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 How Infosys and Tennis Australia are harnessing technology for good By Veronica Lew Mar 26, 2023 6 mins Infosys BrandPost Retail innovation playbook: Fast, economical transformation on Microsoft Cloud For retailers, tight integration of data and systems is the antidote to a challenging economy. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 3 mins Retail Industry Digital Transformation BrandPost How retailers are empowering business transformation with TCS and Microsoft Cloud AI-powered omnichannel integration and a strong, secure digital core lets retailers innovate across four primary areas while staying compliant, maintaining security and preventing fraud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 4 mins Retail Industry Cloud Computing BrandPost How to Build ROI from Cloud Migration This whitepaper and webcast can help you calculate the ROI and create a business case for modernizing your legacy applications to the Microsoft Cloud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 1 min Retail Industry Cloud Computing 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