Category: social networking

Conference envy

Later this month I’ll be heading to Chicago for Ragan Communications’ conference on Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution. (It’s billed as “the can’t-miss social media summit,” so how could I skip out?) I’ll also attend the free un-conference that’s happening the day before. So I shouldn’t be experiencing conference envy. But then I read about a couple of others that turn me green.

First, there’s TechCrunch40 and its powerhouse keynoters: Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Mark Zuckerberg — names synonymous with innovation. And it’s in San Francisco in a couple of weeks.

Then, also in San Francisco, starting today is the Office 2.0 Conference, which, according to the CNET preview, “will push the Web 2.0 concept for business as far as it can go.” I love to learn about the latest software to make managing products and processes easier. The problem is, I’ve yet to find one that has really made life any easier for me or my team. But, who knows? Maybe this is the year Office 2.0 offers up a gem, and I’d love to be in San Francisco to hear about it firsthand. Guess not.

Also this month is CASE’s Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals. I co-chaired last year’s event in Philly. And where might this year’s conference be? San Fran, once again.

OK, maybe I don’t have conference envy so much as a desire to visit San Francisco. If any readers are going to any of these, send me a postcard. I’ll do the same from Chicago.

I, crisis communications expert

[shameless self-promotion]
Just thought I’d let readers know that I, a guy who usually tries to get reporters to interview other people, was interviewed myself as a *ahem* media expert by InsideHigherEd.com for a follow-up story to the whole Dalhousie/Facebook/puppy murder flare-up (Proving you’re not a puppy murderer, by Andy Guess).
[/shameless self-promotion]

Guess’ story views the Dalhousie situation — a resurgent Facebook group of 22,000-plus members that accuses Dalhousie of conducting inhumane research on puppies — in terms of crisis management in the age of social networks:

One of a public relations officer’s worst nightmares is a lie that won’t go away, and Dalhousie University recently confronted a doozy: that it was experimenting on cuddly, doe-eyed puppies and kittens.

Normally in such situations, a university might take steps to release information that rebuts the charges, or it might make contact with the source of the allegations. But in this case the statements in question were online, contained within a group on the social-networking Web site Facebook, and accessible to anyone with an account. The group … was founded by someone who apparently was never even a student there.

Now, after an inital attempt to have the group removed from Facebook failed, the university is considering its legal options. “It’s a clear case of defamation,” said Charles Crosby, media relations manager at Dalhousie, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The case illustrates not only how a university confronts allegations, but the evolving ways in which damaging information is spreading from multiple, uncontrollable sources online.

This case raises some interesting issues about communicating in the social media sphere. Dalhousie, the InsideHigherEd story points out, “is highlighting highlighting efforts by other students to counter the original group. One, a Facebook group called “Stop People From Spreading Lies About Animal Cruelty At Dalhousie”, was started by a student who works in a laboratory at the university. Still, they’ve got an uphill battle: Only a little over 400 members have joined that group, which can’t match the visceral hook of a vulnerable beagle puppy displayed on the original’s page.”

When I received Guess’s email query to chat about crisis communications in the web 2.0 world, I wasn’t mcuh up to speed on the latest developments at Dalhousie, so we spoke in broader terms of how colleges and universities might handle such crises. My lone quote is rightly buried in the story (paragraph nine, if you’re looking). Guess quotes some better experts, such as Rae Goldsmith of CASE and Teresa Valerio Parrot of SimpsonScarborough, whose quote at the end of the story wraps it all up nicely.