Social Media 4 Emergency Management

If you have access to any “public information officer curriculum,” I have a homework assignment for you:

Check the curriculum and compare how many slides are dedicated to social media versus the number focused on writing press releases.

Recently, I have been taking a look at both public information slides and videos and it is interesting to see how dated many presentations are with regards to information dissemination.

Often, there is a “nod” to social media where a slide will say “it’s important and you might want to figure it out,” but rarely is there any specific discussion of the benefits or instruction on how to use it effectively.

What really kills me though is the extraordinary focus on press release development! Typically, PIO curriculum will spend several slides talking about the length, clarity of the ideas conveyed and having a bold title or “hook” in the release.

Seriously?

When you are in a dynamic situation, spending time fashioning a perfect press release is rarely going to be possible. In fact, while you are writing that press release, people around you are tweeting, posting on facebook and filling in the blanks you think you will be answering.

Press releases are too long and too slow. That is all.

Your public information officer or section should be fashioning talking points just as quickly as you can verify key information about your emergency.

These talking points should be focused on the following types of information:

• Identify who the “official sources” are that will be sharing information,
• Share what is happening and confirmed (or share openly about when you can or will share more information),
• Provide information on how people can protect themselves, and/or
• Give ideas on how people/onlookers can help (channel the benevolent desire to help immediately).

If you are managing public information in an emergency, your list of talking points should be dynamic and changing regularly.  Allow for various ways for dissemination and forgo the need to approve every single message.  Instead, ensure that the talking points are reviewed and approved periodically.

Social Media information significantly changes what is possible for both Public Information and Planning sections of any Emergency Operation Center (EOC) or Incident Command Post (ICP).  Be sure that your training curriculum stays current and doesn’t find itself wasting time on antiquated products like press releases.

Two weeks ago, I shared the seeds of a vision that I’ve had for just over a year now which involves developing an emergency management association or think tank that truly involves a whole community of participants.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve found myself engaging with state and national emergency management associations, technology groups, volunteer organizations and educational institutions, but they are all led by “experts” within each of their respective fields.  I have yet to find an organization, in my quest, that truly brings together voices from all of these levels, in an accessible manner, to focus on and solve issues posed by crises.

• Technology vendors have a hard time finding trust among emergency managers who are concerned about being “sold something.”
• Volunteers find it hard to gain the trust, credibility and respect among first responders and emergency managers.
• Emergency managers and government officials find it difficult to be credible in the face of emerging technology developers because of the bureaucracy and red tape created by process and contracts.
• First responders and emergency managers focus on response elements while community organizations focus on recovery missions.
• Emergency response is done differently in different countries, leading to “expert bias” among countries who think they have solved things that other countries have not.

Truth be told, we ALL wear glasses that are colored by our perspectives and yet, at our core, we all want the same thing.  We want our communities to recover from disaster as quickly as possible, right?

Social media is one of the first places where all of these groups find themselves on a more level playing field.  Each group has unprecedented access to discuss, evaluate and work through issues related to emergency management.  More importantly, players in social media can develop trust, reputation and credibility in ways that do far more than just “exchange business cards” before disaster strikes.

And beyond just chatting about how we respond, people now find themselves becoming part of the emergency response when they are able to contribute pictures and videos of the disaster at hand or answer affected people directly through a variety of social platforms.

I want to harness this energy which brings me to my original idea of a Virtual Emergency Management Association which spawned the survey I asked people to participate in 2 weeks ago.  In order to be transparent with you, it feels right to share the responses.

• About 40 people responded to the initial survey (There is one response which I think might be a duplicate).
• Responses came in from the United States, Canada, Italy, Latvia and Nepal. (The international appeal pleasantly surprised me.)
• 3 people said that I should work through other, existing associations
• 6 people said they would likely be passively supportive
• 30 people said they would actively support the development of such an association and provided many wildly kind comments about making this happen.

Emails were sent out to those who were supportive, asking for participation in a Doodle poll regarding schedules to determine a time where we could chat further about this vision.  The time & date of our follow-up conference call have been set for Thursday, December 12th, at 1:00 p.m. PST.

If you are interested in actively supporting this vision, it’s not too late to join the conversation.  Simply jet me an email of interest at cherylble@gmail.com and I will send you the call information.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey over the past 2 weeks.  I look forward to additional conversation on this idea in the coming weeks and will, of course, keep you posted should anything further develop.

In this special Thanksgiving week, let me say that I am genuinely thankful for every single person that I’ve met, collaborated with and befriended over my past 5 years in social media.  I’ve been blessed to already make a lot of my personal dreams come true through working with #SMEM folks over the past few years and appreciate the opportunity to consider yet another.

This past Friday, you had to be ignoring all media to miss Batkid.

San Francisco was transformed into Gotham City in order to make a 5-year old child’s dream come true.

This story is incredible for many reasons, but it touched me as a beautiful illustration of “whole community.”

If you’ve been an emergency manager over the past few years, you have heard this term from our federal friends at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

From its “whole community website” at www.fema.gov/whole-community,  FEMA explains that whole community should…

• Engage and empower all parts of the community. Engaging the whole community and empowering local action will better position stakeholders to plan for and meet the actual needs of a community and strengthen the local capacity to deal with the consequences of all threats and hazards. This requires all members of the community to be part of the emergency management team, which should include diverse community members, social and community service groups and institutions, faith-based and disability groups, academia, professional associations, and the private and nonprofit sectors, while including government agencies who may not traditionally have been directly involved in emergency management. When the community is engaged in an authentic dialogue, it becomes empowered to identify its needs and the existing resources that may be used to address them.

And although this definition exists, many emergency management programs still work with very limited groups of public safety agencies.  We struggle with incorporating private sector partners, faith-based organizations, celebrities, schools and residents within our local communities.

But here is what I saw in Batkid story:

• Many different government agencies were involved at all levels.  From the police chief and mayor to the local Emergency Operations Center, many different agencies participated.
• Senators got involved and cheered on Batkid,
• Celebrities got involved and used their positions to participate,
• Classrooms of school kids began participating in the Batkid Photo Project and submitted pictures to become engaged,
• Over 7000 volunteers were involved in this project with reports of crowds of onlookers that exceeded 10,000 to cheer on Batkid,
• The media shared the story not only throughout the United States, but all over the world in many different languages,
• Even President Obama created his first Vine video to become involved and Mrs. Obama shared her support on Twitter.

Now, I have a few questions for your consideration:

• Could a story like this have gone viral using just traditional news media?
• Did everyone who participated with Batkid know exactly what the “Make-a-Wish” plan was?
• Were all of the volunteers background checked and given a specific assignment for participation?
• Did everyone sign in?
• Was the media messaging all coordinated and approved?
• Who was the Incident Commander?

I’m about to sound very heretical to most trained emergency managers, but “whole community” is about everyone coming together to fill a need. Magic happens when resilient communities get creative and have the power to contribute.  Sometimes, we let our “emergency response planning” get in the way of truly engaging our communities.  We require others to play in “our way” using “our rules.”

What do you think would happen if we focused more on creating meaning, emotional connection and ways for people to get involved in easy ways?  What if we focused on developing the relationships and becoming friends to our communities rather than creating paper-based plans.  What if we asked “Make A Wish” to coordinate our next emergency response?

Social Media gives us all the power to participate, communicate, identify needs and develop communities where everyone has a role to play.  But we first have to buy into the notion that everyone has a role to play and we, as government officials, can’t write all of the rules.  We’ve got to tap into the creative, focus on outcomes and care less about the process of how we get there.  Could you replicate this 5-year old’s dream in your current organization?

Identify the need + Ask for help + Make Your Cause Worth Caring About + Be Willing to See What Happens = Something Cool.

Are you working to mobilize your community through relationships and communications?  I hope so.  Because that is magical.

Three years complete.

So, what it is in store for Year 4?

I have really enjoyed collaborating and chatting with the colleagues that I have met over the past 5 years since I started using social media.

It has changed the way I connect with people and challenged me to do some rather crazy things which have included:

• Attending “tweet-ups” and meeting over 200 people that I had only talked to before on social media,
• Putting together a “140 Character” Conference with 58 speakers in one day, focused on the intersection between government & social media,
• Speaking at conferences all over the United States,
• Completing 3 years in leadership of my State EM Association,
• Facilitating a global VOST Leadership Coalition,
• Creating and managing a successful game called 30days, 30ways with participants all over the world,
• Participating in foot races with teams using social platforms all over my city,
• Walking a half marathon in Las Vegas,
• Recently, running my own political campaign.

Honestly, I attribute most of these activities to social media and a desire to always push the envelope to what we can do next…..and I feel like the past 5 years is pushing me towards developing an umbrella organization to further enhance existing efforts on the “Social Media & Emergency Management” continuum.

I talk to so many people who are hungry for more training and networking in this arena……so, I have a few questions for you.

Please consider taking the following survey and sharing with others in your professional circles. This will help me craft and refine the vision for this project and better gauge the energy of the community.  Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts!

 

Tomorrow marks the 3 year anniversary of a conversation that started on Twitter and hasn’t stopped.

That’s right, the #SMEM hashtag which has come to mean “bridging the gap between social media and emergency management” will celebrate the fact that not only is the hashtag alive and well, but has brought so many diverse people into this conversation.

As I look back over this 3rd year, we have gone through a number of significant and tragic events.

The short list includes:

• Clackamas Town Center Mall shooting in December 2012
• Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012
• Los Angeles Manhunt in February 2013
• Boston Marathon Bombing in April 2013
• Calgary Flooding in June 2013
• Yarnell Wildfire & loss of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots in June 2013
• Colorado Flooding in September 2013
• Navy Yard Shooting in September 2013
• Los Angeles Airport Shooting in November 2013
• Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013
• At least 15 Earthquakes that registered over 7.o in magnitude.

And, you don’t have to look very hard to find articles that talk about the significant social media activity involved in all of these significant events.

If you are relatively new to social media, we’re glad that you’re here!

But if you’re still deciding whether social media is important to your emergency management program, click on each of the events listed above to see how social media was involved. It’s time to get learning and figure out how to communicate to your residents using social tools and methods.

As for the #SMEM efforts in year 3, here is a small sampling of the many great #SMEM projects and outcomes:

This year, the National Disaster Training Center delivered a ton of Social Media for Disaster Response & Recovery (PER 304) courses.  If you haven’t seen these courses come to your local jurisdiction, be sure they do.  Many of the trainers who deliver this class have also had a significant role in the #SMEM discussions over the past 3 years.

The development of Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOST) has really gained traction this year. With a number of teams developing here in the United States, there is also significant activity in the countries of New Zealand, Canada and throughout Europe.

This past year,

• The VOST website was more fully developed by Joanna Lane and contains a number of excellent resources and informative presentations.
• VOST Leadership Coalition met monthly via teleconference to debrief many of the VOST activations.
• National VOST Webinar was hosted by the Central Ohio Public Information Network.
• VOST Field Operations Guide was drafted by Cheryl Bledsoe.
• VOST Creation Guide was drafted by Mary Jo Flynn.

The Emerging Technology Caucus is a committee within the International Association of Emergency Management.  This group released the following document at their Annual Conference in October which provides some standards for the types of capabilities that should be incorporated into Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs)

• Recommended Technological Capabilities for ECC/EOCs

The Virtual Social Media Working Group (VSMWG) is appointed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate.  They completed the following documents this past year

• Next Steps: Social Media for Emergency Response which presents challenges, next steps, and best practices for public safety agencies that are developing and implementing their own social media
• Community Engagement and Social Media Best Practices which provides a guide for using social media to engage whole communities for preparedness
• Lessons Learned: Social Media and Hurricane Sandy which covers the ways that social media was used in response and recovery efforts.

Additionally, the #SMEMChat continues to engage people on Twitter each Friday, from 12:30p-1:30p EST and covers a variety of topics in this arena.  Unfortunately, the Twitter API change this past year made archiving the chats a little more challenging. Nevertheless, people still gather and talk each Friday.  It’s a wonderful way to exercise and practice talking on Twitter. So, join today!

Fully knowing that I’m going to miss a few things in this post, please accept my advance apologies and add in other significant activities that you have seen over this past year!

There are so many amazing people who have become a part of the #SMEM community.  As a community which includes volunteers and professionals, technology gurus and the technically challenged (which is where I sit), educators, non-profits, NGO’s, first responders and politicians, we are blessed to have a common interest in using social technologies to respond and recover from crisis.

If you have ever used the hashtag #SMEM to mean “Social Media Emergency Management,” we are thankful for you!

Keep up the AMAZING work and let’s have a fabulous Year 4 together.  Cheers!

When agencies are considering entering social media, one of the early concerns is “what do I do about negative comments?”

Often, people read the community comments within their local newspaper sites and are fearful that they will experience the same type of vitriol, hatred and rumor-mongering when they seek to share information online.

So, when I get asked about how to handle naysayers, I share the following:

There are trolls online. In fact, wikipedia does an excellent job of providing a good definition of an internet troll:

A troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

These people are not the majority of people online, but many people and agencies will encounter a troll at sometime in their online career.

While the common advice given is not to “feed the trolls,” the issue can be a little more complex than that.

There are cases where people will have a serious bone to pick with an agency or topic and will seem relentless.

There are several approaches that agencies can take with a troll:

• Look for educational points of interest.  For example, trolls will often begin with a seed of truth.  Often, however, there is misinformation involved.  It can be helpful to provide the accurate information (not necessarily for the troll, but for others who will see the conversation and wonder about the reality of the claim).
• If, after sharing, the troll continues to berate, disengage.  There is a great quote by Robert Quillen, a journalist, who said a “discussion is an exchange of information, and argument is an exchange of ignorance.”  Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into an argument.
• It is also important to post language on your social sites about what types of behavior will not be tolerated.  In my case, I use the following guidelines on my websites:   Any graphic, prejudicial, off-topic, inflammatory, repetitive, vexatious, offensive, commercial or otherwise inappropriate posts will be deleted.  You participate at your own risk, taking personal responsibility for your comments, your username and any information provided.

For Facebook, you have the ability to turn off comments on your page and you can delete comments should they fail to abide by your social media guidelines; however, I recommend using these methods as a last resort.  Your community, if provided the right information, will choose whether to speak up or ignore the troll altogether.  It is rare for a troll to replicate and often he or she will be standing alone, seeming to provoke others just for the sake of attention.  Those who lurk or watch the community will see a troll and regularly steer clear of them.  Often, community trolls earn a reputation for these types of behaviors.

For agencies or bloggers who are concerned about trolls, “moderating” posted comments allows you to see the comments in advance before they show up publicly on your site.

Remember, as a public service agency, you will never please 100% of your stakeholders 100% of the time.  Negative comments are not to be feared, but rather signal feedback that provide you the opportunity to evaluate whether or not there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

If there is a problem or lack of information, address it as openly as you can.  And if there isn’t, be flattered that someone finds you controversial enough to poke.

Just remember the old adage from George Bernard Shaw: Never wrestle a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

There is one scenario that is important to consider when it comes to trolls and that involves cyber-bullying. If someone is being picked on, singled out and harassed, it is important to step up and help that person. I have seen this occur online and won’t hesitate to open a dialogue with someone if I see them become an unnecessary target. As someone who has lost far too many friends to suicide, please be mindful and aware.

This week, emergency managers from just about everywhere have converged on Reno, Nevada, for the annual International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) conference.

And, while this conference will be a fun event for everyone who is attending in person, people may also watch and participate online over the next few days.

This post will outline some of the ways that both conference attendees and onlookers can engage socially.

1) The hashtag in use is #IAEM13 which is already popular on Twitter (but I’ll bet you can also find it in use on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest if you go looking.

2) The keynote lectures will be live-streamed which means you can watch them online via computer.  The link to check out the livestream is http://new.livestream.com/accounts/5818024/IAEM2013 and the following events should be there at the times listed below.

