At last weekend’s NDP leadership convention, the party wanted the media to focus on the future prospects of the federal political party, but instead media was trying to understand an IT problem.
The party was relying on an online voting system for both on-location delegates and at-home members to cast their ballots in the multiple-round leadership race. But when the system suffered delays, party officials were scrambling to explain the problem. At first things were blamed on the demand from online voters looking to change their ballot selections. But later, it was revealed it was a denial of service attack.
The resulting media confusion and NDP’s reaction to the problem raises a whole mess of issues. We tackle them in our latest Express IT segment:
Ditch metaphors when explaining tech.