Have You Seen These

Tag Archives: #EM

Is It Time For Meerkat?

In a few days the iconic South By Southwest (SXSW)  festival opens in Austin, Texas.  The future of music, film and computer technology is presented and explored, including new social media apps.  Twitter was introduced there in 2007 and Foursquare ...

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It’s Time To Herd The Cats

“Volunteers bring risk that is hard to manage.” This recent tweet, made by someone with purported emergency management experience, was made in response to my asking the question about several tweets they posted discounting the concept of using volunteers for ...

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Hashtags, SMashtags

“Standardize hashtags”- Ugh, here we go again. Another call for standardizing the use of hashtags during crisis. A report by the United Nations was just released, “Hashtag Standards For Emergencies”. Patrick Meier’s recent blog post provides excellent summary and background information ...

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There Is No Silver Bullet

I just got back from the Oregon Emergency Medical Services conference in Salem, where I talked about the use of social media for crisis communications. After the three presentations I asked one of the conference coordinators if he had heard ...

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1.5 Hours Is Now 1.5 Days

A videotaped interview of four government employees responsible for handling public information functions after the August 24, 2014 Napa, California earthquake reveals real challenges and inherent conflicts between quickly informing the public, fulfilling incident command responsibilities and ensuring the safety ...

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Thoughts on Crisis Comms Leadership

Preaching about the use of social media tools during crisis is much easier than actually doing it. Especially for smaller agencies with limited staff. But, does that mean it can’t be done? Absolutely not. Because of the recent Ferguson, Missouri ...

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Deafening Silence In Ferguson

Over the past two days I’ve closely followed the civil unrest in the small enclave of Ferguson, Missouri, a small suburb outside of St. Louis. A Ferguson police officer shot and killed a young African American male after some type ...

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Syncing Command and Collaboration

Commander or collaborator? In the realm of managing emergency incidents both functions have to happen to make emergency incidents safely go away. Yet, we always assign an “incident commander”, someone responsible – organizationally and legally – for the emergency response. ...

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Mike Tyson Is Right

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson. I saw this quote while scanning an excellent article in the Harvard Business Journal about the changing dynamics of business command and control, often referred to ...

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