Oprah airs at 4 pm local time in each of the four times zones in the US. At 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern, I called my parents in North Carolina. “Are you watching it? What’s happening?” They were indeed watching, and put the phone up close to the tv, so that I could hear, if not see, our CEO, John, describe how he left a high profile job at Microsoft to found Room to Read. He was the second of three guests detailing how one person can make a difference in the world.

As soon as his segment finished, I thanked my parents, hung up the phone, and walked over to our IT Manager’s desk. “John just finished his segment on Oprah on the East coast. How are our servers holding up?”

He tried to access our web page. It timed out and we received an error message. We both looked at each other quizzically. He ran a report. Our eight dedicated servers had crashed. Within two minutes of John’s segment’s completion. Holy O.