• Brian Fagan, “Swept Away by the Waves” (Monday, 10/28/13, 12:05-13:35 PDT)
• Dr. Dennis S. Mileti, “The Shifting Character and Context of Emergency Management: Implications for Disaster Losses and Consequences” (Tuesday, 10/29/13 13:10-14:10 PDT)
• Dr. Rocco Casagrande, “Technologies that Will Change the World this Century: Implications for Security” (Wednesday, 10/30/13, 8:15-09:15 PDT)
• Dr. Thomas E. Drabek, “New Perspectives on Human Responses to Disaster” (Wednesday, 10/30/13, 9:30-10:30 PDT)

3)  FEMA Think Tank will host a live teleconference on Wednesday, October 30, 2013.  The hashtag used typically for these calls used by participants is #FEMAThinkTank

The FEMA Think Tank is a forum to engage the whole community, connect resources, share best practices, and develop solutions based on individual stakeholder input to the challenges we face in emergency management. Participants are able to join in person or by conference call. For more information on the Think Tank, please visit www.fema.gov/thinktank.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Deputy Administrator Richard Serino will host a FEMA Think Tank conference call on October 30, 2013, from the IAEM Conference in Reno, Nevada. The event will provide the opportunity to listen, ask questions, and gain perspective as panelists share their stories on how they use innovative response technology to revolutionize disaster operations, with a particular focus on rescue robots that range from bomb detection to heartbeat detection.

• WHO: Richard Serino, FEMA Deputy Administrator; John Price, DHS Science and Technology Program Manager; Dr. Ken Goldberg, Professor at University of California at Berkley; Dr. Robin R. Murphy, Professor at Texas A&M University
• WHEN: Wednesday, October 30, 2013, 2:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. (Pacific)
• CALL IN:  877-604-9670 ; PASSCODE: 6288892

4)  A Social Media Exercise will occur at IAEM that should afford opportunities for folks to watch and engage with participants.  Check out this website to learn about how the Emerging Technologies Caucus will be seeking to encourage attendees to use social media:  http://certcat3.wordpress.com/posts-2/2013iaem_smexdesign/

In addition to the live exercise, being administered by Mary Jo Flynn, there is also an active Virtual Operations Support Team (VOST), outside the IAEM conference, monitoring social media to enhance their social media skills.  Kudos to everyone involved in this fun addition to the IAEM Conference.

If you are at IAEM, consider sharing information with those of us who will be watching online!  This event is a great way to focus on enhancing your skills and learning from some great users who will also be attending the IAEM Conference.  Find them and chat about how they use these tools in their emergency management programs to communicate with their residents.

And, if you aren’t at IAEM, you can hone your “watching” skills and see what you can learn from those who are in attendance.

Trust me, if you have a peer at the conference, you can totally creep them out with what you’ll learn watching online.

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been speaking at a number of conferences on the topic of social media.  And I’m noticing something troubling. People think they have “handled social media” because they have one person in their office who has been assigned to “figuring it out.”

When I ask groups of people what the last thing they did on social media, I get few answers beyond “updated my personal Facebook page.”  The attitude I sense is one of “we’re not sure, but we get credit because we’ve got someone on that.”

Here is the problem with that answer……social media should be changing how ALL OF US communicate.

• Do you delegate your email management to other people? (I wish I could frankly, but that’s another rant on why I hate email as a form of group collaboration).
• Do you delegate your phone calls? (You might have a call screener, but I’m talking about relying on someone else to have those conversations).
• Do you delegate talking in public meetings?

Of course this sounds ridiculous, right?

And yet, social media is an important form of communication and yet, many emergency management programs are busy handing over their public voices to interns, champions or simply someone else who drew the short straw on office assignments.

Becoming social and thinking about social communication is a skill set that everyone must develop.

• It involves looking at your work and automatically thinking “what would my stakeholders want to know about what I’m doing today?”
• It involves paying more attention to why your community calls your office.  What questions are they asking? Are the answers plainly on your website or in your regular, social communications?
• It involves plugging in to your local community and being aware of what others are doing so that you can partner and leverage the work of others to support your agency’s mission.
• It involves expanding your network and reach in terms of colleagues and community.

While implementation of social media may get delegated to someone else within your office, that doesn’t give you an excuse for learning how to use it yourself.  To ensure that your agency uses social media well, it requires that more than one person uses social media.  You will quickly build bench strength if you become interested and involved.

