Recently, many of us in Europe felt the effects of Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption. During this, social media proved itself to be useful outside of letting people send information home. It saved weddings from disaster, sent news stories around the world, and got a selection of stranded passengers a free breakfast in Bangkok.

Aurelie Valtat of Eurocontrol maintains that social media’s “human touch” is essential in a crisis. “People are happy to know that you’re listening to them. Be human: it doesn’t hurt to be a normal person. Be in tune… show that you care. ” She dealt information out to stranded passengers every two minutes, watching the organisation’s number of followers grow from 300 to 7,000 in a few days.

ZN’s Phil Weiss, who used Facebook to rally passengers stranded with him in Bangkok to demand treatment according to their rights, agrees with Aurelie.

“The key is to know who you’re talking to, and give them the information that they need. Eurocontrol’s efforts placed them in comparison with other organisations, like some airlines and the European Commission, which face big challenges in forming similar strategies for similarly effective communication.”

Both were speaking at an event hosted by ZN, which took place on 22nd June 2010 in the striking surroundings of the Brussels Air Museum. They discussed how the eruption had an impact on social media, with Simon McDermott, co-founder of Attentio, and the European Commission’s Gilles Gantelet.

The emphasis of Eurocontrol’s Tweeting was on crisis management rather than a communications revolution: “normal”, pre-volcano service has since resumed, in case the organisation is seen as a “super travel agency… there is a detailed plan in place, but every ash cloud is different.” Simon McDermott’s advice for organisations yet to embrace social media was simple: “Use it: learn it!”

Gilles Gantelet said that “[the Commission] has been impressed by Eurocontrol… we are also aware that there were some things that we were unable to organise in terms of communication.”

Photos, videos (of the event and of interviews with the speakers) and discussions will shortly be added to the IABC community. In the spirit of social media, questions and comments were Tweeted live into the event: you can find them under #ashcloudbxl on Twitter.

I am hosting it with Helen Dunnett (@hdunnett) The idea behind each show is to focus on emerging trends and topics online with a special focus on Brussels. This is the first show (the Beta Version Zero Pilot Show) so they are open to suggestions to make it better next time, but they decided that the best way to get this show on the road was to…get the show on the road….

We have captured a summary of my presentation which gives an overview of some of the key topics of the ebook.  It is intended as a simple introduction to how the internet is changing communication for global communicators, and what they can do about it.  To find out more check the video (below) or download the ebook (below).

Apologies for the poor sound quality!

Here’s a short video of me – explaining a bit the IABC ning in one of our ZN events.

Cloud Computing by Kris Barz

This is a crosspost from Ideaplants.org.

Digital advocacy – aligned with online campaigning more broadly – has been effective on issues that capture the public imagination for quite a while, largely because the web works extremely well as a grassroots mobilisation tool. From whale hunting to GMOs, pressure groups and concerned citizens have used a variety of online tools to express anger, spread the word and mobilise likeminded people. I’d argue that, were Greenpeace to announce a big-time campaign tomorrow on banning mink farming in Europe, it could be web-centred, with offline elements operating around it. Meaning that Greenpeace would be able to engage and mobilise enough people using primarily online channels to certainly reach (although probably not influence) relevant policy-makers.

However, the vast majority of advocacy issues don’t capture the public imagination. Nobody knows about them; the media doesn’t care. Until a short time ago, these were the sort of issues where advocacy was done off the radar i.e. primarily with stakeholders and policy-makers sitting down face to face. There’d be no large-scale media campaign or the like in support because it wouldn’t have been worth the effort seeing as all stakeholders were a phone-call away.

Now, I’d argue that digital advocacy is nearing the real deal for niche issues as well. Meaning what? That the web is ubiquitous enough – even in public policy land (view Fleishman’s EP Digital Trends or Edelman’s Capital Staffers’ index if in doubt) – to work as a direct advocacy tool.

In practice, I mean that if you plan and execute the online element of your campaign well, you can safely assume that you’ll reach relevant policy-makers directly, as well as engage and/or mobilise the aforementioned stakeholders that are just a phone-call away, using primarily online channels. By no means does that mean that traditional advocacy or media relations are a dying breed, but they can now be supported, enhanced and sped up no end. Exciting times ahead.

(This is a cross-post from Steffen’s blog)

Image source

On the other hand, it seems that most airlines are doing a disastrous job at keeping their passengers informed about the situation. I am myself flying with Austrian Airlines and they have been slow and unresponsive in communicating.  So in the spirit of engaged online communication, I have formed a passenger group in the hotel where I am staying in Bangkok and they started to post information about developments on a facebook group we created for the occasion: Facebook: Austrian Passengers in Bangkok

Although we only have 22 people from the flight on the group it is the main place to get the latest news from the airline and the manager of Austrian airlines is relying on us to disseminate information to passengers in an effective way.  What makes this even more ironic is that Austrian Airlines has a facebook ‘fan page’ which is, in the spirit of the Nestlé ’social media suicide’ turning into a forum for people with complaints against them.

What makes this worse is that the local manager told us that they are not allowed to go on Facebook as part of their company policy so neither he nor anyone else is able to respond to a group of frustrated passengers.

More on this when (?) I return.