Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference 2011

Attending the Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference was a new experience for me. I have attended a number of conferences in the last few years as a student, but this was the first conference where I felt I might actually be attending as a future practitioner. The opening keynote addresses both approached some of the high-level issues associated with emergency and disaster management. The booths of vendors were quite interesting to peruse - the products and services available ranged from communication systems to emergency rations. The first session I attended was on building resilience community partnerships - how to form connections between businesses, government, and citizens.

And this opportunity was also very special because I was given the opportunity to take part in Annie Searle's presentation "Tweet Me Up: Social Media Tool and Crisis Management". Annie presented some of the emerging trends and risks associated with the increasing prevalence of social media use in both normal and crisis business environments. Speaking to about 150 people, the session covered a number of benefits as well as the challenges of social media that appear in the crisis management framework.

After recommending organizations (including government, business, and NGOs) find ways to better adapt to the new reality of social media, Annie passed the microphone to me. A bit nervous to be lecturing to a room full of experienced professionals, I tried to clearly present some of the social media tools available, and how they can work and be managed. It is always an educational experience to try and present a topic one is very familiar with to an audience you must assume knows little to nothing about.

Social media isn't going away. One of the questions from the audience was, in short, about what if Facebook (or the like) isn't around in 5 years? Should people (organizations) jump on board and go through all the headaches that are being seen with trying to integrate social media into more and more business environments? And my first thought was it doesn't matter if Facebook isn't around in 5 years. It is simply one "tool". The methods and mentalities are changing in society, just like what happened with email. And someone else in the audience pointed out just that - the conversations businesses and organizations are having today about social media are very similar to those that were taking place 15 years ago over email. An interesting thought to mull over.

Anonymity, Privacy and The Debate on National Online IDs

I think the National Internet ID conversation that has been recently taking place is quite an important and interesting piece to be discussed. I've been approaching a research piece on it from a risk-perspective, but part of that is a risk to privacy and anonymity. In an article by Helen Nissenbaum on anonymity, I thought she had a good point - that anonymity is really about being "out of reach" from consequences. Anonymity can be abused and used as a negative thing (think criminal activities) but many times it is critical for certain systems to work (as mentioned, voting and peer-review).

In the draft of the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" released in June 2010, their vision of the future sounds pretty good. "Individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy to use and interoperable identity solutions to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice, and innovation." (pg. 12) Some interpret the strategy to mean that Americans could begin to have unique online identities used to access password-protected websites. That's an interesting and slightly worrying thought. While "confidence, privacy, choice and innovation" sound good, what does that mean in a practical sense?

Would having some sort of online identification be a threat to anonymity and a violation of privacy? Already there is so little privacy on the internet - maybe if the government regulates more, there would be less abuse of breaches in privacy and security. But I am a bit leery of the idea of allowing a government to so in-depth access or observation to the behavior of citizens. Nothing sounds so tyrannical as being observed at every moment or having to curtail one's speech for fear of reprival. And I'm not sure that an Online ID would be the most conducive tool for an open and free democratic society. But on the other hand, I like parts of the idea in theory - but things look so good on paper sometimes when in reality they just are a really bad idea.

Projects & Relative Problems

This seems very true some days:

(Picture from http://ninapaley.com/mimiandeunice/)

Whether at work or in one's personal life, it seems to be that by default we want to prioritize our own problems, and view them as more important and difficult than those faced by others. Our needs are at the center of how we see everything else. We can look back later and put a crisis or breakdown in perspective, but in the moment it's hard to have insight like that. But when it comes to the workplace, it can be costly to an organization for an individual to take this stance. In trying to mitigate projects and the inevitable conflicts that arise, this mentality is a particularly difficult challenge for someone like a business analyst or project manager.

Say, for example, I'm trying to get two different department heads to communicate with each other, and communicate to me, about priorities, problems they need fixed, and what their requirements are for a certain project. But if they can't come up with supporting data/information about why their needs are more important, all that happens is a back and forth of "My needs are more important than theirs because... because" and reasonings that have no data to back them up. If I can't get this information, I can't validate any decisions I make in terms of the project direction, nor can I make much (if any) progress.

Anyone in an organization that is tasked with coming up with requirements or needs must be able to not only articulate those needs, but have validating data to back up the reasoning behind those needs. We can't become personally attached to "having-our-way" when there's no data to back up why our way is "better", or why your problem is the most critical. We have to be able to tell someone or many someones why we choose to do something, and what value that decision adds to the project.

Getting that data can be tricky, full of politics and personal feelings, and sometimes it simply isn't going to happen. Information is not a straightforward topic, and it is really the people that make it a challenge and "interesting" in both good ways and bad. But it is worth the effort when you can stand in front of a group and present a solid project with an information foundation you can rely upon.