Software bugs by FlapJack

Last week we held our Q&A webinars. The idea was simple: we wanted to answer everyone's questions about AceProject. Also, we had put together a little surprise for our attendees: screen shots of the upcoming cost tracking features.

The first webinar went well and people we really happy with it! We were delighted at were looking forward to the second one.

And that's when technology happened.

As people were logging in the second webinar, we lost audio. Not just some attendees. Audio was down for everyone. It was bad enough that after 15 minutes, I gave up an rescheduled the webinar for this week (December 16, 2pm EST). I felt awful about having to strand everyone who showed up to get their questions answered. After all 60+ people showed up for the webinar, and I couldn't get it to work!

I was pleasantly surprised to see how supportive the messages were during my failed troubleshooting. People told me not to worry about, that technology happens, and that they were not holding it against me.

What's the lesson here?

  1. We can't control everything.
  2. People deserve more credit than we give them when it comes to technical problems.
  3. Acknowledging a problem and apologizing for the inconvenience is a simple and effective way to deal with the uncontrollable.

What about you? How do you deal with the uncontrollable?