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National Preparedness Month tips: ok, but sooo 20th-century
By WDavidStephenson | September 20, 2007
Long-time readers will remember that I have little good to say about National Preparedness Month, the annual 
non-event each September in which DHS and the Ad Council make half-hearted efforts to get us to prepare for a terrorist attack or disaster.
Always a non-starter, they reached their nadir during Katrina, when Sec. Chertoff chose to attend a NPM event in Atlanta rather than save lives…
Well, this year they’ve at least had a tip a day (there was one year when the promised tip a day didn’t even make it to the web site, but who’s counting, eh? …). However, I swear these guys are in a time warp: sure, having a “go kit,” 3 days of food and water on hand, and a plan to take care of Fido (at least there was something learned from Katrina) are important, but there’s nary a mention of how to capitalize on the 21st-century communication devices and apps that have changed every other aspect of our lives.
So once again, dear reader, I call your attention to my “21st-century disaster tips you won’t hear from officials,” and the YouTube versions (our post-production schedule has been slowed, but expect one in the next few days dealing with what, IMHO, is the most important of all: sending a single Twitter message during an emergency to tell your family and friends you’re ok, rather than sucking precious bandwidth with cell voice calls that won’t get through anyway). As I’ve said ad naseum, people have these devices and are going to use them in a disaster whether or not authorities want them to, so it’s incumbent on government to actually capitalize on the possibilities for two-way communication they present.
Ready.gov is slooowly improving, but I think the more appropriate title is still unready.gov….
Technorati tags: homeland security DHS FEMA Department of Homeland Security War on Terror antiterrorism crowd-sourcing crowdsourcing swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security collaboration web 2.0 homeland security 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management National Preparedness Month business continuity> disaster planning disaster planning 2.0 Ready.gov
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