Continuity Update, 2/1/16 - Welcome to February!

Check out Mitch!

The Traffic, Ops & Engineering teams have been working like mad scientists to get ready for Master Control and the Talk Studio going offline. Herewith, photo evidence how their efforts are paying off:

Mitch hosted Morning Edition from Studio A last week! That’s big for him, for VPR, and he makes it look easy!

You asked, we answer
You guys totally rocked the Comments section of last week's blog post - thank you for the questions and ideas you posted! For your consideration, a round up of responses to these posts:

Q: Can we have an old-school fire drill?

•  Laurie says yes, absolutely. The date is TBD. On a related topic, we'll also be instructed in security protocols for the building during business and non-business hours. 

Q: Will we have gender-neutral bathrooms available?

•  Brian says that all bathrooms are gender neutral, except for those in front lobby. Public restrooms will also have baby changing station in the handicap-access stall. 

Q: Will VPR News or VPR Classical be playing in the main lobby?

•  There is a speaker system through all the public areas and all rest rooms that will play VPR News and VPR Classical. 

Q: Do I get one filing cabinet or two?

• Each desk comes with a new filing cabinet, and this is new info: there is only one under-the-desk filing cabinet at each work station. If you currently use two and want to move one of them with you, that’s okay. As the final renovations are completed on the existing building, we'll check in with those people who really need and want to have two under-desk file cabinets, and get another new cabinet ordered for them.

Q: Is there a kinder name for LMA rooms besides "Leave Me Alone"?

• Probably, there sure were a lot of suggestions! For now, these don't need to be named, and after we've been in the space for awhile we can decide what we really want to call them.

Whose dishes are in the kitchen?
Have you been diligently organizing and shrinking the amount of stuff at your desk? Good, thank you!

We're now ready to up our game and start to clean out SHARED spaces. Please examine all the shared and public spaces you use, and take home or throw out any personal items you have left there. Otherwise, it might be purged by the kind souls who signed up to take care of these areas for everybody. Members of the Continuity Group have volunteered to purge and pack every common area (closets, bathrooms, meeting areas, etc).

The one remaining area that needs volunteers is the kitchen. Who would like to volunteer to purge and pack the kitchen and coffee/beverage station? Seriously, this is a call for help! Use the Comments section to volunteer.


Deadline for removing your personal items from shared and public spaces is Feb. 15!

Take your seats!
We have a seating chart for the new building, arrived at with a lot of discussion, reworking and sprinkling of fairy dust (i.e., Heather's tears). A big printout of it will be on the bulletin board in the kitchen. This is the seating arrangement that gets us through the next phase, during which we will all be in the new building together while our current home is under renovation.

For those who are staying permanently in the new space, it's largely the seating arrangement we'll keep after our friends leave us. Changes will be possible after we’ve been there awhile, but we'll want to make those shifts with careful consideration - every seat change has a cascading effect on technology, coworkers, etc.

Bring a sweater
A few work items are going to encroach on our existing workspace soon:

• The construction crew will remove windows in the back hallway and board them up until construction is finished - that will create cold days at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. 
• They will make a cut in the brick hallway to open the passageway to the new cafe, probably also in the next week. 
• And finally, they will be removing baseboard plumbing from long hallway. They don’t anticipate that project to be noisy, but know that we’ll be the judge of that.

What else is new around the construction site?
So many things!

Our temporary meeting room/trailer will be delivered on Thursday or Friday, early morning. We'll park it in the paved front parking lot for easy access. It will take Neagley & Chase a few days to get electricity to the trailer before it can be used, but once it's running we'll have it through April 15.

(By the way, do your taxes!)

This morning, pieces of reclaimed barn siding were being measured and installed on the walls around the newsroom. The rough wood finish is beautiful!

And, the iron stairs that lead to the upper floor meeting rooms are being welded and soldered into place:

Thanks for reading all the way through to the end. As always, your questions, comments, observations are great fuel for conversation and planning, so use the Comments section below and keep 'em coming!