When Hurricane Katrina pulverised New Orleans in 2004, residents used a variety of tools to keep in touch during and after the event, from group SMS alerts to blogs and wikis.
Four years later, as Hurricane Gustav follows a similar path to its angry sister, Steven Lewis writes about another article, detailing the recent communication methods employed by Big Easy residents:
A colleague pointed me to an article in IT News about the social media and networking sites used by New Orleans residents, aid groups and the media in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Gustav. They included:
- Facebook groups
- A wiki for residents to pool information
- A Twitter (micro-blog) feed from a CNN reporter with updates (every volunteer listed in the wiki has a Twitter account)
- Blogs about weather conditions in the city
- A Red Cross blog listing emergency shelters and giving other news, including a Flickr photo group.
As Steven asks, "If these tools can contribute to the organisation of a whole city in a time of mass crisis, what could they do for your business?"
Across the submissions for this year's Intranet Innovation Awards run by Step Two, (winners announced later this month, by the way) there were several uses of tools like wikis for critical information building, blogs for leadership comms, and Twitter-style feeds within organisations. We're starting to see more and more, but there's no doubt much of it is still fringe activity, instigated by the few.
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