Seeing Ash...

Time - 5:30am Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Location: LA, Studio City
First Rotation IMLP at NBCU: Information Security Governance
Local Weather: 80 degrees and cloudy with a chance of ash?
 
Yeah, you read that last part correct; Ash.

 I woke up Tuesday morning of this week heading to work early to have a security meeting with some of the team I’m working with on the East Coast (3 hour time difference, hence the 5:30am wake-up) to notice it was snowing. Wait… that can’t be right, its 80 degrees outside. Turns out those fires in L.A. were a lot closer to home then I thought. Makes you wonder if living in LA was a good decision.

Either way at 5:30 in the morning you could care less about the charred remains of some multi-millionaires mansion floating down from the sky on your compact rental car. All I was thinking about was my agenda for this upcoming meeting and trying to arrange better times to meet across 3 different time zones.

If there is one thing that is the most difficult part of this job, other then getting thrown into the middle of projects that you either know little about or have been going on for a while, it’s organizing meeting times based on different time zones, across the GLOBE. I work with people in India where it’s a solid 12 hour time difference as well as people on the East Coast which makes sleep for me near impossible. A little more emphasis on working with WebEx (our online meeting tool) and Outlooks calendar feature would have gone a long way I think. However that’s not to say I haven’t figured it out. Light a little fire under anyone’s feet and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of things. Besides even if you don’t feel the heat, I’m sure the falling ash will be a big reminder that you have something to do…