Bird flu will test our collaborative technologies
It is a very early Tuesday morning at 4.30am: I am standing with several thousand people on Market street in downtown San Francisco, watching mayor Gavin Newsom give a speech to commemorate the 1906 earthquake. Alongside him are some of the survivors, an amazing living link to an event that totally remade San Francisco.
One hundred years ago the city received a devastating double blow. A massive earthquake destroyed hundreds of homes but it was the firestorm that came in its wake that razed the city to rubble from horizon to horizon. More than 3,000 were dead, 250,000 were made homeless.
The commemoration of the event was a perfect way to remind people and businesses in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley region to be prepared for the next big earthquake. The Hayward fault in the East Bay is the one that is way overdue for a tectonic shift. It runs east and west under the most populous communities in the Bay Area region.
Most businesses do have contingency plans, and rally points, and equipment to help their staff survive a big earthquake.
But there is another contingency plan that most companies do not yet have: How they will deal with the very real possibility of an epidemic of Bird flu. The migratory birds will start landing in their hundreds and thousands in North America in the late summer and Fall and that's when it will begin infecting domestic birds, and pets such as cats, and then humans.
Will its 57 per cent human mortality rate become less lethal as the virus mutates? Will the virus figure out how to move from human to human? Will Bird flu kill millions of people in the US?
All these things are likely--although not guaranteed. And there are dozens of questions and different outcomes. However, it is a very serious health crisis and we can only watch as it unfolds...
Ted Shelton, an entrepreneur in residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, the early stage VC firm, has been following the topic of Asian flu, as a lay expert, for more than a year.
"We will be lucky because the rest of the world will first see the effects of avian flu. We should be better prepared because we'll be able to witness the outbreaks in other countries," says Mr Shelton.
Recently, I ran into Andy Yue, who is VP of Operations at Worksoft, one of the largest Chinese software outsourcing companies. I was quite impressed by the description and achievements of Worksoft and how it integrates into Silicon Valley startups and larger organisations.
We spoke about Chopin and Debussy, and I also mentioned my concern about the bird flu virus. And I realized Silicon Valley companies have development teams all around the world, India, China, the Philippines, etc. All areas of the globe will have to deal with the same issue sooner or later: how do you continue doing business and protect your people around the world?
In the Bird flu outbreak, the goal will be to limit the spread of the virus by limiting human-to-human contact. In other words, we'll all be working from home for a while.
Which is lucky, because we now have all these wonderful, and simple collaborative media technologies: Blogging, wikis, instant messaging, online whiteboards, group calendars, simple development languages, etc.
The Bird flu will be an opportunity to put our collaborative technologies to the test in a full scale, mission-critical environment. And out of it will come scores of best practices and totally novel applications.
But let's hope the collaborative media technologies work as advertised and we can hole up until the vaccine arrives, or the virus burns itself out.
In this year of the centennial commemoration of the 1906 earthquake, please review your companies earthquake response readiness and also make sure you have an Bird flu response plan.
Please see: U.S. Plan For Flu Pandemic Revealed
Multi-Agency Proposal Awaits Bush's Approval
