A large panel got onstage to talk about lessons learned from disaster, as a warm up to some lunchtime working groups on the topic of business continuity and disaster recovery. All the panelists had in one way or another been affected by the hurricanes in the Southeast this year. They had a lot of interesting observations and lessons learned–but as Paul Saffo made the analogy, such a big panel was rather like an Emergency Operations Center itself: fast moving, action packed, hard to track. My colleague Stephanie Overby will soon give you more in this blog; I’ll give you a tiny taste. Here were the things that were the biggest surprises to the panelists.1. Just how little sleep the human body requires. 2. How little improvement in disaster management there’d been since 9/11.3. The difficulty of tracking employees. 4. Our ability to respond, ensure safety and get back to operations.5. How surprised most organizations seemed to be.6. The lack of communication, and how frustrating that was.7. The storm surge.8. That the storm was not followed by pestilence. And the difficulty getting data in and out.9. The difficulty of executing business continuity plans when disaster struck people personally–30 family members had lost homes, and other employees had similar situations. We broke for lunch and some extremely thoughtful discussion about what CIOs can do to help one another and to help first responders in the event of emergency. More notes on the findings of the five break-out groups will be available soon. –Sandy Kendall Related content brandpost Sponsored by Huawei Beyond gigabit: the need for 10 Gbps in business networks Interview with Liu Jianning, Vice President of Huawei's Data Communication Marketing & Solutions Sales Dept By CIO Online Staff Nov 30, 2023 9 mins Cloud Architecture Networking brandpost Sponsored by SAP Generative AI’s ‘show me the money’ moment We’re past the hype and slick gen AI sales pitches. Business leaders want results. By Julia White Nov 30, 2023 5 mins Artificial Intelligence brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers capture real economic value with zero trust Unleashing economic value: Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange transforms security architecture while cutting costs. By Zscaler Nov 30, 2023 4 mins Security brandpost Sponsored by SAP A cloud-based solution to rescue millions from energy poverty Aware of the correlation between energy and financial poverty, Savannah Energy is helping to generate clean, competitively priced electricity across Africa by integrating its old systems into one cloud-based platform. By Keith E. Greenberg, SAP Contributor Nov 30, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe