WikiLeaks Hit By Powerful Internet-Based Cyberattack CBS New York – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of NY

I guess you can expect some retribution if you embarrass the most powerful country in the world and many other international leaders.

However, who's really to blame in this mess? WikiLeaks or the people who wrote the memos and cables?

WikiLeaks Hit By Powerful Internet-Based Cyberattack CBS New York – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of NY

Sharing knowledge and its benefits

Hi there!  I'm back home after spending most of last week as a guest instructor and coach at the Canadian Emergency Management College in Ottawa. I was there to do the PIO component of the Emergency Ops Centre (EOC) and Incident Site Management courses.

It was a real blast with a fantastic bunch of candidates on the course and very experienced and knowledgeable instructors. I always feel privileged to be asked to go back and share my own modest expertise.

I believe that the instructor often learns as much as the students in this kind of course. Although it was very demanding ... the rewards are numerous.

First, it's something I like doing ... talking about something that motivates me: crisis communications and emergency information ... how PIOs work with command both in the EOC and the incident CP. There's nothing more rewarding then witnessing the sudden understanding dawn in the mind of an experienced senior firefighter who's been afraid of media for years.

I spent a few minutes talking with a fairly senior firefighter from a major city in Québec. He had a bad experience with media a few years back and has never done another interview since ... always referring reporters to some other officials within his department ...

I took a few minutes to outline the message mapping crisis communications technique with him ... how it makes for an easily usable and very visual representation of key messages. After a while ... he said that he now had a much clearer understanding that things don't have to be complicated ... you focus on a couple/few key messages ... well crafted and supported by some key facts ...you visualize them in/on a message map and it's easy to relay the information. That was a highlight of my week. I literally saw the light go on in his mind!

Second, interacting with experienced senior officials from police services, fire departments, EMS, public works and others ... is a good way of validating what we've been trying to impart for years. Does what we believe in and teach or talk about in presentations and seminars, relate to the daily experiences on the ground? To my immense relief, the answer seems to be yes.

Finally, you do learn a great many things about the work of first responders, city engineers and others and how they prepare for emergencies in their communities. That's extremely valuable in itself and provides you with a greater and more accurate perspective on what communications support they might need, what crisis communications planning is most appropriate for them and how they see the role of the PIOs in their EM functions.

All in all it was a great week. Looking forward to the next time already. The only hiccup ... i missed my wife and kids while i was in Ottawa!

An interesting online community

In the last few weeks I have been involved with a new community whose objective is to foster emergency management and business continuity online.

PTSC stands for Partnership Toward Safer Communities and is supported financially by the Canadian government and sponsored by the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs.

Here's the link: http://www.ptsc-online.ca/

I enjoin you to take a look. I believe it's a very worthwhile project.
In fact, a colleague of mine (Barry Radford) and I have decided to put together an initiative to advance crisis and emergency communications practices.

Here's a brief outline of what we propose to do: http://www.ptsc-online.ca/forums/ptsconlineprojects/recommendationsforaptsconlineproject

It's really an open source initiative and we're really hoping to get a lot of input, comments, suggestions and even criticism (if warranted !!! ) in order to foster debate and general contributions.

Hope we'll hear from you!

What better endorsement for being prepared?

The BP Gulf Spill almost brought down that industrial giant. Now, the head of the company at the time admits they were totally caught off guard by the accident itself ... but also the intense media and public scrutiny that followed.

Here's a quote that sums it up rather nicely:

"Embarrassingly we found ourselves having to improvise on prime-time TV and slap bang in the middle of the glare of the global media. Our efforts involved amazing feats of engineering – tasks completed in days that would normally take months, numerous major innovations with lasting benefits.
But because every move was scrutinised around the world, what the public thought they saw was fumbling and incompetence."

That's Tony Hayward, the former head of BP.
full story here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/11/tony-hayward-bp-oil-spill

There's really nothing else to say.

If there ever was a time to ...

OK ... you've heard this many times but apparently some people still don't get it. In a world of instantaneous sharing ... the need for an immediate response is no longer a desirable feature of your crisis management plan ... it's become an absolute necessity.

Case in point: the Quantas airline near-disaster this week: see this post from Gerald Baron on it:
http://ww2.crisisblogger.com/?p=1269

a couple of quick thoughts:

1. if something bad happens ... get in front of it ... don't wait hours or say that nothing's going on
2. always assume that people, your audiences know ...
3. if you're using social media for marketing and PR ... why not use it as an emergency info channel too?

Things will never be the same again ... we're in the era of the "human network". It doesn't matter if the actual platforms (facebook, twitter, others) come and go ... most of us like to have the ability to communicate instantly what we're experiencing ... to share our feelings ... good or bad ... that cat ain't going back in the bag!

In a way, we're in an ultra-post-McLuhan world ... the medium is more than just the message ... the media (or platform) is now the user ... more on that a little later.

For people in crisis communications planning, the expectations are now clear ... it's do or die ... and do it PDQ ...

So, we come back to the four Ps: Plans (or procedures), People, Preparation, Practice ...

1. Plan and Procedures: who does what? Who do we involve? Do we have enough latitude and delegation of authority to respond immediately? If not, you've failed!  Today, that means total integration of the different channels you might use to respond ... from social media to web to traditional media ...
2. People: ... it's zero-dark thirty ... your guy is asleep ... or the B or C (or Z team) is on duty ... are they trained to know what to do? do they have the basic knowledge of crisis comms and crisis response to fill in the templates (see below) to get the ball rolling?  if not, you've failed again!
3. Preparation: you know what risks your business or organization faces ... well do you?  you don't ?  you've failed ....and if you do ... have you prepared pre-scripted response that tell your audiences that you know what's going on and you have a plan to address the issue/deal with the incident? you don't ... you've failed yet again .... it's not rocket science ... a simple HIRA or risk analysis will guide you ... My colleague Barry Radford and I have been proponents of the message mapping technique to prepare our crisis communications response ... it's simple and offers a multitude of uses once approved ... more here from a recent post by Barry: http://barryradford.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/the-message-map/     .... you should have a whole compendium of such message maps or related templates ... ready to be filled out and used to effect an immediate response: we're aware of the incident and have implemented our response plan, we're investigating ... but our first priority is the safety and well being of ... yadda yadda ... you get the point ... again, if I can figure it out ... the complete theory of relativity it ain't ...
4. Practice ... it's all and well to have all three elements above ... but if your plans sit on dusty shelf ... if your people have left or rotated out of their normal jobs ... or have been trained ages ago ... if your message maps haven't been updated ... you'll fail again ... so practice ... run exercises as often as you can ... involve as many of the business functions in your organizations as you can ... you can never have enough alternates and back up ... and there might be some real talent available to you there as well ...

those FOUR Ps sum up a crisis communications plan/crisis management plan ... and because technology and social media are changing our world .... I would now add a fifth P .... P for Platform ... that is social media ...

Because of the growing evolution of social media, its interdependencies with all other means of communications, and its growing involvement in all aspects of our lives ... the use of social media platforms ... those used by millions/billions of people ... is now a MUST for any comms response plan.

You must therefore integrate social media in all aspects of the plan:

• from your procedures: who posts? who has access to the accounts on the platforms you'll be using?
• are your people familiar with social media? with the conversational aspect of the many platforms? the ongoing exchange of info and ideas and how to use crisis communications practices in SM ?
• Preparation: why not have tweets ready to go? facebook posts and blogs?
• Practice: ensure that your key people have accounts on these platforms and can use them effectively ...

Hope this makes some sort of sense ... I know the obstacles are numerous: from policy, to misunderstanding of social media at the top or just paralysis caused by a blind application of the Incident Management System ... well, today, there's no time for inaction when the public's perception on your response is firmed up in a matter of minutes ...

Thanks and I look forward to your comments yet again!

Crisis Commons and Random Hacks of Kindness

Hey folks ! These are good people doing good work !

See below some info on Crisis Commons and Random Hacks of Kindness.

If you can help, please do so

Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0 (RHoK)


is in Toronto on December 4 - 5, 2010. This is the first Canadian RHoK event and the 3rd global event.



Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the world, working to develop software solutions that respond to the challenges facing humanity today. RHoK is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster relief experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems.

