organizations think they can just add more and more storage to handle massively increasing volumes of information. Organizations are now looking at potential information Carmaggadons of their own. We call this “Information Chaos” -- I call it "Mancini's Law" -- and we published a free e-book about it last year.

For now, though, maybe I won’t worry about the snowstorm. I published an earlier version of this post on SlantNews yesterday, and since then, it has been snowing like a moose (technical term). This has actually turned out to be one of those snowstorms worth worrying about.  Here is what it looks like right now (10 am Saturday), and it's still snowing.

Snowmaggedon in Washington, DC

Perhaps it’s time for a glass of wine and a Kimmy binge. Stay safe.

 

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About John Mancini

John Mancini is the President of Content Results, LLC and the Past President of AIIM. He is a well-known author, speaker, and advisor on information management, digital transformation and intelligent automation. John is a frequent keynote speaker and author of more than 30 eBooks on a variety of topics. He can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as jmancini77. Recent keynote topics include: The Stairway to Digital Transformation Navigating Disruptive Waters — 4 Things You Need to Know to Build Your Digital Transformation Strategy Getting Ahead of the Digital Transformation Curve Viewing Information Management Through a New Lens Digital Disruption: 6 Strategies to Avoid Being “Blockbustered” Specialties: Keynote speaker and writer on AI, RPA, intelligent Information Management, Intelligent Automation and Digital Transformation. Consensus-building with Boards to create strategic focus, action, and accountability. Extensive public speaking and public relations work Conversant and experienced in major technology issues and trends. Expert on inbound and content marketing, particularly in an association environment and on the Hubspot platform. John is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary, and holds an M.A. in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.