Friday, August 22, 2014

The Weekly Read

Emergency Managers Stress the Need for Social Media Volunteers
Emergency Management Magazine
May 16, 2014

At this past spring's Governor's Hurricane Conference held in Orlando, David Merrick and the rest of his virtual operations support team (VOST) from Florida State University conducted an exercise to demonstrate how information could be effectively shared via social media. Creating a fictional event - flooding in the city of Duckville - conference attendees were given specific tasks to accomplish with their smart phones. The data was collected and analyzed to show just how effective these tools could be during an actual emergency.


While the exercise went off without too many glitches, one interesting challenged was posed by the National Hockey League. At the time of the conference, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks were in the hockey playoffs, using the same hashtag - #quackattack. While this proved to be a little confusing at times, it showed some of the potential snags using social media.

Tom Iovino, Public Information Specialist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomiovino

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