Editor's Note: Happy December

When I sat down to write this Editor’s Note, files for the December issue of Safety+Health were being completed and prepped for printing. As I looked over and signed off on final pages, I re-read Richard Hawk’s “All About You” column on being grateful. The theme hit home because the S+H team experienced some moments this month in which I wondered whether the print version of the December issue would be published at all.

Missing a printer deadline is an almost unheard-of event in magazine publishing. If your files aren’t ready to go when your publication is scheduled to be “on press,” the printing company moves on to its next project and you’re out of luck. Yet during the final week of production on the December issue – when ads had arrived, the layout had been created and we’re typically in hyperdrive – we arrived on Monday morning to find we couldn’t access our server. The server is maintained by a third-party vendor, which had experienced a major hardware failure. So while the National Safety Council’s in-house IT department stayed in contact with the vendor to obtain updates and try to find a workaround, the S+H team met frequently to discuss what would need to be done once access was restored. As we neared the end of a second day of waiting, I was truly touched to hear team members express their willingness to work 24 hours a day to get the job done.

Fortunately, that turned out to be unnecessary. But during a month when gratefulness is a topic in this magazine, I want to take the opportunity to extend my thanks to my colleagues on the S+H staff, whose commitment to the publication makes me proud to be a part of it, and to S+H’s readers, who motivate us to keep doing what we do. Have a safe and happy holiday season.