This isn’t just a fad or a new communication tool.  Social media is a whole new method and practice of communicating.  If you currently aren’t involved in social media, I implore you to focus on playing with social media for just 2 minutes per day.  Learn something new every day.

Can you take ownership of your need to learn? You can only use the “not in my back yard” excuse so long before you’ll have to admit you are behind.

Most of the readers of this blog know that #SMEM stands for Social Media & Emergency Management, but there is another acronym which always makes me grin.

Yup, you guessed it.

#SMILE stands for “Social Media In Law Enforcement” and I have always enjoyed the awesome resources that this emergency response discipline has put together for use of social media.

Hopefully, you already know about the International Association of Police Chiefs Center for Social Media website at http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/ which is a literal treasure trove of resources for police agencies seeking to use social media.

But beyond this website, there is also a conference called the SMILE Conference which, in its 8th year, is being held in Omaha, Nebraska, this coming week.

And, this year, many of the presentations will be streamed live over Google Hangouts.  Check out the “Watch Us Live” link for all of the details at http://smileconference.com/live/.

You can check out the schedule and see which presentations will be covered live via Google Hangout.  And, I can tell you from seeing many of these speakers at other conferences, you will not be disappointed if you tune in.

Now, if you’re still unsure whether social media has changed life in law enforcement, read the All Tech Considered blog from earlier today.

So, smile this week and think about our response partners in law enforcement!  The hashtag to watch on Twitter is #SmileCon.

I remember when my agency was setting up its social media accounts.

I genuinely became excited, thinking that once the accounts were established, we’d easily attract a number of followers requisite with our local population.

Imagine my surprised when we didn’t.

How could it be? Everyone wants information about emergencies and emergency preparedness, right?

Not really.

We attracted a number of news media agencies, some of our volunteers and a few staff (yes, we struggled to find a following even among staff who work for us).

One of our first lessons learned in social media was this:

• Emergency information isn’t something folks generally want to think about until they have to.

And, when your community is in the throes of disaster, people will flock to your accounts if you are sharing relevant and valuable information during your local crisis.

So, how should your agency communicate on social media prior to your next local disaster?

Think about building your credibility as an agency who is in touch with its community.

• Highlight events or initiatives that other agencies are hosting locally within your neighborhood or community, especially if they are activities that support your mission,
• But occasionally share fun activities that aren’t related. The key is that your followers see you being in touch with what’s happening around you and they don’t see you as isolated.
• Share interesting research that is relevant to your hazards. This shows a connection between the educational world and the future of our profession.  This assures people that you are busy educating yourselves and others about the latest and greatest in the world of disaster science and community resilience,
• Engage in conversation with others.  If you have a Facebook Page, put on that “Page’s Identity” and comment on big community wide conversations.  Find where your community is huddling and chatting and be human.  If you are on Twitter, share interesting information and chat with folks that you follow.  Being human will develop trust in ways that will pay off later on.  Check out @LAFDTalk or @SeattlePD as great examples of organizations who chat regularly with their followers.

The reality is people engage with others on social media because something that was shared resonates with them personally.  And if you are only sharing emergency preparedness information, you’re only going to find people engaging who are already interested in that topic by nature.

Our challenge is not to preach to the choir, but to those who have never considered what they will do if they face a crisis.  Have you ever wandered by a street preacher who is yelling their message to a crowd who is doing everything possible to avoid eye contact?  This is how you appear if your agency’s mission is all you ever talk about in the social media world.

Contrast that to joining a crowd at a party already in-progress. You find someone you know, start up a conversation and soon, there is a crowd of 5-6 people chatting, having fun and getting to know each other.  Throughout the course of conversation, you find out what everyone does for a living, but that’s not the focus of the evening.  A few weeks later, you have a need to reach out and find someone in a particular field.  Do you rush to the Yellow Pages or call the person you met at the party if you judged them to be smart and competent?

Don’t underestimate the importance of human communications, even if you represent an agency, in your life on social media.  People know I’m an emergency manager despite my tendency to tweet about anything and everything else.  People aren’t waiting to get to know your agency.  They are most interested in finding agencies and people being relevant and real.