It wasn’t long into Monday when the AWS blackout hit and our snarky Gen Z employee (everyone needs one), Ben, wrote out on our teams chat. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like if I messed up and the whole internet went down for a few hours.” Neither can we, it was a rough day for a lot of people. But it got us thinking: how could you spend your day the old-fashioned way, in a dashboard-less, cloud free world? If your productivity joined your mind and was “geographically misplaced” on Monday, just save this for the next time (there will always be a next time).
- Reintroduce Yourself to Your Local Hard Drive
Remember that mysterious folder icon on your desktop? That’s your local storage. Inside, you might even find old projects, downloads, or relics of the pre-cloud era. Who knows what treasures (or 2014 shapefiles) await?
- Draw a Map by Hand
Grab a pen and paper and embrace your inner cartographer. Add a north arrow. A scale bar. Maybe even a compass rose if you’re feeling fancy. When your coworker walks by, say you’re “prototyping offline visualizations.” If you really wanted to scare your coworkers, you could always pull out a paper map. Bonus points if they are under the age of 30 and barely remember a time before GPS or MapQuest. You may get a call from HR letting you know that you can take the day off, since you are clearly ill.
- Finally Clean Your Folder Names
Remember your local storage from before? “Data_v2_final_FINAL_reallythisone” deserves closure. Take this time to organize your files — or at least rename them something that won’t embarrass you in your next sync. Better yet, delete what you don’t need anymore, since it only serves to confuse you.
- Explain Complex Data Theories to Your Pet
Work from home? Have a good chat with man’s best friend. They won’t understand, but they won’t interrupt, either. And honestly, it’s great practice for your next client presentation. If you can get your dog to understand it, the sales team will certainly be able to figure it out.
- Recreate Your Favorite Dataset from Memory
Can you remember your top five census tracts? Your favorite ZIP Code? What about the address of the shopping center you were looking at? No cheating with cached tiles — this is pure cartographic recall. Just tell everyone that you are training for Jeopardy and need to work on your pointless trivia and memory recall speed.
- Go Ground-Truthing (a.k.a. Take a Walk)
If you can’t analyze the world digitally, you might as well explore it physically. Walk your neighborhood, grab a coffee, and call it “data validation.”
While we can’t get your time back from Monday, there are certainly tips here to help the next time you lose cloud access. After all, there will always be a next time.
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