Last June I had the awesome honour to participate in RHoK 1.0 -Sydney, Australia. It was amazing to support and promote their efforts. Check out a RHoK 1.0 video from the event

Calling all Brains

We will need Hackers, storytellers, software engineers, programmers, university students, marketers, web content creators, emergency planners,international policy and development students, teachers, librarians, videographers, event planners, organizers, project managers and YOU. Creating humanitarian software in a hackathon is a very special collective collaboration.

Participants can select from a number of problem definitions. (These will be posted in the new few weeks.)

Video screens and online tools like IRC, blogs, wikis and more tools will connect the world. You could be collaborating with any of these countries to solve problems and brainstorm. Yes, there is even some healthy competition in store.

Help us make this global event RHoK. RHoK 2.0 is happening in Toronto (Canada), Chicago (USA), Berlin (Germany), Bangalore(India), Mexico City(Mexico), New York(New York), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Aarhus (Denmark), Nairobi (Kenya) and Lusaka (Zambia).

Registration

Register for RHoK Toronto

Date: December 4, 2010: 9:00am - December 5, 2010 8pm. ALL NIGHT

Location: University of Toronto, 100 St. George Ave. Sid Smith, Rooms 2015,2016,2019,2020

Tshirts and stickers will be provided.

HELP US BY SPONSORING

We are looking for food and beverage sponsors for the RHOK 2.0 event. We will need food and drinks for 30-50 volunteers for 6 meals.

Please contact Heather AT textontechs.com or @heatherleson

Thank you to University of Toronto, Idee Inc, TinEYE and HackTO for sponsoring the event.



Heather Leson

heatherleson@gmail.com

Twitter: HeatherLeson

Blog: textontechs.com

The Social Media Beat

A new social media resource or link ... this one from the International Association of Chiefs of Police ///

The Social Media Beat

Drought may threaten much of globe within decades

This story is very much related to my post of last Friday on the theme of "WATER" for world blogging day.


Drought may threaten much of globe within decades: "

The food we eat

A new study, based on twenty-two computer climate models and a comprehensive index of drought conditions, as well as analyses of previously published studies, finds that most of the Western Hemisphere, along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, will be at risk of extreme drought this century; in contrast, higher-latitude regions from Alaska to Scandinavia are likely to become more moist

The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, according to a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai.

No

read more

"

Crisis Commons and Crisis Camp

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: a good resource

08 31 10 berkman presentation

View more presentations from Heather Blanchard.

Blog action day: water scarcity and impact for EM planners

Hello everyone! Today is Blog Action Day which is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year's topic is water.
http://blogactionday.change.org/



This will explain why water is the subject of this year's actions: http://blogactionday.change.org/why-water


For emergency managers, the concept of water scarcity and its impact on our North American society might be difficult to grasp because the problem is not yet an acute one. But how soon before it becomes so?


There have already been some heated discussions between states in the Southern US on water supply. http://lakelanierdilemma.com/lake_lanier_proj_00000b.htm and many issues related to the Klamath River water system in the Northwest ... and many Californians have felt the effects of water shortages at different times over the last few years.


By all accounts, these situations are only going to get worse.http://rd.tetratech.com/climatechange/projects/nrdc_climate.asp


What does this mean for EM planners? What are the implications in terms of public policy and public safety? Could we face internal mass migration toward areas where it's perceived there is more water? 


Would the Great Lakes area be flooded by American or Canadian refugees? 


It's often very difficult for EM planners to look at long time hazards/risks and engage in efficient mitigation and preparedness practices. In this case, I'd say that this is a topic that cannot be ignored. Large segments of the North American continent would not be able to sustain the population levels that are projected for 2050. Where will these people go? what will be the pressures on other states and on the relationship between the US and Canada? 


As climate change slowly affects all of our lives, many scientists and observers think that its impact will become more and more apparent on our demographics and geography. People will move where there is water, where crops can grow. Large swaths of territory (i'm thinking Vegas and Phoenix in particular, but also many areas of Texas, the central plains, Alberta and Saskatchewan, even northern Florida) will be severely impacted. 


How do you plan for a population displacement on such a scale? 


Yeah, I know. It's still some 40 years away but my children and their children will need water ...