' Year2000.com Announcement List, Special Mailing,
May 28, 1998
by Jon Huntress
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---------- BrainStorm Conference Preview
San Francisco
The next BrainStorm Group Y2K conference will be held at
The Fairmont Hotel Atop Nob Hill, in San Francisco on June
28, 29 and 30. The program will include: crisis management,
contingency planning, cross-enterprise testing, desktop
and distributed systems, embedded systems, legal and
regulatory issues, supply chain management, contingencies
for infrastructure failures, community partnering strategies
and the results of U.S. Industry Readiness Report. There is
a list of speakers at:
brainstorm-group.com .
I've interviewed several of the speakers and asked
them what they were going to talk about at the San
Francisco conference. Their answers are below.
Ian Hayes
Ian's topic at Brainstorm will be Crisis and Transition
Management. In other words, how a company should be
operating over the transition. Ian says that more is
needed than just contingency plans and planning. Some
procedures won't work. Even if Y2K turns out to be a bump
in the road, what about your help lines? What about tech
help? The transition period will start in September of
this year and go through the first quarter of next year.
Crisis management begins whenever the problems start to crop
up. Any organization can handle problems, because that is
what they do every day. But there is a point where the
number of problems an organization can handle exceeds the
ability of the staff. At this point crisis management
begins. Ian thinks it is obvious that the number of problems
will overwhelm companies who are less prepared. Ian pointed
out that if you don't have a crisis management plan, then the
company is "winging it". And when people wing it they often
make mistakes that actually exacerbate the problem and cause
more trouble than the original bug. He gave a good example
of a Y2K team doing a practice run. They showed up at the
factory on a Sunday and wanted to see if they could get the
equipment up. It took them more than two hours just to find
the light switches. Another example would be your back up
communication system. Is it cell phones? Last New Year's
Eve cell phones were useless between 10 PM and 3 AM because
the circuits were saturated with everyone calling everyone
else to wish them happy new year. Think that won't happen
again this year?
Stephanie Moore
Stephanie Moore of the Giga Group will be talking about the
global Year 2000 preparedness, based on multiple 3rd party
studies and interviews that have been published in the
press. She said. "I want to dispel the myth about the
preparedness rating system. So, in other words, even though
the USA rates very well in terms of overall year 2000
preparedness, this does not mean that we are not going to
have significant Y2K related problems. I will focus on the
need for contingency plans or risk mitigation strategies
based on individual company's specific vulnerabilities
(regardless of the country of origin of these
vulnerabilities)."
Lynn Durocher
Lynn Durocher works for Carrier who has a presence in
137 countries. She will focus on contingency planning
for supply chains, including raw materials, infrastructure
and transportation, non-product, distribution channels and
customers. She said that within the U.S., a large majority
are doing well but mid-size firms aren't aware and don't yet
want to invest. Contingencies have to be created because of
this situation. Also, overseas a lot of infrastructure is
owned by the governments themselves and almost no information
is getting out, nor does anyone have the leverage to get it.
The concern is for U.S. firms doing business overseas and
anyone involved with export and import. She said that at least
one country is going manual for their customs office- and this
means inevitable delays and mix ups. She will name names at the
conference. Because many foreign customs have automated in the
last few years they have actually have put themselves in a worse
position. Her session is primarily for anyone who is a Y2k
coordinator, project manager, contingency planner, or in
purchasing. This session would also be good to raise the
general awareness for senior management and help them with
proactive and reactive strategies. The last part of the
presentation will be tips on contingency planning with emphasis
on things that work and lessons that have already been learned.
There will be hand out materials for this.
Ken Owen
Ken Owen of Tava is going to cover contingency planning for
the telecommunications and utility industries. He will cover
creating the plans and what issues everyone needs to know.
He will be preparing his presentation right up until the time
he gives it in order to present the very latest information
available.
Walter Taylor
Walter Taylor works for Delta Technology which is the IT arm
for Delta Airlines. His session will be on what the airline
industry in general and Delta in particular is doing. Walter
says that for the airline industry as a whole, automation has
grown at a very fast pace for the last decade. Because of
de-regulation, airlines are handling more passengers and prices
are low. They have become a commodity business, with
consumers able to keep the prices down. The number one issue
with the airlines is always safety, but they are very dependent
on entities such as the FAA, airports, fuelers, and others in
the supply chain. Walter pointed out that human nature being
what it is, there is a lot of concern about the safety of the
airplanes and their ability to continue their mission. There
is also a general lack of confidence in what the FAA is saying
and Walter will address these concerns directly in his session.
Then he will cover what Delta is doing specifically. He will
talk about Delta's suppliers, their airplanes, simulators and
airports along with the airplanes themselves. The airline
industry has to do this well, he pointed out, because customers
have a very low tolerance for delays.
He will end his session by summing up what Delta has learned
through the Y2K process. He says they have learned 5 valuable
lessons that Delta is going to take into the new millennium.
This talk will be of particular interest to CIOs, Y2K project
managers and anybody in information technology or a business
leadership position.
Lois Zells
Lois Zells is doing a session on how to testify as an expert
witness in Y2K litigation. Although she believes that there
will be Y2k lawsuits in the future, she doesn't think that
there will be the huge amount of litigation that has been
publicized in the past. She said that the chances are very
good that the people who are in on fixing their companies
systems---for example working on project management and
writing the remedial software---will be called on to justify
what they did or didn't do. The litigation being seen at
this time is mostly test cases, brought by companies to
determine if their software providers are responsible for
selling compliant software. Many of these companies dragged
their feet when it came to fixing their software, hoping the
vendors would do it for them.
Lois sees several kinds of litigation coming. The first
would be from people and the families of people who
suffered injury or death from products that failed. She
expects there to be relatively few cases here but there
will be heavy publicity about them. The second would be
from customers of financial institutions who lose access
to their funds. The third will be customers of vendors of
products that don't make the transition including software,
hardware and embedded devices. And fourth, she sees a
field day for class action lawyers.
Lois doesn't testify in a case unless certain conditions
are met. She states that in today's world, many software
organizations barely meet the "minimum standard of care."
However, if she agrees to testify for a client who is being
sued, the client must show that they have exceeded this
"minimum standard of care" and that they are a mature
organization. And if she testifies for a client who is
suing some else, she must be satisfied that the other
organization has not met the "minimum standard of care" for
a mature organization. If she can't get "yes" answers to
the above questions, she doesn't testify.
In order to get to the yes answers she has developed a
series of questions to ask the clients. This checklist is
what her session at Brainstorm will be about. If you can
answer yes to her checklist, then you are on the right
track for being in a defensible legal position.
Jon Huntress
jon@year2000.com
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