Grateful 8 May: All Systems Go!

I thought it was necessary to write an entry today rather than wait till tomorrow, as I will probably be too exhausted after a full day of training delivery. So here goes: 

• Training Preparation Completed. I agreed to take over the training on Tuesday while I was in the midst of attending my aunt’s wake. The training delivery is scheduled for this weekend, which meant I had only 3 days to prepare. That is an incredibly tight timeline, but I agreed readily as there was no one else available to do it. This is probably the fastest I have ever completed my training preparation: content review, report writing, activity sheets, and so on. I am glad I had conducted this module before and had previously spent considerable time going through every slide and activity in detail. That familiarity allowed me to ramp up the preparation incredibly quickly. 

• Canvas Down. I learned from a fellow trainer this morning that there was a worldwide Canvas outage. This followed the recent hacking of the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). It got many of us worried, as we rely on the system to distribute learning materials and conduct assessments. Another trainer asked me whether I thought the LMS issue would be resolved by tomorrow, and I replied, “Pessimistically optimistic - especially since it’s a global outage. Even if they get it up, they will still need to check the settings to ensure everything is properly in place, and that would take time.” With that in mind, I immediately went into contingency planning mode and converted the assessment documents into Word files in case the IT department could not get the LMS up in time. I was relieved to receive a text late in the evening saying that the system was back up and everything had been restored. Grateful to the IT department for their quick actions. I did a check and everything looks good. Hopefully it runs smoothly this Sunday! 

• All Systems in Place. Barring any more unforeseen issues, it is all systems go for tomorrow’s training. And that is not easy given the sheer number of processes that need to be in place: LMS setup, trainer portal setup (for training administration, attendance taking, assessment recording, training evaluation, etc.), government attendance tracking settings, and more. I am grateful to the operations team for putting all these in place at such short notice. Ironically, I think it was precisely because it was an urgent last-minute change that everyone paid extra attention to it. Still, I am grateful for the support and teamwork. 

So yes, today was very much about training preparation. Despite the last-minute shock of the system downtime, everything got sorted out and it is now all systems go. Beyond that, I also managed to catch up with PY over a very nice lunch, visited T at the hospice again, and achieved my exercise goal by walking some 10 km before taking the bus home after the visit. All in all, it was a productive day.

Looking forward to the training tomorrow!