Taking Risks in a Risky Business

Someone made the decision to enter the world of social media, ensuring that their emergency response agency is not behind the eight ball when an incident occurs. They see that the real risk is in ‘not being there’ and you are faced with a stressed community full of rumours on Twitter.

Congratulations…you took the risk…you’re ahead of the game…you are part of the conversation!

Taking a risk to enter the social media world, is an emerging theme these days. That means someone has jumped ahead of protocol and said this is too important a situation to await the arrival of a corporate social media policy.

Within the past month, I have heard directly from at least two agencies that made this decision. In British Columia, the government has come out with a pro-social media policy. They encourage employees to be engaged in the conversation. BC government just asks that their employees apply common sense when using these tools.

During the G8-G20 Summit in Ontario (June 2010) international governments were given access to security protected wikis and other web 2.0 tools in order to develop better policy papers. Prior this, governments only had face-to-face meetings and conference calls to use, to create materials.  This service was an initiative created and now maintained by Canada. Someone took the risk and decided to make these social media tools available. The services were available not only for the political forum; it was also used by the business and youth forums. The current G20 Summit in Korea continued using Canada’s services.

These are examples of the current situation. Now, social media policies are quick to follow. Perhaps, the policies will be that much better because they are written by ‘practitioners’ not just ‘theorists’ and ‘policy wonks’!

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