Crisis Response

I hit the links today, determined to shake off the cobwebs accumulated during a gray Pacific Northwest winter.  After three holes of hackin’, choppin’ and basically suckin off the tee, I stood on the fourth tee box hanging my head.  ...

Wow, how time flies.  I realized it has been almost a month since I last posted.  My apologies to those who follow along.  Things have been kinda nuts at work. Let me  explain. At “O-dark-thirty” on March 30, we responded ...

Emergency Management Magazine hosted an All Hazards Stakeholders Summit in Seattle today.  I believe this is the second year of these “summits”, bringing together the best and brightest stars in Emergency Management to motivate, inspire and educate.  It was fun ...

As a social media (SM) junky for a few years now, I have had lots of opportunities to use the medium during a community’s worst day.  I’ve made some mistakes and learned some lessons along the way, but now feel ...

This week’s announcement of the Red Cross and Dell’s collaboration in opening an innovative digital operations center is a giant step forward in incorporating social media efforts in crisis response.  The Red Cross has been a thought leader and champion ...

OK, I admit it, I’m a weather geek.  Meteorology fascinates me, and living in my area of the Pacific Northwest affords ample opportunity to study weather patterns.  Up here, the complex influences of the Pacific Ocean, Cascade and Olympic Mountain ...

The other night an impromptu Twitter chat erupted among a few of us #SMEM stalwarts.  The subject; credentialing social media volunteers who assist during disasters.  Conventional emergency management practice requires people register with their local emergency management (EM) agency before ...

A couple of months ago I heard about a new social media website in a meteoric climb.  Pinterest is the new kid on the block.  Within a year of it hitting the “beta world”, it earned top 50 status in ...

Over the past few days I watched with much fascination the unfolding of a needless tragedy, the sinking of the Costa Concordia.  During the first few hours, tweets and reports of the ship’s sinking surfaced in the news.  I retweeted ...

Yesterday, Gerald Baron (the #1 Big Kahuna of social media in emergency management according to Patrice Cloutier’s ranking of top 25 social media emergency management influencers) gave his predictions on what will happen with SMEM in 2012. I read lots ...