Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Tourists
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2014 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
What do you know about pipe organs?
Several years ago, all I knew about organs I'd learned from a few pages in Cryptonomicon comparing them to vacuum-tube computers. And I liked their sound. I was a regular attendee at the Community Church of New York at the time, and CCNY featured organ music in its Sunday service.
One day I heard that they were fundraising for organ upkeep. To help people see what needed doing and why, someone led a small group of us on a guided tour of the organ. I got to see how its parts related to each other, how all the inputs turned into the sound we enjoyed.
Any sysadmin or manager trying to persuade others to invest in long-term infrastructure should consider a similar tactic. Give your stakeholders a tour of your system's anatomy, so they can appreciate it.
