Editor's Blog: Working from home is snow joke

It's not always the events of high drama that can disrupt the working week. Today it's the homogeneous nucleation of cloud droplets that only occurs at temperatures colder than -35° (thanks Wikipedia) - which to you and me is also known as snow.

And as Wikipedia further points out, substantial snowfall can disrupt public infrastructure and services, slowing human activity even in regions that are accustomed to such weather.

I wouldn't say the public infrastructure of the South of England is particularly used to this amount of snow we've had today, hence some pretty widespread working from home. The obvious point to make: business continuity plans aren't just for major incidents. Chances are you're either nodding smugly at that last point or scowling, depending on how well your plans have performed today.

Like the rest of the silicon.com team (apart from one brave soul who fought his way in, presumably using a combination of snow shoes, huskies and skis), I'm working from home.

Fortunately over the last couple of years we've had a couple of test runs of the whole team simultaneously working from home, and that experience has really helped us today - at least so far. For example, instead of having our morning editorial meeting in person, we had an instant messenger conference.

If you want a peek at how one of our previous working from home experiments panned out, take a look here.

And if you want some ideas for getting the most out of snow day, check out our 10 top tips for working from home.

It's strange that in times of even minor emergency, my first recourse is low tech: this morning I checked the local radio, which was handy for travel advice but also for providing a few horror stories from the brave souls that did head out.

My second port of call was much more cutting-edge - Twitter, to find out how the bad weather was affecting fellow tweeters.

From that I discovered that most had given up on the journey into central London and were recommending that everyone else do the same. After that it was just entertaining to keep up to date with the flurry of tweets from those that were braving the snowy wonderland: "Just watched a Maserati skid all over Park Lane," said one tweet. "Hit by a snowball," said another. Similarly, Flickr is already filling up with drifts of snow pics.

The big loser in all this so far I think is TV. I just haven't bothered to switch it on at all today, because it was unable to provide the granularity of response I wanted, whether it was about my neighbourhood or my friends.

Let us know how your IT organisation has coped with today's weather - and please share any tips you might have - by posting a Reader Comment below, or emailing editorial@silicon.com. And let's not forget - a big freeze is always followed by a big melt, so best get ready for that too.