last week, at the exact moment that i happened to scheduled a Campfire chatting session, 37signals’ servers went down. some of you might think that’s not such a big deal, but 37signals serves up tens of thousands (if not millions) of pages a day and they were completely offline for about 3 hours. it was their first major downtime in about 8 years, and it just so happened to occur for the 3 hours i scheduled for chatting.
anyhoo, i thought it was such an amazing coincidence that i decided to leave a comment on their blog, Signal vs. Noise (SVN), describing what happened:
get this. i’m living (and working) in antarctica right now, and i’ve been using campfire to chat with my friends and family back home. i set up a time and people just show up and come and go and we have a great time with it. this crazy downtime just happened to occur at the exact moment i schedule. what are the chances?
the next day i got an email from Matt Linderman at 37signals!!!
hey eli-
just saw your message at signal vs. noise. first off, sorry for the downtime. second off, your use of campfire sounds interesting. would you be up for a mini-case study? (just means answering a few questions.) we’d publish it at our blog. let me know.
-matt
i almost couldn’t believe what was happening. some of you may remember the first time i was featured on SVN and my post about that, but this time it was a much bigger deal. i wrote back, he sent me the questions, and i wrote back with my answers (along with a few screen shots and some links to flickr pics).
the post went live a few days later. enjoy!
Campfire keeps Eli Duke in touch with friends/family while in Antarctica
Filed under: nerdery
hey eli. it’s dk. as i’ve stated previously, you are my hero.
i read the article about the whole campfire deal and was intrigued. i’d never heard of it before. i went to the site and signed up hoping that i could check out your chat room, but i’m horribly un-tech-savvy. all i can do now that i’ve set up an account is sit in my own lobby with my lame chat room that no one knows exists. any advice on maneuvering this website so i can drop you a line?
dk,
first off, you’re a sweet heart… a big pile of sugar.
secondly, that’s a good question. as far as chatting with ME personally, you’d have to come to MY chatroom. i set up an “antarctica” chatroom and then made it public. all you have to do is click on the link below:
http://elisfanclub.campfirenow.com/bf8b5
but that’s not all. you have to go there when i’m there too, or else you’ll be in the same situation you were in before. i chat once a week, and here are the times:
McMurdo Station, Antarctica -> Tuesday, 8am – 10am
West Coast -> Monday, 11am – 1pm
East Coast -> Monday, 2pm – 4pm
Granada, Spain -> Monday, 8pm – 10pm
so there you have it! i hope to see you there next tuesday.