On Wednesday, August 31, I had finished my work day in my home office in Sanford, Florida. My wife Lisa, my 2 daughters, and I had just finished dinner, and I went into my office for a minute and noticed that I received an email (not a surprise when you work at Microsoft). After reading it, without even thinking, I immediately sent an email that started this massive initiative [http://www.katrinasafe.com].
The email was from Rebecca Harriss who blind copied the Hotmail email alias. She saw an email from a Microsoft Consultant on the ground volunteering for the Red Cross [original email below] that was using Hotmail to email loved ones of evacuees in the relief center. She saw John's plea to increase the limits of his Hotmail account on a different alias, and engaged 3 key people on the Hotmail team (who had helped John in like 3 minutes, the Hotmail team rocks).
At 7:44 pm EST, I responded to the people on this thread, carbon copying my mentor at Microsoft, who is a Principle Architect in MCS, and long-time good friend Jim Carroll [The Jim in the Jim and Dan Show], and told them:
John, I am a developer currently in a TS role in State and Local Government, and have several friends in MCS. I, with possible some help from my friends, could work tonight to create a Winform app, Access or InfoPath, that can send the emails through simple smtp, saving the data locally and sending it to a web service for a master store on one of our servers. If I could get that done asap, would that help?
John replied [while somewhat throwing down the challenge] at 9:09 pm EST stating that his current solution was working.
"Thanks, Dan. For now, the Hotmail setup is working reasonably well simply because it doesn't require anything more than IE (many of the machines we have are running Win9x). If the number of messages being sent through this comm center starts increasing, the Winform setup could be something we'd want to revisit, assuming that we could provide the necessary server infrastructure. The real key is that we need something that's really lightweight and easy for folks to use. Hotmail currently fits both of these needs, but I'd be happy for you to make something better :)"
I thought what he was doing was great, and should be available for anyone.
At that point, I opened the my Office Communicator, and instant messaged Jim asking him if he has read my emails yet.
Trying to think how I could help, I responded to John that:
"I would host a server or find a host, and create a site with SharePoint or create a web application, if that will help.
I think a very lightweight entry system, then queue the messages for delivery (for scalability). Then for the other side, the ability to review the list, search by any of the entered elements in a simple search page. What do you think?
I wish I knew someone with some speech server hardware and capacity. To give people the ability to call a number and try to find a loved one (from the database), or leave an entry saying I am ok (also in the database)."
At 10:10 pm EST, I see the first email from Jim, on the current thread: "I have hardware and a public IP address – what do you need?", and thus began Jim's involvement in KatrinaSafe.com (without his involvment, it would be a FRACTION of what it is today).
Jim was one of the many in Alabama that made it through the Hurricane. Jim, Paula, and the boys were bunkered up in his house in a suburb of Birmingham during Katrina, sustaining some damage to his property and was without power for a while.
Jim called me and we went back and forth discussing architecture that can help evacuees notify their loved ones. At about 11 pm EST, I wrote the first line of code on this new system. Had I only known that this would be the first of many sleepless nights...
Somewhere between 11 pm, and 1:26 am EST, we brought in another of the key members of the team, Dave Gardner. Jim called Dave and told him what we were doing, and Dave in a nonchalant manner says, I have a 6-way box that is available in my home office if you need it (yeah, that blew us away too, my home office server is an old 733 mhz machine with 256 mb of RAM). It is also during this time I had a conversation with Jim suggesting that he takes the Project Management role, and I will focus on the Development role. (Jim refers to this a Dan driving the bus over him.)
So now with Jim in Alabama, me in Sanford, and now Dave in Sacramento, Jim sends the following message out to John:
"All,
We have been on the phone nailing down the issues and this is what we have:
I coded the web application into the night, and passed off the working source code to Dave, who at 5:31 am EST stated that he "prettied up the site", by providing the colors, logo, and the look and feel you see today, while I vaguely remember going to sleep around 4 or 5 am.
Life goes on...
So while this project is brewing in the background, I am up at 7:30 am EST to spend some time with my girls, and get a start on a regular workday. I have several appointments, and things I have to do (help sell more InfoPath as a good IW TS should ).
I get a urgent call around 1:50 pm EST, and a meeting request to attend a conference call with John Morello, Dave, Allen Abrahamson (Dave’s manager), and a member of one of Microsoft’s partners, Greg Blackett to discuss what just happened and what would cause a change in course and a rewrite of the code I wrote the night before to be a Evacuee Management System, and Missing Person Inquiry System.
Much more to write, I am gonna sign off for now… TO BE CONTINUED!
Dan Manrique
Original Thread:
From: Rebecca Harriss Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 6:54 PMTo: John Morello; Gil Gordon; Omar Shahine; Steve FriesenSubject: Re: Hotmail needs for Red Cross at hurricane sheltersImportance: High
Steve Friesen, Omar Shahine and Gil Gordon are three people in Hotmail that I know. I have added them to the thread.Hopefully one of them can help or redirect appropriately. BCC’ing the other aliases off the list.-Rebecca
From: John Morello <jmorello@microsoft.com>Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:38:36 -0700To: Conversation: Hotmail needs for Red Cross at hurricane sheltersSubject: Hotmail needs for Red Cross at hurricane sheltersI'm sending this via OWA in a Red Cross shelter in LA with poor connectivity. Can someone please forward the below message to the right folks in MSN?>>>>>>>I'm a consultant with MCS that lives in south Louisiana. I'm volunteering with the Red Cross helping setup the needed IT facilities for dealing with the thousands of refugees in or moving into the shelters. I'm setting up a basic messaging system that volunteers are using to send messages from survivors to loved ones they've been seperated from. All we have at this point is IP connectivity (Exchange, SharePoint and the like aren't options), so I'm using a single Hotmail address (katrinasafe@hotmail.com) that all volunteers are sharing. The workflow is that survivors fill out a brief paper form with their name and the missing person's email and cell phone number. The volunteers then take this and send a short, pre-formed message to the seperated person's email and cell phone (via a web based SMTP/SMS gateway service) letting them know that the sender is alive and at the shelter.What we need at this point is to have the mailbox size limit for the account increased immediately (rather than after 30 days) since we're sending (and hopefully receiving) thousands of messages. If we could also get integration with Outlook Live, that would be great too, as it would make it easier for staff to manage the messages that are being sent and received. Also, unless you really have something revolutionary to suggest, please keep in mind the type of situation we're in. We can't put up a server or domain or expect anything but very basic computer knowledge from the volunteers.I and the thousands of people currently suffering in LA and MS appreciate the help.John