This year, during the holiday season, I hatched an idea for a new white board for NSIDC Operations. Our old white board was serviceable, but getting long of the tooth and not as functional as we have needed more recently. So, I ordered a new magnetic white board and started putting together something a bit more flexible that could change as our duties evolve.

Below are pictures of the old and new white boards:

The old board was focused on ECS as that has been the primary task of Operations for many years. However, more recently, our responsibilities have included a lot more of our locally-developed custom software. I’ve decided to bring forward our concepts of status codes (green = nominal, red = unplanned downtime, etc) to our non-ECS products and made the team a set of magnets to denote them.

Most of the text I simply printed on magnetic paper, but the magnetic status markers and name plates I actually printed on my 3D printer. This was a fun bit of crafting as I got to use the software I created to make tokens again and make something that really stands out.

I also consider this a gift to my team, and it’s been really great to see everyone enjoying playing with the magnets and talking to other people in the center about what it all means. It’s a nice piece of visibility for all the things that Ops does for the organization, and I look forward to playing around with the concept and seeing what everyone’s imagination might cook up next.

Oh yes, I have plans.