Launch Day!
Baltimore, 3/1/19 10:00 AM
I’m sitting at my computer ready to left click my mouse and send an email. An email that could change everything. And yet I hesitate.
I think my palms may be sweaty. I check and yes they are. I know that once I send this email I could be unleashing a lot of stress into my life.
A woman with whom I was once involved (an understatement) has an expression “you take that back”. She would say that when I said something she didn’t like. I always thought that amusing since you can’t ever really take anything back. And that’s especially true of an email to 28 people!
So I check the system I’ve set up. One more time. And then I press the key and my email goes out sending the link to the letter to the Nova Scotia Minister of Lands and Forestry that I’ve set up for signing online.
So what's this all about? I've written a letter and set up a system for online signing. With this letter, I hope to deter the clear cutting that threatens the forest right across and down the road from my country summer home in Nova Scotia.
So why the sweaty palms? Why the hesitation. What could possibly go wrong? Well if I knew what could go wrong I wouldn’t have pressed the key. I’ve checked the system and it’s working perfectly. But I’ve done that before and a then a bug crops up. An “insurmountable obstacle”. That’s what it seems like at the time. Yet each time I’ve encountered these "insurmountable" obstacles the solution crops up. Sometimes within hours, sometimes a day or more often waking up in the middle of the night with an idea.
I’ve learned it’s best to take a break and let the subconscious work on the problem. That’s not easy to do. It seems like shirking but in fact, it is the exact opposite of shirking the job. Making yourself back off.
It’s three minutes since I sent my email and the first signer shows up! I’m monitoring the system on my second computer monitor. On this monitor, I’ve got a window that shows the names of the signers as they sign. I check and yes the signers are showing up on the website I’ve set up as well. This way the signers can see their name and they and everyone else in the world can watch and see how the number of signers is growing.
Cool eh? Well, I think so. Naturally. And when you read the letter you see all the others who've signed it and a nice button right under "Sincerely" to push to sign your name. A friend suggested this which angered me because I didn't think I could do that. And what I thought I had designed was "good enough". Yet within hours of this unappreciated suggestion, the way to do this popped into my mind. Super cool. Well, that's what I think.
Twenty-one minutes more and another signer shows up on my computer monitor. Fourteen minutes later another. And seventeen minutes later yet another.
I knock on my wooden desk. All seems to be OK. Well so far.
At this rate a signer every 20 minutes, I should have, let’s see, more than all of the folks I’ve sent the email to as signers before tomorrow.
And I should have more since I’ve asked the signers to send the link to the letter for signing to their friends and neighbors so they can see and sign the letter as well.
And this is where it gets really interesting. Like the old chain letter, this could really multiply. If every signer asks 5 friends and neighbors to sign and then they each ask a similar number (or more) this thing could really take off. It could go viral!
It’s now been 29 minutes and no new signers. Hmm.
Whew! One just showed up. OK relax!
What I find most scary is if the system breaks down and I miss or lose signers. Remember Murphy’s Law. “Whatever can go wrong will”. Just because I don’t know what can go wrong doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
I’m not really worried or I’m telling myself not to worry. A better word is "wary". That's what I am. Just trying to keep my guard up.
I could have launched this last night but I decided that I should get a good night’s sleep. If something goes wrong I’ll have to fix it in real time while the system is “live”. It’s easy to fix something offline. But a completely different thing when the system is live and people could be trying to sign the letter never to return if the system goes down. Or, worse yet, if I lose data including names of people who’ve already signed up.
Uh oh. The list of signers is not updating on the website. The first glitch. The list is supposed to update every 5 minutes and you have to refresh your browser to see the additions. The list of signers is updating on the bottom of the letter but not on the separate list for viewing on the website.
Oh, wait a minute. It is updating you just have to scroll down. Whew! And then I fix it so more show up without having to scroll down which may not occur to people to do .. just as it didn’t to me.
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It’s now 4 pm and things are slowing down. I had taken a break. Worked out in my home gym. Went to lunch at my favorite local coffee house and ran into Arthur my former partner in the effort to save the trees in our iconic Mt. Vernon park in Baltimore. The trees are still there 8 years later.
He proceeded to tell me what we should do to save the forests in Nova Scotia, playing the role of an American know-it-all. A role for which he’s a natural. I tell him it’s different there. We can’t call for a public hearing. There is no local jurisdiction. We have to appeal to the “remote” provincial government in Halifax over a 2-hour drive away. We don’t have a lot of votes in our rural community (where my summer home is and where they are threatening to clear cut). So it’s an uphill battle.
I check the list of signers. The system is working OK. We’re still adding signers. But we’ve gone from 1 every 20 minutes to 1 every hour to the latest 2 signers which came in an hour and a half apart. Yes, it has slowed down but that’s to be expected. We now have 20 signers out of the 28 I emailed. Not bad when you consider that many have probably not checked their email during the working day or not had time to deal with reading the letter and signing it.
But I think we’re approaching the upper limit from “Phase I”. Phase II and Phase III and beyond will tell the story. Phase II is where the signers from our group of 28 people email their friends (hopefully) with the link to the letter to sign. How many do that and the results they get will determine how many signers we get. And then, hopefully, those, in turn, will email their friends etc., etc. And then, of course, there’s social media – facebook etc.
So the current slowdown is not unexpected. But what comes next? Will the signers follow through? Well, I can only guess and I can see it going either way.
Time will tell!
If you want to read the letter and see the latest listing of signers Click on these links -
Oh, we just got 2 more! Things may be picking up!
I’ll let you know what happens. Keep tuned.
Thanks for reading!
