Death, Taxes, Crisis in 2014

This past year reinforced the ongoing need for solid crisis management strategy and communication planning, regardless of what your organization does. I didn’t attribute this quote because in our community, as far as I can tell, this is essentially a cliché. It’s cliché because if my great, great grand pappy (conceptually pictured here) were a […]

Community resilience strategies for long-term recovery

After a webinar I presented to emergency managers on crisis and risk communications during recovery from disaster I was asked, “Do you have a communication strategy for long term recovery?” To which I responded, (and I’m paraphrasing here,) “Yes. I do.” I used more words, but that was the gist. Now, I can’t say for […]

How Crisis Communicators Can Leverage SM Info Flow

  Yours truly. RT @NYPDnews: Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. pic.twitter.com/olAxGgU4Hs — Justin Wedes (@justinwedes) April 22, 2014 I recently spoke at a two-day all-hazard crisis incident response seminar in Berkeley, Calif., titled, “Thriving in the First 96 Hours.” Among other activities, I […]

Crisis Communications Job Aids for Your Next Incident

In the overall scheme of things, there’s two ways to manage crisis incident response, and the communications component that is part of it — just wing it and make it up as you go along, or take a systematic approach. I’ve witnessed both, and (spoiler alert!) the former might produce occasional successes (due, mostly, to […]

Resilient Crisis Communications

I live in one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities,” which is a program funding innovative thinking and action to overcome issues that challenge preparedness, response and recovery during crisis. Norfolk for instance, where I make my home, faces issues of serious coastal flooding problems and the inadequacy of its infrastructure to support mass evacuations. Resiliency is easy […]